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Membership Coordinator: Gerald Lavarias


Gerald is a graduate student at CSULA in midst of attaining a Masters of Science, Applied Behavior Analysis in Psychology.  Gerald currently works as a private consultant for Valley Achievement Center (VAC), and behavior consultant for Autism Spectrum Therapies (AST) under the clinical direction of Dr. Doug Moes.  His past employment includes 6+ years of experience implementing or developing applied behavior analysis (ABA) programs for children with autism at VAC, a non-public school, in Bakersfield, California.  At VAC, he began working as an instructional assistant (1 year) and senior instructional assistant (1.5 yr.) implementing and assisting ABA programs.  Later he was promoted to a supervisory role as a program director/manager (3 yr.) and program administrator/coordinator (1 yr.) which required program development, supervision, and training amongst VAC instructional aides, senior instructional aides, and program directors (program administrative level).  Also, Gerald helped provide in-home direct instruction for 2 years in addition to working as a program director/manager at VAC. 

Gerald’s professional and personal interest include positive behavior support (PBS) for school and home settings, functional assessment strategies, communication-based interventions for challenging behavior, applications of reinforcement (concurrent schedules, non-contingent, fixed-time, etc.), paraprofessional management, consultation, and training in school and home settings, and non-aversive behavioral treatment/applications as a part of reactive and emergency procedures.  At the moment, he would like to conduct research in the role of manding within a functional communication training program for access to escape and tangible related challenging behavior as part of his master thesis.  Several behaviorists Gerald admires include, but not limited:  B.F. Skinner, Robert H. Horner, Gary LaVigna, Mark V. Durand, Thomas Willis, James Carr, Barry Lowenkron, Edward Carr, Glenda Vittimberga, Bill Matthews, and Douglas Moes.

Future goals for Gerald include: enrollment into a doctorate program, conducting research (based on above interest), and present at professional conferences such as Cal-ABA, International ABA, etc.

Contact info: 

lavarias24@yahoo.com


 
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