President’s Welcome

July 2021

Greetings NJABA members! For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Robert LaRue and I am the incoming President of NJABA. Over the last 17+ years of living in New Jersey and working at Rutgers University, I have had the opportunity to get to know many of you personally and professionally. I have served on the NJABA Board of Directors since 2016 in the roles of Events Chair and President-Elect. I look forward to working for you in my next role as NJABA President.

I am fortunate enough to be assuming the presidency of NJABA at a point when the organization may be the strongest it has ever been. NJABA is in this fortuitous position largely because of our dedicated membership. Within the last year, we reached the highest number of NJABA members in our history. We also owe thanks to our hard-working and brilliant NJABA Board of Directors. It has been a privilege to work alongside such creative professionals over the last few years. Within the last few years, we have expanded our workgroups to provide support to practitioners, provided members with updates regarding critical licensing legislation, and we have developed a number of additional training/continuing education opportunities (e.g., Speaker Series) for our members. As impressive as all of these accomplishments are, they make me acutely aware that I have large shoes to fill for the coming year.

My goals for the next year are to continue many of the initiatives we have been working toward with the goal of engaging and being useful to our membership. This is where your role as NJABA members is critically important. The input of our behavior analysts and behavior analysts-in-training will help guide us as an organization moving forward. Fortunately, New Jersey has some of the best ABA training programs in the country and some of the best practitioners in the world providing services in our state – so we have some expertise to spare 😊. Whether it is providing more continuing education opportunities, more diverse training opportunities (beyond applications with ASD), or providing more networking events – we want to know what will make you the most effective practitioners you can be.

In closing, I am honored to be stepping into this role and recognize the responsibility I have representing our field and our state. I look forward to hearing your input about the next steps for NJABA and hope to see you all (hopefully in person!) soon.

Sincerely,