Florence DiGennaro Reed

Background and Professional Interests

I am currently an Associate Professor in and Chairperson of the Department of Applied Behavioral Science at the University of Kansas. I am a licensed behavior analyst in the state of Kansas and a Board Certified Behavior Analyst.  I received a bachelor's degree in psychology from Binghamton University, a master's degree in experimental psychology from Long Island University, and a doctorate in school psychology from Syracuse University. I also completed a clinical post-doctoral fellowship at the Institute for Child Development and a pre-doctoral internship in clinical psychology at the May Center for Education and Neurorehabilitation and the May Center for Child Development.

Research Interests

My research interests primarily involve organizational behavior management. I am particularly interested in working at the organizational or staff level to improve the quality of services provided to individuals in need of support. As such, a majority of my work is conducted in a behavioral consultation model with non-profit service delivery organizations.

My work with the WHO Collaborating Centre has involved assisting colleagues with documenting Ebola response efforts as well as developing standardized protocols for the KU Center's consultation efforts.

Why I chose to be engaged in this work/How I came to be engaged in this work

My interest in organizational behavior management stemmed from my work as a behavior analyst. I noticed that educators did not adopt best-practice training approaches, which influenced the outcomes of service recipients in desperate need of support. Sadly, I also observed that consultants failed to reliably implement best-practice training procedures when working with educators. Over time my research has evolved to incorporate developing resource-efficient and effective practices to support the efforts of interventionists, more broadly.

Description of the work I am engaged in

I am currently engaged in applied research and consultation as well laboratory research. My team’s applied research and consultation mainly focuses on developing staff training procedures for local non-profits, presenting monthly performance scorecard data on various quality assurance metrics, tracking the effectiveness of staff incentive programs, and other organizational-level efforts. Our translational research involves using a behavioral economic framework to understand employee behavior.