After graduating from Hamilton with a major in government, Vincent Strully went to Syracuse University for a year of graduate study in political science. He explains how he got into the field of helping severely disabled children: "It was the late '60s-early '70s and antiwar movements were rampant. Kent State happened and the country was figuring out what to do. I was trying to figure out what the hell I was doing." Quickly realizing that a Ph.D. in political science was not what he wanted, he left Syracuse to work for a child care center near Albany. There he found that he enjoyed teaching kids and first developed his passion for helping children with severe behavioral problems.
He left Albany for the Spaulding Youth Center in Tilton, New Hampshire, to work with emotionally disturbed children. This evolved into the first behavior modification unit to treat children who were emotionally disabled and autistic. He and his colleagues studied while they worked, reading journals, striving to follow the models provided by the great behavioral psychologist B .F. Skinner '26.Jonathan Vaughan, professor of psychology at Hamilton, explains the work of B.F. Skinner: "Dr. Skinner did his pioneering research at Harvard beginning in the 1930s, and it set the stage for psychology for more than 30 years. He studied operant conditioning, which describes how our behavior is affected by reward and punishment. In his research, Skinner and his students looked at both human and animal behavior, and these laboratory studies have informed clinical practice ever since." Dr. Vaughan recalls his own psychology training: "I learned about instrumental conditioning as an undergraduate research participant by training pigeons in 'Skinner boxes.' The academic field of psychology has generally moved from the emphasis on learning processes, which it had at that time, to the study of cognition (which Skinner decried as the "creation science" of psychology). Nevertheless, the principles of learning are still at the core of clinical practice in psychology and education. Vincent Strully's programs are true to their roots in instrumental conditioning because they use Skinnerian models of reinforcement in treatment regimes that have very strong evaluation components. The work with the children is closely monitored to make sure it is really working as intended."
In the summer of 1974, Vincent Strully moved to Massachusetts. During his last year in New Hampshire he had helped write a proposal to establish a private school for children with special disabilities. The proposal, in competition for a contract from the State of Massachusetts, prevailed over several others. He says the first year, with its horrific start-up problems and challenges of working with a large state bureaucracy, was an education in itself. He started with six residential students and a staff of eight. "We used applied behavior analysis, and at the time we were the only program of that kind. Our fledgling attempts resulted in a nice program. Students learned important life skills and received good care."
By 1978 it was time to look for new opportunities. In 1980, in a move he described as determining the future of the NECC and the "making of his career," Vincent Strully had positioned his program successfully enough to take over in addition a failing institution in Southborough, Massachusetts. "We could have totally failed. Taking over a program in emergency status required 24 hours a day of my time. We had difficult kids and it was a real struggle. It wasn't the right type of facility. All our programs now are community-based with group homes. This program in Southborough was an established institution, and in taking it over I took a huge risk and gamble." The school didn't fail, however. For the first couple of years, Vincent Strully lived there day and night, and with sheer force of personality, will, and some luck, made it work. By 1982 the program was up and running.In 1985, with private donations and state support, the school began to get the necessary financial backing. Vincent Strully says, "People realized they needed us. We provided a valuable human service and I knew our programs were finally regarded as leading in this field. It was at this time, with the support of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that he combined his two programs into the New England Center for Children. With fully modern facilities in Southborough, he was able to begin to recruit world-class senior clinicians.
Today, the NECC is internationally recognized. Because of Vincent Strully's Hamilton roots, it includes several of the College's graduates on its staff in addition to offering a unique educational opportunity for Hamilton students. On a visit to his alma matter last fall, he joked with a group of students: "We discriminate in favor of you. If you come from Hamilton and Dr. Weldon recommends you, you're in. If yon were from some other college, you'd go through days of grueling interviews."
Douglas Weldon, who chairs Hamilton's psychology department, worked with Vincent Strully and NECC program director Dan Gould to create a program for Hamilton juniors and seniors that will combine supervised teaching and academic course work. Until now, only graduate students earning a master's degree at either Simmons College or Northeastern University have been eligible to intern at the Center. To interested Hamilton students, Vincent Strully promised a career that "fundamentally changes the lives of children," adding that the graduates of his programs are sought-after in many areas of human services, research, administration, and special education by public and private agencies throughout the world.
Dr. Gould recently hosted a visit to the NECC by Jonathan Vaughan and several Hamilton students, so they could learn more about the new program. Dr. Vaughan says the internship is a "remarkable opportunity for students to get hands-on experience, using what they have learned in the laboratory to help individual children." The psychology program at Hamilton under Dr. Weldon's leadership prepares students for the intense training and course work they will receive at the NECC. Students take classes that include basic research working with rats in the lab, and courses designed to teach how to formulate hypotheses about behavior, test those hypotheses, and evaluate and interpret the results. Dr. Vaughan says, "In the laboratory and at the NECC, the same issues are important. The research question, 'Does the experimental evidence support this conclusion?' is the academic equivalent of the clinical question, 'Do our data show that this particular treatment works for this child?'"
The approach at the NECC is scientific and based on principles of applied behavior analysis affecting everyone. Vincent Strully says, "Ever done something twice? You've been reinforced." At the Center the clients are autistic, learning disabled, or mentally retarded, sometimes violent or self-injurious, and many have pervasive emotional disorders. Some have seizure disorders and many have multiple handicaps. The students vary greatly in their functional levels and degree of disability, which is why, for many of them, one-on-one care and individualized treatment plans are essential to the success of the program.
Jonathan Vaughan says, "During our visit, I was most impressed with how deeply thought-through each child's treatment plan is." He gave the example of a child who had trouble imitating. "A teacher might spend the better part of a day teaching the child to imitate one behavior, like waving his arms." This is followed up with objective, scientific evaluation in which virtually every one of the child's actions are recorded and graphed. Although that approach might initially seem sterile and mechanical, Dr. Vaughan explains why this detailed evaluation is so important: "Clinical detachment is essential because, particularly with children, it is all too easy to see improvement that is not really there, because we are so motivated to help.""The goal of the New England Center maximize independence as much as possible for each child," says Vincent Strully. "After having participated in the program, 20 to 40 percent of the youngest group of children no longer diagnosed with the problem originally brought them to the NECC. On the other hand, we've had older kids come who've been through water therapy, music therapy, animal therapy--you name it, they've had it. They probably had a good time, the people working with them had a good time, but the kid is still rocking, weaving, and head banging. At the New England Center we systematically teach life skills the child will need. We take a careful, scientific look and use positive behavioral change techniques that we have proved work."
"Regardless of my ties, I looked to Hamilton for recruitment purposes because it's one of the most solid programs, in terms of undergraduate offerings, that I know of," explained Vincent Strully. "The quality of the current program, and the tremendous work Doug Weldon has done to make this semester internship possible, determined my decision to go with Hamilton." Another determining factor: Hamilton is one of the few colleges that still provides students with an in-depth understanding of the Skinnerian model of operant conditioning which is the foundation of the program at the New England Center for Children.