Cora Santman
Cora Santman, M.A., BCBA, LBA
Cora Santman, M.A., BCBA, LBA
Cora Santman is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan. She attended Michigan State University where she received her bachelor's degree in Special Education - Learning Disabilities. She continued her work in education by pursuing her special education teaching certificate as a teaching intern in the Lansing School District. Throughout this experience she worked multiple summers at various ABA companies as a behavior technician, where she began to admire and understand how the environment can be arranged to promote behavior change. Due to this, she decided to pursue a career as a BCBA and was accepted into the Master of Arts ABA program at Michigan State University. At MSU she was directly advised by Dr. Matthew Brodhead for the 2 years in the program. Through the Masters program she was a behavior technician at the Early Learning Institute (ELI) for approximately 2 years. At ELI she worked with preschool aged individuals with autism, in both an individualized and general education classroom setting. Through this she gained valuable experience in the implementation of functional analyses, treatment of severe problem behavior and intervention to increase individuals' social skills. Additionally, she conducted research for her thesis on the generalization of activity schedules to different environment, such as the general education classroom setting. After graduation and receiving her certification from the BACB, she moved to Grand Rapids to pursue a career as a BCBA . As a BCBA she has worked with individuals with autism of all ages, by conducting assessments and designing goals to increase socially significant skills. She has had many different experiences training client's parents and/or caregivers using behavior skills training (BST) approach to help promote generalization of the skills an individual has learned in the therapeutic setting to the home setting. Her current interests in Grand Rapids include exploring local restaurants, taking her cat on walks and exploring local hiking and biking trails. She also makes it to as many Michigan State and Western Michigan football games as possible.
