Temple Coursework and BACB Requirements

The Association for Behavior Analysis International has verified the following courses toward the coursework requirements for eligibility to take the Board Certified Behavior Analyst® or Board Certified Assistant Behavior Analyst® examination. Applicants will need to meet additional requirements before they can be deemed eligible to take the examination. 

For more information on the examination, students should contact the Behavior Analyst Certification Board (BACB; www.bacb.com). Please note that the BACB periodically changes their certification requirements. Temple University updates its ABA programs when the BACB announces new requirements in order to stay as current as possible. If you do not apply to complete the certification exam soon after graduating from this program, you may need to take additional courses, gain additional supervised experience, or fulfill other requirements in order to be eligible. Students who completed coursework under a previous BACB task list (or other previous BACB requirements such as degree or supervision requirements) will not necessarily meet requirements for the current task list at the time they apply. Whether they meet current requirements is at the discretion of the BACB, not Temple. It is the student’s responsibility to be aware of upcoming changes in BCBA exam coursework, degree, and supervision requirements and how this may affect the student’s ability to qualify for the exam in the future and to obtain any additional documentation for their own certification. Temple does not keep syllabi from courses offered in previous semesters. We strongly recommend that students retain their syllabi after graduation in the event they must document to the BACB (or other professional organizations offering licenses, certificates, or other authorizations) that they meet their current requirements. 

In cases where a student requests for a Temple faculty member to sign off or otherwise attest to the BACB that items under the current edition task list content were covered in one or more courses taken under a previous task list, the student must present to us (a) the syllabi from the relevant courses and (b) a detailed explanation of which hours from the current task list were covered by any course(s) submitted with the request. We will review and accept each request on a case by case basis, make a determination, and grant the necessary approval, if appropriate.

In addition, some students may take courses from other programs and wish to transfer the courses into our programs. It is important to note that university programs allocate the BACB-required course content across courses in an ABAI-verified course sequence differently, so courses do not always transfer easily from one program to another. In these cases, it is the student’s responsibility to contact the BACB for a coursework evaluation, subject to fees, to determine what combination of courses would meet their current requirements to apply for the certification under a pre-approved sequence.

Please review the BACB website for requirements regularly.