A cycle of learning and teaching powered Hannah Grey's Salve journey from BA to MA to Ph.D. in behavior analysis

When she was coming up through middle and high school, Hannah Grey '21, '22 (M), '26 (Ph.D) was already teaching and mentoring others. "I was that kid who was the camp counselor and worked with children. I knew I would wind up in some kind of teaching role," she said.

But like many new college students, when she got to Salve Regina University she wasn't sure how to create a path toward that sort of career. She started as a psychology major in 2021 with a minor in special education. Psychology professor Dr. Paula Martasian suggested she might look into behavior analysis (BA) – a field that studies how environmental factors influence learning and behavior.

"When I took my first undergraduate course in BA it immediately made sense to me. I understood it – it explained how my own brain had been working," Grey said.

Looking ahead to a career, Grey also learned that the field of behavior analysis was growing extremely fast. According to the Behavior Analysis Certification Board, nationwide demand for board certified behavior analysts has increased every year since 2010.

That summer she took a job as a behavior technician at Alternatives ABA in Norwell, Massachusetts. "I really liked the classwork and theory of BA, but I needed to know if I would like doing that kind of work day-in and day-out. After that experience, I thought, 'I can do this.'"

When she returned to Salve for her junior year she did so under the accelerated MA program in behavior analysis, which enabled her to begin taking graduate-level courses as a senior. She earned her bachelor's degree in 2021.

"Part of the draw of the MA program was being able to complete it in an accelerated timeline," Grey explained.

She was also intrigued by the research of the master's program director, Dr. Cody Morris, who became one of Grey's mentors, along with assistant professor of psychology Dr. Stephanie Jones.

Courses, fieldwork, board certification

As she continued in the master's program, Grey balanced classroom work with clinical work at Pathways Strategic Teaching Center in Warwick, Rhode Island, where she did fieldwork as a behavior technician. Through her Salve practicum, she had the opportunity to present her research at the Berkshire Association for Behavior Analysis and the Therapy BABAT conference, along with other Salve students and faculty.

"What I learned by presenting and networking at conferences was that we don't know everything. It made me want to go for a Ph.D. to get more experience, to learn as much as I can about all the different pieces of behavior so I could continue to improve my clinical work. I wanted to do better for the people I worked with."

As luck would have it, while Grey was matriculating through the master's program, Morris was building a Ph.D. program to launch in 2023. "Once I was ingrained in the Salve graduate community I knew there was nowhere else I would do my Ph.D.," she said.

Grey walked the Salve stage for the second time in 2022 and passed the BCBA (board certified behavior analyst) exam.

Working as a BCBA, pursuing a Ph.D.

The four-year journey from MA to Ph.D. saw Grey take a role as a BCBA at Autism Care Partners in Fall River, Massachusetts, develop her research and present it at professional conferences that took her to Portugal and across the nation. Articles she co-authored with Morris and Jones, Autism Care Partners training and quality director Elizabeth Bland, fellow Ph.D. students Jesse Perrin and Jacob Oliviera '23 (M) and MA candidate Grace Boyle '24, '25 (M) were published in the journal Behavior Analysis in Practice.

She also switched from the back to the front of the classroom at Salve, teaching introductory psychology courses to undergraduate students.

"I love presenting at conferences, and I fell into teaching so naturally – it was that role I had always wanted," Grey said.

She also dove deeply into the clinical aspect of the work, joining Horizon Consultant Group as an associate BCBA consultant, working at a public middle school in Massachusetts guiding students who need support in their academic placements.

"We work with students but also help teachers, para-educators and administrators with training and implementation of BA strategies in classrooms," she said.

It was in this work that she found inspiration for her doctoral dissertation that dovetailed back into a topic she had researched with Jones. "We worked a lot on the challenge of staff training. It's critically important, but also time- and resource-intensive. I think it's the hardest part of clinical work."

With the BA field having grown so quickly, Grey explained, a lot of direct-care staff are young adults just out of high school or college students studying psychology.

"As a BA you often write programming that can be fairly technical and challenging for staff to implement. My dissertation asked questions inspired by the importance of training. I can write a great plan that makes sense in theory, but when it's implemented in the classroom, things can go wrong. Buses arrive late. Maybe the student didn't get to eat breakfast that day. We need to bridge the gap between how a plan should go and how it will probably go. A lot of people who care deeply work in conditions that aren't ideal. How can we make our interventions work in different conditions?"

Taking the Salve mission to heart

As she works to help students succeed in the classroom, Grey sees the connection to Salve's mission coming through.

"A lot of what we do as BAs is meet everyone where they're at. We look at what you need and do what we can with what we have. That is especially true for a student, adult or any learner with a disability. The work is never about changing the student to fit the academic mold. It's about changing their environment to reveal a skill that they may not have known how to express. This is about a person being in harmony with their environment so they can be successful."

She also feels deeply connected to another aspect of Salve's mission – the concept of lifelong learning. As she crossed the Salve stage for the third time in 2026, she did so as the first scholar to complete Salve's behavioral analysis Ph.D. program.

Grey is now heading into her second school year helping middle school students succeed, and looking forward to re-joining the Salve faculty in future semesters as an adjunct member teaching undergraduate students as they begin their own journeys in the field.