Colin Muething never knows what will happen minute to minute on the floor of Marcus Autism Center, a subsidiary of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. That’s exactly what drew him in.
Muething BSEd ’07, MEd ’09 is director of Marcus Autism Center’s Complex Behavior Support Program, where he works with children with autism and their families, helping curb dangerous behaviors such as aggression and self-injury.
For Muething, working with people with disabilities is a lifelong passion. His mom is a behavior specialist, and he helped care for his uncle with Down syndrome.
After earning his master’s degree in special education at UGA, he taught in the Gwinnett County Public Schools and shadowed professionals across Atlanta. That’s how he met Nate Call, then-manager of Marcus Autism Center’s Intensive Outpatient Program.
While shadowing Call, who today is Marcus Autism Center’s vice president, Muething soon came to a realization: “This is it. This is what I want to do.”
The Complex Behavior Support Program that Muething directs uses current, evidence-based assessment and treatment strategies to provide comprehensive treatment services for children on the autism spectrum or who have a developmental delay or a history of physical safety risks. Services range in intensity to meet each family’s needs with treatment aiming to reduce concerning behaviors, teach new ways to communicate wants and needs, and build accommodating environments that facilitate success both during treatment and in daily life.
For each case, the mission is the same: helping children and families no matter how severe the issue is.
Marcus Autism Center is one of the few facilities in the country offering such programs, and demand is skyrocketing. Muething has watched the waitlist grow from three years to four. For parents, that’s four years waiting for help managing what can be very dangerous behavior.
Muething remembers thinking, “This is out of control.” And he believes the path to greater accessibility for these services is growing the behavioral specialist workforce.
He has advocated for creating a path for professionals in this field to get licensed in Georgia. He was appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp BS ’87 to sit on the Georgia Board of Examiners of Psychologists and is part of the Georgia Association for Behavior Analysis public policy committee.
Muething, who holds a Ph.D. in school psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and is an assistant professor in the Emory University School of Medicine, is also active in research, studying what could trigger a relapse in destructive behavior and how to help caregivers prevent them. He serves as an associate editor for publications such as Journal of Behavior Education and also seeks to improve training for doctors and nurses working with kids who have disabilities.
He has been honored for his work, landing in UGA’s 40 Under 40 Class of 2019. But beyond all else, Muething loves seeing the impact his work has on children and their families. He recalls an experience where, after years of treatment, a child was able to return to school. The boy’s mother and grandmother gave him big hugs.
“It took four long years of lots of individuals working with him, but the trajectory of their life has totally changed forever,” Muething says. “I wouldn’t change that for the world.”
