OSLC History: A Brief Timeline

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Celebrating 30 Years

Over the past 30 years, Oregon Social Learning Center (OSLC) has conducted research to help children and families, specifically children at risk for abuse, delinquency and/or failure to succeed in school. The work of OSLC’s scientists is well regarded in research communities around the world, and represents the highest level in research standards. Following are some highlights from the organization’s past and present:

1957 – Gerald “Jerry” Patterson and his social learning research group convene at the University of Oregon, and later, the original Oregon Research Institute. The group has a keen interest in using science to improve clinical work with children.

1963 – Jerry is quoted in the Eugene Register-Guard: “We and other researchers may be able, within the next decade, to give parents specific help in raising their children.”

1977 – Jerry Patterson and John Reid form OSLC, serving as the organization’s two research scientists. In its first decade, OSLC employed 54 people.

1982 – Jerry writes “Coercive Family Processes,” a significant work frequently referenced by other researchers.

1983 – OSLC develops Multidimensional Treatment Foster Care, a successful method for treating chronic juvenile offenders who are placed outside the home. The program was selected as a National Blueprint Program for violence prevention by the U.S. Department of Justice.

1984-85 – OSLC incorporates. John Reid is elected executive director, and Patti Chamberlain as clinical director.

1991 – The Prevention Intervention Research Center is created within OSLC. It links many aspects of OSLC research to strengthen the organization’s overall contributions to the prevention field.

1992 – Jerry, John and Tom Dishion publish A Social Learning Approach: Antisocial Boys, Volume IV. The book is frequently cited by other researchers.

2007 – OSLC celebrates is 30th anniversary. The organization now employs 205 people, including 14 research scientists and one research scientist emeritus. It occupies more than 47,000 square feet in Eugene and has smaller community offices in Albany, Newport, Portland, Salem, Tillamook and Woodburn.

In the past three decades:

OSLC research has made significant impacts on the understanding of the development of aggressive and delinquent behavior in children, from toddlers to young adults, and how to effectively change such behavior.

The organization has provided treatment services to more than 3,000 families of aggressive children, and research shows the services are as effective as any being provided across the country.

Guided by the knowledge that parents are the major influence in their children's' lives, training programs developed by OSLC scientists have been used internationally as models for effective parenting.

OSLC researchers have published 615 research papers, including 182 book chapters and 18 books.

OSLC has brought more than $165 million in federal research grant awards into the Eugene/Springfield economy.

In 2007, the National Institutes of Heath peer review said of OSLC: “OSLC has a cadre of superb investigators who have engaged in the most carefully orchestrated inquiries and implementation ‘tests’ within this segment of at-risk youth [in child welfare]. No other Center or site comes close to rivaling the OSLC in this pursuit – either in its basic research or translational and implementation programs.”

Looking Ahead

Continuing into the next decade, OSLC scientists will focus on working to advance the understanding of biological influences on behavior and plan to develop more of the organization’s evidence-based practices into interventions to be used in community settings.

OSLC Mission Statement

We are a collaborative, multidisciplinary center dedicated to increasing the scientific understanding of social and psychological processes related to healthy development and family functioning. We apply that understanding to the design and evaluation of interventions that strengthen children, adolescents, families and communities.