AbstractThe Basic Academic Skills Enhancement (BASE) program is described as an example of one research team's approach to the design, conduct, and implementation of a multilevel (i.e., primary and secondary) prevention program. Following presentation of the conceptual rationale for the program, BASE's evolution is discussed with regard to its specific personnel and setting characteristics. In describing the program's screening, intepretation, and evaluation components, the authors present a model of collaboration between university and community‐based individuals that appears, to this point, to have resulted in a program solidly rooted in the setting's current and foreseeable strategies for responding to children's learning and emotional disorders from a prevention rather than a treatment orientatio