New Faculty - College of Public Programs

Khalid Al-Yahya
Assistant Professor, School of Public Affairs
Dr. Al-Yahya received his doctorate from the University of Connecticut in 2004. Prior to coming to ASU, Dr. Al‑Yahya was a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University . His research is comparative and interdisciplinary in character and contributes to three streams of literature—public organizations and management, comparative governments and development administration, and comparative political economy more generally. His ongoing research focuses on trust and decision making, participation and empowerment, knowledge-competence utilization, and civil society-work organizations relations. He conducted several international research projects, especially in Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. He also provided consultations on various research and consulting projects to national and international firms.

Debra Friedman
Dean, College of Public Programs
Dr. Friedman earned her doctorate in sociology from the University of Washington and comes to ASU as the dean of the College of Public Programs and professor of public affairs. She served as associate dean of undergraduate education and associate provost for academic planning at the University of Washington . In these roles she was responsible for managing university-wide innovation programs, enrollment planning, and strategic visioning initiatives. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles and a book. Dr. Friedman has taught at the Universities of Iowa, Arizona , and Washington , and won distinguished teaching awards at the University of Washington and the University of Arizona . She was a national fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a visiting scholar at both the Australian National University and the Russell Sage Foundation.

Christopher D. Jones
Assistant Professor, School of Community Resources and Development
Dr. Jon es received his doctorate in forest resources science with a specialization in recreation, parks, and tourism management from West Virginia University. Prior to coming to ASU, he was an associate professor of outdoor recreation management in the Physical Education and Recreation Department of Utah Valley State College where he earned the Board of Trustees Award of Excellence. He also held professorial appointments at Eastern Kentucky University and Potomac State College. His publications, which include articles on the sense of belonging, flow experience, and environmental perception, have appeared in the Journal of Leisure Research, Leisure Sciences, International Journal of Wilderness, and the Journal of Park and Recreation Administration. Currently, Dr. Jones is an investigator on projects that examine the relationship between loss of place attachment to water resources and crowding.

Judy Krysik
Associate Professor, School of Social Work
Dr. Krysik joins the faculty from the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work where she was an assistant professor. She earned her M.S.W. at the University of Calgary and her doctorate at ASU. She specializes in the delivery and evaluation of services to children and families, program planning and development, and family policy. She is the co-author of two books, Social Policy and Social Work: Critical Essays on the Welfare State (Aldine de Gruyter, 1998) and Research for Effective Social Work Practice (McGraw-Hill, forthcoming 2006).

Gyan Nyaupane
Assistant Professor, School of Community Resources and Development
Dr Gyan Nyaupane received his doctorate in leisure studies from Pennsylvania State University and master’s degree in parks, recreation and tourism management from Lincoln University, New Zealand. His research interests include ecotourism, sustainable tourism, environmental, social and economic impacts of tourism, tourism and terrorism, and user fees. Some of his works have appeared in the Annals of Tourism Research, Tourism Management, and Journal of Ecotourism. Prior to his doctoral studies at Pennsylvania State University, he worked for seven years with the National Park Service, Forest Service, and World Wildlife Fund in various capacities including deputy superintendent of national parks, tourism planner, and project manager in Nepal .

Bárbara J. Robles
Associate Professor, School of Social Work/Center for Civil Rights and Community Development
Bárbara J. Robles received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park with emphases in econometrics and monetary policy. She formerly worked as an economist/revenue estimator for the Joint Committee on Taxation, United States Congress scoring tax legislation. She is an associate professor in the School of Social Work and teaches undergraduate and graduate classes on Latinos and public policy issues, and Latinos, financial services, and community asset building policies. Her current research interests center on financial literacy, the Earned Income Tax Credit as a source of capitalization for microbusinesses, Latina entrepreneurship and microbusiness as well as family and community asset building on the United States-Mexico border economy. She is currently working on a book concerning Latinos, cultural capital, and asset building policies and has another co-authored book entitled The Color of Wealth forthcoming (New Press) in late 2005/early 2006. She is a member of the Hispanic Business, Inc., Board of Economists and has consulted for US AID Legislative Strengthening Initiatives in El Salvador and Guatemala and for the State Department on microenterprise creation along the United States-Mexico border.

Dominique Roe-Sepowitz
Assistant Professor, School of Social Work
Dr. Roe-Sepowitz received her doctorate from Florida State University in social work, with a specialization in adolescent mental health and forensic social work. Prior to coming to ASU, she was a teaching assistant and adjunct instructor at Florida State University College of Social Work and School of Criminology and Criminal Justice where she taught courses on human development, groups and families, and victimology. She has been the clinical and research director of the Esuba Program, a trauma intervention program for incarcerated women and girls, since 2002 and has presented for the past three years at the American Society of Criminology conferences regarding this project. Included in her publications are two book chapters, “Empirically Supported Problem Prevention Programs for Adolescent Mental Health” and “Anxiety Prevention Programs for Adults” and an evaluation of the Esuba intervention program which appeared in the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology. Dr. Roe-Sepowitz is a clinical social worker with certifications in trauma interventions. She specializes in sexual abuse, anxiety disorders, victim services, and self-mutilation of children and adolescents.

Timothy J. Tyrrell
Professor, School of Community Resources and Development
Dr. Tyrrell received his doctorate from Cornell University in agricultural economics with a specialization in econometrics and consumer behavior. Prior to coming to ASU, he was professor of tourism economics in the Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics at the University of Rhode Island. Dr. Tyrrell has published numerous articles on tourism economics and is editor of a forthcoming special issue of the Journal of Travel Research on the economic impacts of tourism (July 2006). He is also leading an effort to create a Metropolitan Tourism Research Center at the downtown campus.