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Annual Spring "Working With Youth" Workshops and Conference May 16-18, 2011
Historic New Orleans, Louisiana
      
Evidence-based Programs & Practices to Prevent & Reduce Youth
Delinquency & Crime
Paul Elam, Ph.D., Director of Business Innovation and Project Manager, Public Policy Associates, Inc. Dr. Paul
Elam,
Ph.D., is a project manager at Public Policy Associates, Incorporated. Dr. Elam has over 13 years of experience working as
a team builder and is recognized for his ability to assist government,
academic, community, and philanthropic organizations with pressing
sociological issues. He has been successful in securing over $16
million dollars in federal, state, and private contracts and grants to
develop and maintain human services in the City of Lansing, Ingham
County, and the State of Michigan. Dr. Elam has also worked with
several city, county, and state coalitions to help develop community-
and school-based programs. He has wide experience and competency
in research and analysis, program and policy development, grant
administration and contract compliance, and university partnership
building.
Dr. Elam is currently managing a project with the
Michigan Department of Human Services, Bureau of Juvenile Justice and
the Michigan State Court Administrator’s Office to help state and local
governments prevent and control juvenile delinquency and improve the
juvenile justice system. This project involves helping to develop
and implement strategies to deinstitutionalize status offenders,
separate juveniles from adults in institutions, and remove juveniles
from adult jails and lockups. Dr. Elam is also working with the
Michigan Committee on Juvenile Justice and the Michigan Department of
Human Services to ensure that minority youth are treated fairly when
they come into contact with the State of Michigan’s juvenile justice
system by developing and implementing state and local plans to reduce
disproportionate representation. Through this public/private
partnership, the State of Michigan and several local jurisdictions have
instituted multipronged intervention strategies, juvenile delinquency
prevention efforts, and system improvements to ensure equal treatment
of all youth. These prevention and system improvement efforts
have successfully reduced the disproportionate number of juvenile
members of minority groups who come into contact with the juvenile
justice system.
In addition, Dr. Elam is also working with
the Michigan Department of Corrections and the Michigan Council on
Crime and Delinquency on the Michigan Prisoner ReEntry
Initiative. He is working with these partners to help implement a
statewide model that connects recently released prisoners with the
resources necessary for a successful reintegration into the local
communities to which they are returning.
Prior to joining
PPA, Dr. Elam worked as the grants and program coordinator for the City
of Lansing Human Relations and Community Services Department. Dr.
Elam has also worked as a research and teaching assistant at Michigan
State University in the Departments of Urban Affairs, Criminal Justice,
and Family and Child Ecology where he assisted professors with the
study and instruction of crime, juvenile delinquency, research
methodology, multiculturalism, demography, urbanism, and multicultural
communication. He has also worked as an institutional research
analyst at Lansing Community College where he assisted with studies on
student retention, enrollment forecasting and trends, institutional
program effectiveness, and student satisfaction.
Dr. Elam is
the co-author and presenter of monographs and papers that have been
presented at national conferences. He received both his
undergraduate training in criminal justice and his graduate training in
criminal justice, urban studies, and family and child ecology from
Michigan State University.
Dr. Dan Edwards, President, Evidence Based Associates
 Daniel L Edwards, Ph.D.,
is President of Evidence-Based Associates (EBA), an organization
focused on improving the outcomes of juvenile justice agencies and the
youth and families that they serve – through home-based,
research-proven programs and performance-based contracts. In its
flagship program, EBA contracts with the state of Florida to implement
the highly-successful “Redirection” program statewide, providing
evidence-based programs to over 1,700 youth and families each year –
over 6,000 since 2005. Redirection was recently cited by an
independent evaluation as having saved Florida over $50 million by
decreasing recidivism and out of home placements.
Dr.
Edwards was previously affiliated with the Medical University of South
Carolina and MST Services (in Mt. Pleasant, SC) from 1997-2007.
Dr. Edwards earned a Masters degree in Education from Harvard
University and a Doctorate in Clinical and Health Psychology from the
University of Florida. Dr. Edwards is also a board member of the
Advancing Evidence-Based Practices (AEBP) national association that
advocates for EBPs in policy, academic and community practice settings.
A frequent speaker at national conferences and author of
several publications on implementation of evidence-based programs, Dr.
Edwards lives with his three amazing kids and his 2 year-old black lab,
and he is slowly working towards his first Iron Man ®.
Sobem Nwoko, President, Joyfields Institute
 Mr. Sobem Nwoko
is Founder and President of Joyfields Institute for Professional
Development serving the human services fields. The company is the
world's leading training, staff development and programs evaluation
company for evidence-based programs and supports. Evidence-based
programs are programs shown through research and documentation to
produce their intended outcomes.
Prior to founding the
company 10 years ago, Mr. Nwoko spent 15 years working at major
corporations in various senior management roles, including Vice
President of Marketing, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating
Officer. He managed customer sales and service operations and was
responsible for over 350 employees.
As
president of Joyfields Institute, Mr. Nwoko has focused attention on
evidence-based human services models for solving business challenges
and has worked to bring the best experts, teachers and practitioners
together to share what has been learned. Mr. Nwoko has built
Joyfields Institute into go-to resource public and private agencies
look to for these practices. The company serves over 400 agencies
located in all 50 US states and 11 countries and has trained over 2000
professionals. The company's public and private programs are
delivered via on-site and online workshops and conferences.
Mr.
Nwoko did his undergraduate studies at University of Maryland where he
studied Mass Communications. He did post-graduate studies at Towson
State University. He is also a student and coach graduate of Dale
Carnegie Training. He is married with 2 lovely daughters. The family
lives in the Atlanta, GA area of the USA.
Mark Lowis, LMSW, MSW, MINT, President MML Consulting
Mark Lowis has extensive experience in the public and
private sector for mental health and substance abuse services. He offers
assistance to agencies and facilities in the design, development, and
management of the following areas:
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Utilization Management
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Quality Management
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Utilization Review
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Clinical Supervision
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Staff Development and Training
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Clinical Chart Review and Performance Monitoring
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Contracts and Services Analyst
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Mark has provided leadership and consultation in
Utilization Management (UM) and Quality Management (QM) to various agencies and
at the state level over the years. He has helped agencies reduce their
dollar amount of loss for non-certs and denials by helping to improve
Utilization Review (UR) processes and staff trainings. Mark is a member
of the Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers (MINT) and provides
training and clinical supervision in this evidenced based practice.
Additionally, Mark provides team building activities and training that help to
increase the partnerships between functional departments, management, and
contractors in the field of mental health and substance abuse. Mark has a
great deal of experience designing and developing performance measurement
systems for maintaining the standards of accrediting bodies, as well as systems
for continuous quality improvement, contracting, and services analysis.
Dr. David L. Myers, Professor of Criminology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
 Dr.
David L. Myers,
PhD, is a Professor in the Department of Criminology at
Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), where he first joined the
faculty in 1998. He has also served as Interim Director at the
John Murtha Institute for Homeland Security. He earned his PhD in
1999 from the University of
Maryland, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and
previously received a Master of Science in Administration of Justice
and a Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice from Shippensburg
University.
Dr. Myers has taught more than 15 different courses at the
undergraduate, masters, and doctoral levels, specializing in classes on
research methods and quantitative analysis, juvenile justice and
delinquency, and criminal justice policy, planning, and evaluation.
From 1999 to 2002, he served as the criminology master’s program
coordinator at IUP, and from 2002 to 2008 he served as the criminology
doctoral program coordinator. He has supervised the teaching and
research of dozens of criminology doctoral students and has advised a
variety of student organizations and community groups.
Dr. Myers has published two books (most recently Boys among Men: Trying
and Sentencing Juveniles as Adults, Praeger Publishers, 2005) and
nearly 30 journal articles, book chapters, or other scholarly works. He
also has presented more than 35 papers at national and regional
conferences and is currently the Editor of Criminal Justice Policy
Review (a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal published by Sage
Publications). He has received several grants to support his research
and previously served as the Director of the IUP Center for Research in
Criminology.
Dr. Myers also has served as the Dean’s Associate in the IUP School of
Graduate Studies and Research; the Interim Vice Provost for Research
and Dean of Graduate Studies at IUP; and the Interim Executive Director
of the IUP Research Institute. He currently is serving as the Interim
Director of the IUP Murtha Institute for Homeland Security. In
the community, he has served as Chairperson of Indiana Area Communities
That Care, President of the Board of Directors of Big Brothers Big
Sisters of Indiana County, and Advisor to Kids on Campus of Big
Brothers Big Sisters.
** Agenda Subject to change
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