Program Faculty and Staff
On this page:
Core Program Faculty
Charmaine Higa-McMillan, Ph.D., Professor, Director and Field Placement Coordinator
Dr. Charmaine Higa-McMillan received her B.A. in Psychology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 1999 and her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Tulsa in 2004. Dr. Higa-McMillan is licensed to practice as a psychologist in the State of Hawaii. Her clinical and research interests include childhood stress and anxiety, implementation of evidence-based services, training and professional development, and improving access to quality care in rural, underserved schools and communities. Dr. Higa-McMillan has over 50 publications and 80 presentations in her areas of research, serves on several editorial boards and is the current chair of the Rural Health Committee of the Hawaii Psychological Association. She also serves as a consultant to PracticeWise, LLC, a company that trains and supports behavioral health providers who work with youth and families to access and implement evidence-informed services.
Bryan S. K. Kim, Ph.D., Professor, Chair of the Division of Social Sciences
Dr. Bryan S. K. Kim received the Ph.D. in Counseling, Clinical, and School Psychology with an emphasis in Counseling Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He also has a Master of Education in School Counseling and a Bachelor of Education in Secondary Science Education, both from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Dr. Kim is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (MHC196) in the State of Hawaiʻi. Prior to joining UH Hilo, Dr. Kim was a tenured Associate Professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and previous to UCSB a tenure-track Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland.
Dr. Kim has over 90 publications (including 9 psychological instruments) and 100 presentations in the areas of multicultural counseling process and outcome, measurement of cultural constructs, counselor education and supervision, and immigrant experiences. His current research examines the effects of culture-specific counseling interventions and client enculturation/acculturation (e.g., cultural values) on counseling process and outcome. Dr. Kim's interest in multicultural counseling psychology largely stems from his experiences growing up in Hawaiʻi as a 1.5-generation Asian American.
Dr. Kim is the Editor of The Counseling Psychologist journal and Associate Editor of Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development journal. He also is the immediate Past Editor of Asian American Journal of Psychology and serves on editorial boards of several other journals. In recognition of his contributions to the field, Dr. Kim received several research awards from American Psychological Association, American Counseling Association, and Asian American Psychological Association. He is a “Fellow” of the American Psychological Association (Society of Counseling Psychology, Division 17; Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, Division 29; Society of the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues, Division 45), International Academy of Intercultural Research, and Asian American Psychological Association.
Steve Herman, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Dr. Steve Herman joined the department in 2005. He received his Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Stanford University in 1998 and is licensed to practice as a psychologist in Hawaiʻi. He studies mental health professionals' judgments about the validity of allegations of child sexual abuse. He has presented numerous workshops on child sexual abuse evaluations to professionals (judges, attorneys, psychologists, child protection caseworkers, forensic interviewers, and law enforcement) in the United States, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Finland, Japan, Norway, and South Korea.
Dr. Herman teaches courses on counseling theories and skills, career counseling, group counseling, child maltreatment, psychopathology, and personality psychology. He also supervises our master's students' practicum and internship experiences. Additionally, he has authored and co-authored numerous professional publications.
Sunyoung Kim, Ph.D., Professor
Dr. Sunyoung Kim arrived at UH Hilo in 2010 and has been teaching graduate and undergraduate students in the department of psychology since her arrival. She is also a contributing faculty member of the Gender and Women’s Studies Program of UH Hilo. Her course offering includes Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Adult Behavior Therapy, Psychological Assessment, Psychopathology over life span, Practicum Seminar, Counseling Skills, Social and cultural Foundations for multicultural counseling, Psychology of Women, Abnormal Psychology, and Cross-cultural Psychology.
Dr. Kim received a B.S. from Seoul National University, a M.A. in women’s studies from Ewha Woman’s University in Korea. She co-founded the first rape crisis center in Korea while she was teaching women’s studies in universities and carrying out a government funded research on sexual violence in Korea. She received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Boston University in 2004. She is licensed as a psychologist in the states of California and New York. She completed her post-doctoral fellowship in Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences in 2006, at which point, she was employed as a research associate in the same department. She obtained a VA grant along with other investigators, and carried out multiple NIH and VA funded treatment outcome research projects on anxiety disorders and PTSD while she was at Stanford University for five years.
Dr. Kim’s clinical and research interests include treatment of panic and anxiety disorders, trauma and PTSD, social justice and women’s issues in mental health, multi-cultural and international approaches to clinical psychology. She obtained grants from the Korean research foundation and University of Hawaiʻi for research projects on the breathing retraining therapy for panic disorder and on the second order victimization of sexual violence survivors.
Dr. Kim has provided numerous presentations and trainings to psychiatrists and psychiatric residents in teaching hospitals in Seoul, Korea. Dr. Kim also taught graduate and undergraduate courses as a visiting professor of psychology, in Yonsei University and Korea University in Seoul, Korea.
She is currently an investigator of an international research team that studies victims and bereaved families of the Sewol Ferry disaster. She authored and co-authored multiple peer reviewed articles, book chapters, reports, and booklets on treatment of anxiety disorders, PTSD, sexual violence, and international clinical psychology.
Contributing Faculty
Errol Yudko, Ph.D., Associate Professor
Dr. Yudko received a B.A. in biological sciences from the University of California at Irvine in 1991, and both M.A. (1994) and Ph.D. (1997) degrees in behavioral neuroscience from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Dr. Yudko’s post-doctoral research was spent in the Laboratory of Psychopharmacology at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Dr. Yudko has worked as a research assistant for the Center for Memory and Learning at the University of California Irvine, research pharmacologist for the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience for Wyeth Research in the U.K., and as an ethopharmacologist for the Pacific Biomedical Research Center at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Dr. Yudko’s research interests include the effects of pharmacological agents on aggressive and defensive behavior in both humans and animals, the psychoneuroendocrinology of addiction, models of substance abuse prevention in adolescents, and the effectiveness of distance education. His interest in distance education led to his being the first recipient of the Taniguchi Award for Excellence and Innovation. His interest in substance abuse has led to his developing several substance abuse prevention programs targeted at adolescents of the Big Island of Hawaiʻi. These interests have also led to his being PI on a $750,000 grant from the DHHS that funds a program for Native-Hawaiian and part-Hawaiian at-risk youth who are attempting to finish high school.
He co-authored a book on methamphetamine, which is currently in its second edition. Dr. Yudko is a reviewer for the Journal of Computing in Higher Education, and has been an ad-hoc reviewer for the Journal of Studies on Alcohol, Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, Addictive Behaviors, Journal of Traumatic Stress, Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention and Policy, Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology, and Computers & Education. Dr. Yudko is the author or co-author of 50+ peer reviewed publications, book chapters, and/or conference presentations.
Jennifer R. Turner, Ph.D., Assistant Professor
Dr. Turner recieved both her B.A. in psychology (2013) and her Ph.D. in Adult Development and Aging (2020) from the University of Akron in Ohio. Dr. Turner’s post-doctoral research was conducted at the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center at the Pennsylvania State University, where she assisted in examining daily memory lapses and their associations with emotional outcomes and psychological well-being on an NIH-funded R-01 grant. Dr. Turner’s primary research interests focus on social and emotional factors that influence lifespan health and well-being, such as age differences in nostalgia and potential mechanisms to reduce negative perceptions of aging. Her work has been funded by the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and the American Psychological Association (APA), and has been published in several peer-reviewed journals including: Emotion, Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences, and Journal of Happiness Studies.
In addition to her course offerings in lifespan development, aging, and statistics, Dr. Turner also directs the Aging and Social Cognition (ASC) developmental research laboratory at the UH Hilo.
Program Staff
Tifaine N. Crivello, Program Coordinator
Tifaine received her B.A. in Psychology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo (UHH) in 2018. In 2020, she decided to fulfill her commitment and excitement around mental health by applying to the M.A. Counseling Psychology program here at UHH. She graduated with her M.A. in 2022. Before starting her position here as the Program Coordinator, she worked in the community providing therapeutic services to keiki and their families, in addition to currently providing case management services to eligible youth on the east side of Hawaiʻi island.