Introduction to Tourism: A Community-Based Approach

Samuel V. Lankford is the interim associate dean of the College of Health and Human Services, and was professor and chair (20142017), Department of Recreation Administration at CSU Fresno. Formerly he served as a professor and doctoral program coordination in Health, Physical Education, and Leisure Services and the director of the Sustainable Tourism and the Environment Program at the University of Northern Iowa. He has a PhD with a focus in recreation planning and development and a master of urban and regional planning from the University of Oregon. He holds a master of arts in recreation and park planning and a BA in geography from CSU Chico. Dr. Lankford worked as the youth director for 8th U.S. Army Korea and also worked as a consultant for morale, welfare, and recreation organizations in Asia/Pacific. Dr. Lankford has been a practicing planner in both staff and consulting roles in California, Oregon, Washington, Iowa, and Hawaii. He has completed master plans and comprehensive plans for parks and recreation, needs assessments, community impact studies, carrying capacity studies, and market research in those states and other countries. He specializes in tourism and recreation development. Dr. Lankford participates in Ask the Author, a Sagamore initiative that enables professors who adopt titles to communicate with the author and really understand what the book is about and how any ancillaries are intended to be used.

Jill K. Lankford has worked with communities in their planning and design efforts with a particular focus on community character and development. Jill's work with planning and design with small towns has resulted in recognition by the American Planning AssociationOregon Chapter for citizen involvement and economic development. She has provided tourism development training in North America, Bolivia, and Vietnam. She has degrees in landscape architecture (BLA and MLA) from the University of Oregon. She was the coordinator of the Sustainable Tourism and Environment Program at the University of Hawaii and the University of Northern Iowa, where she completed community development projects with students for community and regional agencies and organizations. Jill continues her work in Fresno focusing on community-level park and recreation planning and water-wise design.

Oksana Grybovych is an associate professor in the Division of Leisure, Youth and Human Services at the University of Northern Iowa. She holds an EdD in Leisure Services from the University of Northern Iowa (USA), MSc in Leisure and Environments from the University of Wageningen (the Netherlands), and a BA in Economics/ Management from the Institute of Economics and Law (Ukraine). Her research interests include civic and community engagement, participatory community tourism planning, economic impacts of tourism, tourism marketing, and sustainable development.