Ashley Metoyer, MPA, MSW, LCSW

Speaker Information

Ashley Metoyer is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and a second-year PhD student at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work. She has more than a decade of experience designing, implementing, and evaluating crisis response services in higher education and clinical settings. Ashley was the founding manager of a campus-based tiered crisis response model at UC San Diego that integrated behavioral health, student affairs, and campus safety to reduce reliance on law enforcement during mental health crises.

Her research focuses on developing college-based crisis response models, with particular attention to structural constraints, cross-system collaboration, and the ethical tensions mental health professionals face when working within carceral institutional frameworks. Ashley’s work integrates qualitative inquiry, crisis theory, and structural analysis to examine how higher education systems can move toward decriminalized, equity-centered approaches to crisis intervention.