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Seena Skelton, Ph.D.

Director, MAP Center; Director of Operations, Great Lakes Equity Center; Editor, Multiple Voices
Seena M. Skelton, P.h.D.

Seena M. Skelton is the Director of the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center (MAP Center), and Director of Operations for the Great Lakes Equity Center.  As Director of the MAP Center, Seena works in collaboration with the center’s executive director to plan, direct, and manage projects and services offered to state and local education agencies throughout the MAP Center’s thirteen-state region. Seena also oversees organization development for the Great Lakes Equity Center. Seena has worked as an educational consultant for a regional special education resource center in southwest Ohio, a lead consultant for three state-wide school improvement initiatives funded by the Ohio Department of Education, and as a co-director of professional learning and technical assistance at the Equity Alliance at Arizona State University and assistant director of professional learning and technical assistance at the Great Lakes Equity Center in the Indiana University School of Education-IUPUI.  She has garnered more than 27 years of experience working in the areas of inclusive practices, systems change, school improvement, and educational equity. Seena has been an adjunct professor at Northern Kentucky University, the University of Cincinnati, the College of Mount Saint Joseph, and Indiana University, Indianapolis.  Seena has co-authored publications on topics related to improving outcomes for marginalized youth including a book chapter on addressing equity in transition education for youth of color with disabilities. She has also been the single author of publications including the article Situating my positionality as a Black woman with a dis/ability in the provision of equity-focused technical assistance: a personal reflection in the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, and the book chapter, Cultivating Positive Racial-Ethnic-Disability Identity: Opportunities in Education for Culturally Sustaining Practices at the Intersection of Race and Disability, in Sustaining Disabled Youth Centering Disability in Asset Pedagogies, edited by Federico R. Waitoller and Kathleen A. King Thorius.  In 2020, Seena received the Leadership in Special Education Field Award from the University of Kansas. Seena regularly presents at state, regional, national, and international conferences and is the editor of the Council for Exceptional Children, Division for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Exceptional Learners peer-reviewed journal, Multiple Voices: Disability, Race, and Language Intersections in Special Education with Thorius and Santamaria Graff. 

Central Office Team
Executive Leadership Team