Roosevelt O. Shelton, Ph.D.
Interim Dean, School of Education
Roosevelt O. Shelton is a higher education consultant, Naismith Legacy Group Distinguished Fellow, Kentucky State University Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Center for Innovation in Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Fellow, and a senior executive member of The Registry of College and University Presidents.
He has accumulated over 33 years of experience as a higher education executive, professor, and teacher-scholar at Kentucky State University and Jackson State University, including multiple appointments as a divisional chairperson, dean, assistant vice president for academic affairs, director of strategic initiatives, and founding associate vice president for enrollment management and student success.
His research interests include experimental aesthetics and analytic autoethnography. His current research, Testifycation Theory: Human Abasement, Oppression and Diasporic Rituals, emerged from his extensive fieldwork in the American South, Brazil, and the Caribbean. His theoretical framework documents and illuminates the use of Diasporic Ritualistic Practices (DRPs) to resist conditions of abasement and oppression, fortify identity, and empower human beings to endure.
He and Dr. Cynthia Shelton are the proud parents of three children: Greg Thomas, Sacheen Luna, and Amirah Grace.