Deborah Donahue Keegan

Faculty Fellow

Deborah Donahue-Keegan, M.S.W., Ed.M., Ed.D. (she/her), Faculty Fellow in the Office of the Vice Provost for Institutional Inclusive Excellence (IIE), is a Lecturer in the Tufts Department of Education as well as the Tisch College Civic Studies program, through which she teaches the foundations course for first-year students participating in Tufts Civic Semester, a transformational fall semester program. In addition to her faculty role, Deborah co-leads the Tufts Mindfulness and Wellbeing Collaborative, and serves on the Tufts Table leadership team.  Since the 2017-18 academic year, she has overseen the Social Emotional Learning for Equity and Civic Teaching (SEL-E-CT) Fellows program in collaboration with the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) and now with IIE’s Inclusive and Restorative Dialogues Program. Dialogic pedagogy and contemplative practices are important dimensions of SEL-E-CT Fellows, a cohort program for Tufts faculty and staff with student-facing roles.

Deborah serves as an Advisor for SEL4US, a national social emotional learning (SEL) advocacy organization, and as a member of the Steering Committee for SEL4MA. She co-founded and co-leads the Massachusetts Consortium for SEL in Teacher Education (MA SEL-TEd).  Her research and teaching focus on ways that transformative social-emotional learning can be leveraged for well-being, equity, belonging, and racial literacy in K-12 and higher education environments. Deborah recently co-authored a chapter titled “Social Emotional Learning for Wellbeing and Equity in Higher Education” In the Handbook of Social and Emotional Learning, 2nd Edition, Guilford Press (2024).

Deborah holds a B.A. from the College of the Holy Cross, an M.S.W. from Boston College, and Ed.M. and Ed.D. degrees from Harvard University. She recently completed her Social-Emotional Learning Facilitator Certification (SEL*F) and 200-hour Yoga Teacher Certification (CYT 200) training through Breathe for Change.