Jackie Mania, Ed.D.

Director of Research and Evaluation

Jackie Mania serves as the Director of Research and Evaluation at the National Council for Community and Education Partnerships. In this role, she leads the organization’s research and evaluation agenda which includes guiding a national research and evaluation consortium, customized consulting, providing external evaluation of federal U.S. Department of Education grants, conducting training and technical assistance to a national community of education leaders, and working hand-in-hand with our government relations team to produce advocacy materials.

Previously, she served as Director of Research and Evaluation for the University of Oklahoma’s K20 Center where she led large-scale research projects in the state of Oklahoma and evaluation of three GEAR UP partnership grants serving a total of over 46 schools and 13,000 Oklahoma students. Prior to this role, she served as Project Coordinator for GEAR UP for the PROMISE, a GEAR UP partnership grant at the K20 Center that served students and families within Oklahoma City Public Schools. In this role, she led project teams to design, plan, implement and evaluate services. She was instrumental in adopting a concurrent enrollment partnership with local community colleges to provide opportunity for students who would not traditionally be eligible for concurrent courses to receive college credit for statistics. 

Dr. Mania has 20 years of experience in education. She has been a classroom teacher, a principal, a district administrator, the Director of School Turnaround for the Oklahoma State Department of Education, and an Associate Professor in Educational Leadership at Oklahoma State University. She has published numerous manuscripts and book chapters and has been invited to speak internationally on her research. For her work in education and research, Dr. Mania has been elected to leadership positions in two Special Interest Groups (SIGs) for the American Educational Research Association (AERA), has been named one of Oklahoma’s 40 under 40 Achievers, and, with a multi-disciplinary team, was honored as a third-place recipient of the OSU President’s Cup, a prestigious award that honors innovative and integrative research projects. Most recently, she was honored with the 2021 Oklahoma Online Excellence Award for her work on the first ever virtual Innovative Learning Institute, a statewide conference for Oklahoma educators designed to highlight creative instructional practices in K12 education.

Dr. Mania holds a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities from St. Gregory’s University, a Master’s Degree in English Education from the University of Oklahoma, and a doctoral degree in Educational Leadership from Oklahoma State University.

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