Tina Arora

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Tina Arora has earned two master's degrees (one in India and one at Kent State), a California Specialist Instruction Credential in special education in the area of severe disabilities, an Ohio Multiple and Orthopedic Handicap Credential and a Crosscultural Language and Academic Development Credential, and she expects to receive her doctoral degree in special education and educational psychology from UCLA.

Most knowledgeable in the area of education of young children with severe and complex disabilities, including cerebral palsy, low-incidence disabilities and autism, Arora has already received frequent offers to head the departments of special education at different school districts in California and other parts of the country. She has also received written and verbal offers from colleges and universities in California and New York inviting her to apply for the post of assistant professor.

Arora's outstanding research has earned a National Institute of Health federal grant for the first three years of her joint doctoral program in addition to the California Teacher Association Scholarship and Martin Luther King fellowship from the Teacher Association of Long Beach. She is in the unusual position of taking her doctoral qualifying examinations while in only the second year of her program in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies.

Arora has provided training for professionals to work with children with disabilities in India, Ohio and California, and made presentations at national and international conferences.

Arora dedicates time and energy to the University over and above the already demanding realities of completing her degree. She created, designed and was a founding editor of InterActions: The UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies, which has become only the second online peer-reviewed journal in the California Digital Libraries System. She has served one year as president and two years as co-president of the Graduate Students Association in Education.

Arora has been an essential member of the UCLA Committee on Disability and its Academic Subcommittee, which is currently in the process of developing and introducing a disability studies minor on campus.

As supervisor of autism services in the Office of Special Education for the Long Beach Unified School District, Arora has been observed working long after closing time in order to accommodate working parents’ schedules.