Her father, Rollin G. Osterweis, was a professor of history and oratory and the debate coach at Yale University.
She spent a year (1964–65) as an apprentice teacher at the Shady Hill School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before earning an M.A.T.
Selig earned a Master of Arts in anthropology with highest honors in 1975 from the George Washington University (GWU), a graduate program she began while teaching anthropology to high school students at the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland.
In 1975, Selig began a 35-year career at the Smithsonian Institution, establishing an Office of Outreach and Education in the department of anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History.
In 1978, Selig partnered with her former GWU professor, Alison S. Brooks and fellow GWU graduate student JoAnne Lanouette, to develop the National Science Foundation-funded George Washington University/Smithsonian Institution Anthropology For Teachers Program that ran four years in the Washington, D.C. area, training teachers in Maryland and Virginia school districts as well as in the District of Columbia.
This publication expanded with Smithsonian support, edited by the same team that ran the teacher training program: Selig, P. Ann Kaupp, Alison S. Brooks, and JoAnne Lanouette.
In 1998, the Smithsonian Press published a compendium of AnthroNotes articles, with Selig as senior editor.
A second, revised and expanded edition of Anthropology Explored appeared in 2004 and again received positive reviews.
In 2002, the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) presented the editors and illustrator of AnthroNotes and Anthropology Explored: The Best of Smithsonian AnthroNotes with the SAA Award for Excellence in Public Education “for presenting archaeological and anthropological research to the public in an engaging and accessible style, and for encouraging the study of these disciplines in classrooms across the nation.”[2] Between 1986 and 2010, Selig held senior administrative positions at the Smithsonian Institution, in the Director's Office, National Museum of Natural History; Office of the Assistant Secretary for Science; Office of the provost and the Office of the Secretary where she worked (2007–08) as the Special Assistant to Acting Secretary Cristián Samper and as senior writer/editor for Secretary G. Wayne Clough (2008–2010).
AnthroNotes was published two or three times each year by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History from 1979 to 2012.
In addition to serving as senior editor for both editions of Anthropology Explored, Selig wrote the book's Introduction and Preface, and authored or co-authored three chapters.
Social Science Education Consortium (SSEC), Boulder, CO.[9] 2000 Brokering Cultures: Archaeologists Reach Out to Teachers, pp. 151–164.
Selig wrote two other chapters profiling anthropologists who each added a short “update” to the original single authored article.
In Conrad Kottak, Jane White, Richard Furlow, and Patricia Rice, eds.
Archaeology and Education: The Classroom and Beyond, Archeological Assistance Study, # 2, National Park Service, U.S. Department of Interior, Washington, D.C.[14] 1989 Anthropology in Public Schools: Why Should We Care?