Interview with Saundra McGuire, Louisiana State University
Invisible Mentor: Saundra McGuire
Company Name: Chemical Educator, Center for Academic Success, Louisiana State University 
I interviewed Saundra McGuire in November 2012, but as I was reading the transcribed interview, I realized that the information she shared is still relevant. Before you start reading her interview, I have a few tips to share on turning ideas into action:
- Receive the ideas: Listen to what Saundra McGuire is saying in the interview, then write down five of her ideas that resonate with you.
- Expand the ideas: What's one of the five ideas that you want to build on?
- Apply the ideas: What projects are you working on that you can apply the one idea?
Part One: Introduction
Avil Beckford: In a couple of sentences, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Saundra McGuire: I’d like start off by saying I’m a wife, I’m a mother, I’m a sister and then a chemical educator and a learning specialist and I really have had a wonderful career. I’ve been blessed to have been elected to fellowships in the American Chemical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science or AAAS and most recently the Council of Learning Systems and Developmental Education Association for the work that I have done throughout my life in teaching and in mentoring others.
Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?
Saundra McGuire: Tough one because there really isn’t a typical day for me. All my days are so different, especially now that I am 50 percent time at the University but even before that there was not a typical day so what I will do is I will tell you what I try to include in each of my days. So, every day I try to combine some exercise because I do believe that physical activity is extremely important and I love cycling, I do water Pilates, reformer Pilates – those are my current favourites; and I will do some work with students – I had a conference with a student this afternoon, I will have some administrative meetings – I had two of those today. You may have lunch with a friend or a colleague – I didn’t do that today but it’s typical for me to do that, and then the rest of the day is spent with reading and emailing and writing and occasionally, I’m not teaching actively anymore but when I was, of course, teaching classes.
Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?
Saundra McGuire: That’s such a good question. That, actually, has come very easily because I love what I do. I’m really excited about it because I’m able to see the impact on students, how students are helped when I can teach them how to develop more effective learning strategies, and I also love the reaction that I get from faculty when I talk with them about how to teach students these skills that are going to turn them into great learners and critical thinkers and not just the memorizers and regurgitators that so many faculty are complaining about. It’s just exhilarating because it is exciting work, and every day I get out of bed, I’m just excited to come. I don’t even consider it work because I love it so much so I don’t really have to do anything to motivate myself other than do what I do and the positive feeling comes from that and that keeps me motivated.
Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you now know, what would you do differently?
Saundra McGuire: I think what I would do very differently – not much, let me start off by saying I was with the Learning Centre at Cornell University for 12 years, and I was director for about the last three before coming down to Louisiana State University, but I did not know the kinds of things that I know now about teaching students and effective learning strategies. I didn’t know about the professional associations that deal with improving student learning. So what I would do differently – at the beginning of my career in learning support, I would have been more intentional about finding out what professional organizations were involved in this work, what the research was in this work, and I think that I would have been able to help many more students a lot sooner than I was able to. But I really wouldn’t change very much because I’ve had a really blessed life, and I would do pretty much everything the same way except for learning more about the learning centre communities.
Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.
Saundra McGuire: You know, I’ve thought about that and I really don’t think that I could say I’ve had a big break. I think I’ve had a trillion little breaks and I think starting with when I skipped my senior year in High School and I started Southern University when I was 16 years old. As a first-year student, I met my future husband that freshman year and that was, of course, the break that started my family life along the path that it’s on – that’s been wonderful.
Another break was when I was selected to attend Columbia University after my sophomore year on a special programme, and I met a wonderful mentor there and then I spent my junior year at the University of California at Berkeley, and I was taught organic chemistry by a Nobel Prize winner. I went to Harvard the summer after that; and so all of those were breaks that I think really allowed me to learn a lot more about the academic community and the academic community in other areas. Another break was when I got a Danforth Foundation fellowship to attend Cornell University for graduate school, and was assigned as a TA for Nobel Prize-winning chemist, Roald Hoffmann, and we started a professional relationship that remains until this day, so there have been lots and lots of little breaks, but I can’t really say that there was one big break that I can ascribe things to.
Avil Beckford: Did you say the first university you went to was Southern University?
Saundra McGuire: Yes; Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Avil Beckford: The Mentor – The Nobel Prize winner who mentored you, the first one you mentioned, what was that person’s name?
Saundra McGuire: He wasn’t my first mentor because my first mentor was at Southern University, and I would say that was Dr. Vanden White, who was the chair of the department at the time but then I had other wonderful mentors at Southern, Dr. Jack Jefferson was an analytical chemistry professor. Dr. Bill Moore was a biochemistry professor and they introduced me to professional associations. I was able to attend some of the meetings of associations and I did undergraduate research with Dr. Bill Moore and it was Roald Hoffmann who was actually at Cornell University who was a mentor to me there.
Part Two: Career
Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?
Saundra McGuire: I think that one of the most important things that mentors did for me was to express their belief in my ability to succeed, to excel at any task that I put my mind to, but they also provided insight and strategies on how to achieve the goals that I set for myself, and also, in the case of Bill Moore, he was the one who suggested that I look at Cornell University as a potential graduate school so they also gave me information about things that I did not know about, they exposed me to associations, to activities that I would not have known about had I not interacted with them.
Avil Beckford: What’s one core message you received from your mentors?
Saundra McGuire: I think the core message that I received from them was ‘you can do anything you set your mind to and you can do it very well but it takes hard work and focus and dedication and that you have to strive to be the best, the very best at whatever you are attempting to do.’
Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn from by observing them from a distance. In that capacity, what is one piece of advice that you would give to others?
Saundra McGuire: I would say to observe methodically. Have a method to your observation, know what you’re looking for. Decide what it is you would like to get from the mentor. Do you want to know how to navigate or negotiate certain situations? Do you want knowledge and information? Do you want to understand procedures? Because what you are looking for will largely determine what you’re going to see. So I would say pay very close attention to exactly what it is that makes this person a good leader and to analyze their actions, and not just what the mentor is doing, but look at people’s reaction to what the mentor is doing because you’ll be able to get a lot of information about human nature and the kinds of behaviours that illicit positive reactions in other people versus the kinds of behaviours that illicit negative behaviours in other people.
Also, I would suggest analyzing why they seem to be good at what they do. Are they good because of the way they treat people? Are they good because of how much they know? Are they good because they are very good at organizing things? Do they have good organizational skills? and so forth. I would also urge them, as you’re observing this invisible mentor, to try to put yourself in their place and see if there are things that you might do differently. So I guess what I’m saying is don’t assume that just because they’re the mentor that everything they’re doing is correct, and the best thing to do, so you should be analyzing ‘oh, what would I have done differently in that situation?’ and ‘why would I have done it differently?’ and I think if you are intentionally observing, you know what you are looking for and how to interpret that then it’s going to help you more consciously develop some of the leadership skills that you are looking to develop.
Avil Beckford: What kind of leader are you? What’s your leadership philosophy?
Saundra McGuire: That’s an interesting question because I actually never wanted to be a leader of anything. I’m very happy, if I am in an organization that has a good leader, I am very happy to follow. The other thing that I tell people all the time, and sometimes people find it humorous is that I say we have a one-career family. In our family, my husband has the career, and I just end up getting a job wherever he happens to move to for his career. I never intended to be in any kind of a leadership position in the university, but it just happened to me. In several cases, the person who was directing the unit ended up taking another job and then I was tapped to lead the unit. My colleagues indicated that, and I agreed with them, that it was better to have someone from inside who knew the organization, to lead the unit rather than bring in somebody from outside who may want to change everything that we were doing.
So I got pulled into a leadership role. But given that, I would say in terms of my leadership philosophy, I’m really big on collaboration and consensus. I believe that everybody in the organization, from the custodian to the administrative assistant to whomever, has benefit, as much worth as anyone else. We all have different roles but everyone is very valuable.
Sometimes people have said that I’m what would be called a transformational leader, and I think that terminology comes from the contrast that James McGregor Burns made when he talked about two different kinds of leaders. He talked about transformational leadership, that leadership that goes in and tries to raise the motivation and productivity of both the leaders and the followers; and he contrasts that with what he calls transactional leadership and transactional leadership is really leadership that comes in and seeks to maintain the current level of productivity, and I think there is value, certainly, in both kinds of leadership.
But people have typically, over the years, told me that they find me very inspirational and they find that I have a way to bring out the best in people. I think that’s because I really do believe that everybody has a valuable contribution to make and I want them to be in an environment where they’re comfortable and are able to do that. You can say my leadership philosophy is that a good leader inspires colleagues. I don’t consider anybody a subordinate, but they inspire colleagues to do their best work and then they just get out of the way and let those colleagues do the work that they have inspired them to do. Again, letting everybody know their worth as individuals, as humans and as parts of the team really helps to foster that teamwork that’s so important.
Avil Beckford: What big steps did you take to succeed in your field? What is one step or action you have consistently taken that has contributed the most to your success?
Saundra McGuire: I wouldn’t say that there is one big step that I’ve taken because I really have had the philosophy over the years that I really don’t have a career, and sometimes people are surprised to hear me say that I’ve really never, ever, sat down and written out a list of goals. My major goal has been to, whatever situation I find myself in, whatever work I find myself doing, be the best at what that is. DO my homework, be organized, find the information I need to find, and do the best job there.
But I really haven’t taken any big steps to succeed in the field other than committing to doing the best that I could possibly do and also to be kind to other people and always be positive. I always try to avoid assuming any negative things about people or about situations because I find that if you are positive then that brings out positive reactions in others. That’s, kind of, what I would say because I really don’t see that I have taken any big steps to succeed.
Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?
Saundra McGuire: At the time, when I saw that question I was thinking hmm, now at the time I didn’t think of it as a failure which probably says something about my attitude, but my first year in graduate school, I was at Cornell University from Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where I’d done very well as an undergraduate student. But I actually never studied in undergraduate school other than the night before exams so I was one of these folks who was a very good memorizer and I could do pretty well. When I got to graduate school, that was not the case, I was taking three courses, I ended up dropping one and got two B’s and I was thinking well, this is really not a success because I was used to making all A’s and so it was at that time that I decided that OK, I must not be smart enough to do this, and that was to get this PhD in Chemistry and become a chemical researcher.
I decided that I was going to switch to Chemical Education primarily because I really enjoyed being a teaching assistant, my first experience teaching was as a TA at Cornell and I loved it, I got teaching awards and so I switched over to Chemical Education. Some people would probably say that I failed in my attempt to do a PhD in Chemistry Research but I don’t really see it as much a failure as an opportunity to do something that I have been allowed to be very successful at. I think this is indicative of my whole attitude, and when I talk with students and with people whom I mentor and they are saying, ‘oh, well I failed at this’ or ‘this was a failure’ then I try to get them to see another perspective, and see this not as a failure but as an opportunity to analyze the situation, to move forward and so in many cases it’s really a blessing in disguise. I’m reminded of, I think it was Edison, who said something to the extent when somebody said ‘oh, so you tried this 99 times and you had 99 failures before you succeeded’ so he said ‘well no, I don’t consider those 99 failures, those are just 99 ways that I learned what would not work’ so I think perspective is so important and I just don’t tend to look at things in terms of failures.
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Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that's why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people.
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