AAFCS turns the spotlight on individuals, their experiences, and how they have benefited from AAFCS membership. It offers an opportunity for you to share your story with your colleagues and the greater FCS community.
To submit your profile for the spotlight, download a submission form here!
Sue L.T. McGregor, Ph.D., CFCS
Nova Scotia, Canada
Fresh from the Lake Placid Centennial Conference where she delivered a paper and chaired a panel on “new directions,” see what we learned when we turned our spotlight on Sue, director of graduate education in the Faculty of Education, Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, and the 2009 recipient of the Distinguished Consumer Scholarship and Education award presented by the Consumer Citizenship Network in Berlin, Germany. As principal consultant for The McGregor Consulting Group, Sue works to effect transformative change through leadership education, research and development.
Why did you choose the field of family and consumer sciences? I have been a home economist since I started home ec classes in junior high school (mid-60s) and emulated my teacher (Mrs. Speedy). Obviously, I went onto university and got several degrees but in all honesty, I don’t think I chose home economics; rather, I think the field chose me. I like to say “I was born with a home economics gene.” Being a home economist is part of who I am – it is an integral part of my personal and definitely my professional identity. . . . I now see myself as a world leader in getting people to think deeper and wider about what it means to be in the profession and what we can bring to the world, through, what I have coined, philosophical well-being, see http://www.kon.org/hswp/archive/philosophical.html . I am not sure anyone could do that with sustained energy unless they were chosen for the job!
How has membership in AAFCS been of value to you and your practice?
To use the tried and true clichés, it brought me a sense of being in a broader professional community, and connected me to the larger cause underpinning the profession and discipline, which I framed as well-being and quality of life at the time. I have now expanded this to include the human condition. AAFCS membership also made me venture to the website more often and that kept me abreast of internal and external developments and trends....
AAFCS is...
A beacon for our future – a vanguard of hope and inspiration. Home economists (family and consumer scientists) need hope – it is their connection to the future. Hope is different from positive thinking, which involves reversing pessimism. Hope engenders a belief in positive outcomes. It is a feeling that what is wanted can be had. Professional associations have a key role to play in generating and sustaining that hope. AAFCS serves as a beacon for the future because it has the potential to socialize members to stand on the edge of chaos and find a way into the future. AAFCS has the chance to help FCS to reframe chaos from disorder to order emerging, just with no predictability. Inspired by this insight, AAFCS members (and potential members) can embrace risk, uncertainty and tension as necessary for growth and transformation.
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