Being blind doesn’t limit this professor

A subtle woman with stormy gray eyes and curled feathered gray-brown hair staggers out of the elevator with a shaggy, sandy golden retriever by her side.
“Lauren?” Professor Laura McArthur asked.
“Yes?” I replied.
She pulled out her keys and opened her office door. The walls were bare except for a bulletin board with a child’s sketch of a dog with angel wings and a halo, and her diploma from University of California and a computer was perched on her desk. McArthur is a professor of nutrition in the Dietetics department of Western Illinois University. Her job is odd from any other professor at Western because she is blind.
Laura McArthur was born with glaucoma, which caused her to loose her sight at the age of 16. Being blind however, doesn’t stop McArthur from achieving what a sighted person can achieve. She has taught for 19 ½ years, at the University of Vermont, at East Carolina University, and presently, at Western Illinois University. In addition, she also has written 25 journal articles. She has studied for 13 years to earn a Ph.D. in Nutrition, an M.S. in Food and Nutrition, an M.A. in International Studies, and a B.A. in Political Science. She has accomplished far more than most people with eyesight achieve. McArthur’s interest in nutrition grew from her passion to help people and to have something that would fit into her way of life.
“I wanted a field to help people without having to see.” “I can even work on patients one on one, everyone has to eat,” said McArthur. She likes being around people, she enjoys teaching and she has a thirst for learning. “Being a teacher is like being your own boss,” she said.
McArthur recalled that her first day of teaching was intimidating, said McArthur. “I was so nervous, my whole body was physically shaking, I was scared.” Even though she was no longer a new instructor, she said on her first day teaching at Western she was also nervous. “It’s always hard on the first day, I didn’t know my way around well,” “Being new, some students like to test you; some of it was going on in January when I first got here.” She said. She came to Western because her previous school was making changes and she didn’t feel that those changes included her. She chose Western because the school has good ratings for education. To assist her with her teachings, McArthur has a talking computer that reads the words aloud; she says this is very helpful when she surfs the internet. She also has a scanner to scan books into the computer so that it can read the book to her. Besides helpful technology, McArthur also has what she calls her angel, her guide dog Gracie. The canine is her third in the 34 years she has been blind.
I never take for granted the dogs that serve people, they are angels,” she said. “I believe in angels and that’s what guide dogs are. They give their life to take care of you.”
Even though McArthur has shown she is capable of being a professor and nothing holds her back, there are difficult aspects to teaching a class without seeing the students.
“Not really knowing if the students understand what I am saying by looking at their faces, I miss a lot of visual clues,” said McArthur. Another obstacle she has had to overcome is school emergencies. Last year, when there was a shooting threat on the Western Illinois University campus McArthur said that she was frightened, because she went to her class, said “Hello,” and no one answered.
McArthur wasn’t fully blind until she was 16, so she was able to see the world around her for the first part of her life.
“I appreciate knowing colors because if someone said blue-green, I can imagine that color because I saw it at one point in my life,” she said. Her fondest memories are the images of flowers, birds and her mother who passed away five years ago.
“I have an image of her and that means a lot,” McArthur said. She loves flowers and birds. And because she knows what they look like these are what McArthur remembers the most when she had vision.
Professor McArthur may teach nutrition, but her most important lesson is teaching her students and other faculty to cherish what they have and to not take the simplest things for granted.