The great thing about psychology is that there are so many different flavors. At least, that’s what Dr. Mary Margaret Livingston says about the field she has built her career around.
Livingston has worked at Louisiana Tech University for 49 years as a professor in the Department of Psychology and Behavioral Sciences, but the psychological field was not her first choice in academia.
As a philosophy major minoring in English at the University of Michigan, Livingston was heavily involved in university life and wondering what she wanted to do after graduation. It wasn’t until she started working as a research assistant at the University of Alabama Birmingham (UAB) that she found her footing in the field of psychology.
However, her first research position was not exactly what she imagined a career in psychology would look like.
“My job was counting dirt in children’s mouths,” she joked.
Livingston studied the effectiveness of different fear-based messages on children’s dental hygiene, including counting the dirt on their teeth before and after the children received different messages about brushing.
“We would make recommendations based on their results,” she added. “Suggesting options based on horrible hygiene outcomes to moderate ones.”
That job introduced her to psychology, and she kept taking courses until she had essentially completed the equivalent of a psychology major. That led to a master’s degree in general and experimental psychology and eventually a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.
Without a mentor to guide her, Livingston stumbled across a list of APA-approved psychology graduate programs and began applying.
“I didn’t have a mentor,” she said. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but that’s one reason why I have a passion for my students because I know how it feels.”
After completing her clinical training, Livingston received a job offer from Dr. James Williams, Louisiana Tech Psychology and Behavioral Sciences department head from 1974 to 1985.
She had never heard of Ruston and knew very little about the University. After arriving at Louisiana Tech in 1977, she only expected to stay a year or two.
Instead, she found a place that was just right for her.
“This town felt like the Goldilocks level,” Livingston said. “I’ve never lived in a place this small, but I loved the fact that unlike a lot of big cities, I felt safe and free to go anywhere I wanted, day or night. It was not too big and not too small.”
Over the next five decades, Livingston watched psychology and Louisiana Tech evolve. She learned to use a 16-millimeter projector, taught classes before email and PowerPoint, and eventually adapted to Zoom during the pandemic.
However, the biggest change in her teaching has been more personal.
“I think my biggest shift is that I’ve become more individualized over the years,” she said.
You’re not teaching the student you wish you had, you’re teaching the student you got. Meeting them where they are is the best way to get them where you want them to be.
– Mary Margaret Livingston
That philosophy has guided her advising as much as her teaching. Sometimes helping a student means supporting them through a difficult quarter. For Livingston, that is part of a professor’s legacy.
“I think my legacy at Louisiana Tech is the people I’ve taught and what they achieve,” Livingston said. “As a professor, it’s a human legacy and I think that’s true for all of us who teach.”
That legacy is also being carried forward through the Dr. Mary Margaret Livingston Scholarship, established in her honor to support Louisiana Tech psychology students. Available to juniors and seniors, the scholarship provides an opportunity for Livingston’s impact on students to continue long after her retirement.
Donna Thomas has known Livingston through her own Tech experience as a student, faculty member, department head, and now provost. Thomas has witnessed Livingston’s impact throughout her own career.
“Dr. Mary Margaret Livingston is unyielding and unapologetic in her passionate advocacy for students,” Thomas said. “Anyone who has known her for very long has heard her say, ‘Erosion is a powerful force,’ most commonly when she has doggedly persisted in pursuing a goal. I like to think the metaphor also applies to her legacy at Louisiana Tech. Through her unwavering dedication to students and her commitment to putting their needs first, she has modeled what it means to keep students at the center of our work. For almost 50 years, that kind of persistence has a way of shaping an institution year after year, student after student. That, too, is the power of erosion.”
After 49 years at Louisiana Tech University, Livingston is stepping away from the classroom and into retirement. She jokes that she and a colleague once identified a major research area that had been overlooked: “the gravitational pull of grandchildren.”
But even in retirement, Livingston’s influence will remain in the students she taught, the colleagues she mentored, and the future psychologists who will benefit from the scholarship established in her honor.
“You can always find a spot in psychology,” she said, “but it’s important to know what kind of things you like and where you want your spot to be.”
Through nearly five decades at Louisiana Tech, Livingston found her spot and helped countless others find theirs too.
