Rate My Professor Shelley McGuire

Shelley McGuire serves as Director and Professor of the Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Idaho, where she also directs the COBRE in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences. She earned her Ph.D. in Human Nutrition with minors in International Nutrition and Physiology from Cornell University in 1994, an M.S. in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Illinois in 1988, and a B.S. in Biology from the University of Illinois in 1986. Prior to her appointment at the University of Idaho, McGuire was a professor of lactation physiology at Washington State University. Her career has focused on advancing knowledge in nutrition science through leadership in academic administration and research.

McGuire's research centers on maternal and infant nutrition, human milk composition, breastfeeding, the milk microbiome, mastitis, and women's health. She leads the McGuire/Williams laboratory, which investigates aspects of human and bovine milk and lactation, including compositional variations, microbiomes, and nutritional impacts on health. Key projects encompass an NIH grant on milk microbiomes and immune factors associated with mastitis in women and cows, studies on COVID-19 transmission through breastfeeding, genomic determinants of milk composition variation, and the influence of maternal diets including cow’s milk, soy beverages, and cannabis on human milk. In 2024, she received over $11 million from the NIH to launch a research center dedicated to women's nutrition and health. McGuire has co-authored influential textbooks, including Nutritional Sciences: From Fundamentals to Food and Prebiotics and Probiotics in Human Milk: Origins and Functions of Milk Microbiome and Prebiotic Components. She contributes editorially to The Journal of Nutrition as a Biographical and Historical Editor and served on the national committee updating U.S. Dietary Guidelines for alcohol consumption. Her scholarship has amassed over 13,500 citations, significantly shaping lactation and nutrition research. In 2025, she was awarded the Idaho Academy GEM Award for leadership in enhancing health outcomes for Idahoans, especially women.