Clarksville, TN – Between recovering from heart surgery, becoming a new mother, and moving across the country twice while earning her doctorate in educational leadership, it was easy for Cavelle McGrath to feel overwhelmed.
There were times when she thought she wouldn’t be able to graduate, but her mother – Dr. Marsha Lyle-Gonga, a professor of political science at Austin Peay State University (APSU) – was always around to keep her calm and focused.
It was only fitting that as McGrath took the final steps of her journey at Austin Peay State University, Lyle-Gonga was there to hood her and celebrate her accomplishments on stage.
“I wanted to take the opportunity to not only honor what I’ve achieved, but the person who helped me get there,” said McGrath, who currently works as the dean of students at Great Hearts Academies. “My mother has always been the pillar of my motivation to continue with education, and I would be lying if I said today that she’s not the reason why I have my doctorate.”
Both of McGrath’s parents pursued higher education and stressed its importance to their children, but she is particularly inspired by her mother’s resilience. Lyle-Gonga had three children while earning her own degrees and is currently being treated for multiple sclerosis (MS) while remaining involved on campus.
“Education has always been a core value in our lives,” Lyle-Gonga said. “To see my daughter achieve something that amazing given all that she’s been through with her heart surgery … [it’s] an incredible achievement and I’m so honored for it to happen.”
A Heart for Healing
McGrath first discovered a passion for education in high school, where she spent two years as a mentor for students with disabilities.
“They stole my heart and showed me the importance of laughing more and having fun with life,” she said. “From that moment, I knew that I needed to be in education. I’ve always had a heart for healing, and I felt like counseling is where I could make the greatest impact.”
From there, she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Middle Tennessee State University and a master’s in counseling from APSU.
“I finished out my master’s degree in May 2020, but in January of that same year, a heart defect I’d had since I was a child became an issue,” she said. “I was determined even then to have my heart surgery in January and walk for graduation in May. Since COVID happened around that time, if this had occurred just a few months later things could have looked a whole lot different for me … God’s timing is incredible.”
Although McGrath’s heart surgery was successful, she found herself wondering about what could have happened instead.“In a moment like that, you do face death, and I started asking myself all these big philosophical questions,” she said. “Am I happy with what I’ve achieved and who I am as a person? Something shifted in my mindset after graduation, and I knew I was essentially going to go as fast and hard on everything that I’m passionate about from that point forward.”
Finding Order in Chaos
That decision led to several turning points in her life, from enrolling in the doctoral program to meeting her husband and moving – first to Hawaii, then to Arizona.
“Both of us were born and raised in Clarksville, and even though it will always be home for us, it was time to see what else was out there,” McGrath said. “We chose to fly across the country to a small rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and it was the scariest thing that I’ve ever done in my life. I’d never lived that far away from my family, and here I was packing up everything I owned in six suitcases.”
McGrath and her husband welcomed their daughter while still adjusting to life in Hawaii, but she said raising a child ultimately made them stronger.
“My whole life has been about academic achievement – how many degrees can I get and how quickly can I get them?” she said. “Becoming a mom really expands your sense of what’s important and changes your priorities. It gave me permission not to be a perfectionist, and to be more still in the chaos. Toddlerhood showed me that nothing is going to be exactly how you planned it, and I allowed myself to adopt that mindset in everything I do.”
That perspective helped McGrath overcome the challenges she faced as a doctoral candidate, especially adapting to an academic writing style.
“Cavelle is a writer, but writing creatively and at a doctoral level is a little bit different,” Lyle-Gonga said. “That was hard for her – she can write very well, but there were times I had to remind her that you can’t put your voice into [academic writing]. All I did, to be honest, is just talk her off the ledge … when she would call, I made sure she knew she was capable of doing whatever she needed to succeed.”
Making revisions to her papers was still a major source of stress for McGrath, but knowing her mother had been through the same experiences encouraged her to move forward.
“We started doing these 7:00am phone calls on the way to work, and after getting in the rhythm of doing that I realized that my heart was so much more full,” McGrath said. “My mind was so much more clear, and it became a habit. I needed this grounding moment every morning to remind myself what I was capable of doing, and why I was doing it.”
Inspiring the Next Generation
Now that McGrath has finished her doctoral program, she is applying her personal leadership style to her work at Great Hearts Academies.
“I’ve been given an opportunity to build out more positive behavior plans for the school, making sure that our discipline is done with love, grace, and dignity,” she said. “When discipline is more punitive it does a lot of psychological damage to students, especially in middle school where they’re highly impressionable.”
Instead, McGrath wants her students to know they are supported by school administration and to see failure as an opportunity for growth.
“It’s about just letting them know that they’re human,” she said. “Humans make mistakes, and I never expect them to be perfect. Besides, such amazing things can happen from failures and mistakes.”
McGrath knows that well from her own educational journey, and she looks forward to helping students persevere through difficult times.
“What I learned through the doctoral program is that I can be excellent without showing excellence every single day,” she said. “That doesn’t make me any less, and as someone who’s very hard on myself in every facet of my life, it gave me permission to be human.”
