MacDonald currently serves as interim dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, interim director of the Iowa Agricultural and Home Economics Experiment Station, and Secretary of the Egg Industry Center Advisory Board.
In 2021, MacDonald was promoted to serve the Iowa State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences in the leadership role of associate dean for personnel and finance. In that role she provided strategic guidance and counsel on personnel and finance initiatives, opportunities, and challenges. MacDonald has also served the college leadership team as Interim Senior Associate Dean, Interim Associate Director of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, and Assistant Dean of Graduate Programs. Prior to her appointments at the college-level, MacDonald moved to Iowa State University in 2004, to serve as Professor and Chair of the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition.
MacDonald has served on the Economic Development Board for the state of Iowa and the Technology and Commercialization Committee. She was co-leader of the Advanced Food and Feed Platform within the Bioscience Alliance of Iowa. MacDonald is a member of the American Society of Nutrition, American Association for Cancer Research, Sigma Xi, and the Institute for Food Technologists. She has served as chair of the ASNS Diet and Cancer Research Interest Section, and was an executive committee member Sigma Xi. She has been recognized as an Outstanding Faculty member by the MU Food Science Association and was awarded the Gold Chalk Award from the MU Graduate Professional Council. MacDonald has also served in numerous other roles incuding: editorial board of the Journal of Nutrition, the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry, the Korean Journal of Nutrition, and has been on grant review panels for the US Army Breast Cancer program, USDA-CSREES, NIH, Komen Foundation, and other funding groups.
MacDonald received a Ph.D in Nutrition from the University of Minnesota. She completed an MS in Nutrition, also from the University of Minnesota, and has been certified as a Registered Dietitian. She was an NIH Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School, Joslin Diabetes Center, in Boston MA. Before joining Iowa State University, she was faculty in the Department of Food Science at the University of Missouri, Columbia MO, where she rose to the rank of Professor and was Department Chair.
