Christine McPhail formerly served as president at Cypress College in California and is founder and professor emeritus of the Community College Leadership Doctoral Program at Morgan State University in Maryland. She is the Managing Partner for The McPhail Group LLC and currently serves as a Leadership Coach for more than a dozen community colleges in the Achieving the Dream National Reform Network for student success. Her research interests lie in the intersection of leadership, teaching, and learning in higher education. In this interview, D. Patrick Saxon begins by asking McPhail about her views on the "one size fits all" approach to developmental education, the importance of teachers discussing their first impressions of students with them and how it can improve the student/teacher relationship, and ways in which excellence and respect can be promoted by teachers in the classroom. Saxon goes on to inquire about McPhail's thoughts on how teachers can facilitate the development of students becoming a partner in their own learning, the importance of teachers developing a personal philosophy on their beliefs about their practice and developing rules of engagement in the classroom. The interview concludes with McPhail's opinion on how educators can make teaching and research efforts more personal.