We were lucky to catch up with Ursula Emery McClure recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ursula, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with a hypothetical question – if it were up to you, what would you change about the school or education system to better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career?

As a college professor in the design disciplines one of the greatest things I get to help students with is transforming their creative thoughts into tangible products and projects. Helping a young person bring their ideas and imaginations forward for discussion and development (no matter how random or different they may seem) gives them value and thusly makes the student feel heard and more engaged and interested. The more engaged they are the more likely they will have a fulfilling life and career. Design education methods unfortunately are relatively exclusive to the design fields and not commonly found in general education instruction where memorization and recitation of learned material is still primary and standardized test scores are still relevant. When I was in elementary school, I was not a good student. I could not sit still and I did not get good grades. I was classified as hyper-active and by 7th grade I had been asked to leave 3 schools as I was too difficult to teach. To make me less restless and hopefully keep me in school, my parents enrolled me in extracurricular artistic programs. It seemed to work as I went on to become a good student earning a full scholarship to college, and advanced standing in graduate school. I did not know this at the time but I am sure now, after spending 20+years teaching young people design and being a design professional, that those artistic programs my parents put me in where creativity and imagination were important ,were critical to my success. If I could change anything about the educational system it would be to make design education methods more accessible and more available for younger students. I truly believe that this would prepare students for more fulfilling lives and careers.

Ursula, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am an architect, a design researcher, an interior designer, a college professor, a firm partner, and a trans-disciplinary educator. When I was a senior in high school I decided I wanted to go to architecture school for college and made a portfolio out of Lego buildings. Those Lego buildings garnered me a full scholarship to college and I have never looked back. (Please don’t laugh too hard or think I am telling a lie, I really got a full scholarship to college with a kid’s toy.) From college I went to graduate school in New York and then worked for the three years until I earned my professional license. The month I earned my license I opened my own firm with my husband/partner and moved to Louisiana to start teaching at LSU. My firm offers design services, mostly residential and small commercial. as well as speculative research projects. We pride ourselves in finding unique and individual solutions for our clients be they private or academic. We strive to make our designs as much our own as our clients and thusly find our portfolio varied and diverse. We are proud of this diversity and we love that our clients are so pleased with their projects and that they often cry when they move in. For future clients, we want them to know that we will find a way to materialize their wishes into the projects they need and desire and we will do so responsibly, resiliently, and relevant to the places where they are located.

How’d you meet your business partner?

I met my first partner, Michael McClure, in graduate school. He and I had both gone to the same college so at the beginning of graduate school we all found each other by which college we went to. Two years later we were married and three years later we started our firm emery(me)mcclure(him)architecture. My second partner, Sarah Young, was the student of my first partner. She worked for us for 7 years before she became a partner. Now we all work together now matter where we are located. It is a great partnership.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

It took us a while to build our audience on social media. We really believed that good work and good work alone would get us the audience. That was not true. We needed to promote ourselves. We needed to brag. We needed to post not only our good work but we also needed to make the work human and personal by posting our failures, pictures of us working, and pictures of our success. This was not easy but it was extremely important. We figured this out by watching one of our less accomplished peers become extremely successful by self promotion. I don’t like to admit it, but my best advice for those building their media presence is to make sure and celebrate all their activities and accomplishments and do so often and creatively.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.emerymcclure.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emerymcclurearchitecture/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emerymcclure.architecture
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ursula-emery-mcclure-faia-faar-leed-ap-bd-and-c-ncidq-340291106/

Image Credits
James Osborne IV for all but Tene, 31, and Baronne Leonid Furmansky for Baronne emerymcclure architecture for Tene, 31