McPhail was born in Tyler, Texas, on February 1, 1946, to Mary and Otis Johnson. She would grow up there.[1][2] Her mother was a homemaker and her father was a sharecropper who later started a small business in Tyler.[3] She attended Emmett Scott High School.[3] McPhail graduated from Fresno City College and earned a bachelor's degree in social work from Fresno State University.[3] She worked for the Economic Opportunities Commission as a social worker for Head Start.[3] She completed a master's degree in education and counseling from Fresno State University.[3]
She began a doctoral program at University of California, Berkeley while working as a counselor at Contra Costa College.[3] She later became an assistant dean of students and was promoted to dean at College of Alameda.[3] With the full-time position, she paused her doctoral studies.[3] She later transferred to a part-time D.Ed. program in higher education at University of Southern California.[3][4] Her 1987 dissertation was titled, Academically Underprepared Students in the California Community Colleges.[5] Clive Grafton was her doctoral chairperson.[5]
McPhail became president of Cypress College in 1995.[6] She was its first Black and first female president.[6] She stepped down in June 1998 after marrying her husband, Irving Pressley McPhail.[6] She later joined Morgan State University as the founding professor and director of its community college leadership doctoral program.[7] McPhail was later a professor of practice at the John E. Roueche Center for Community College Leadership at Kansas State University.[7] Following the death of her husband due to COVID-19 in October 2020, she was selected to succeed him as the thirteenth president of St. Augustine's University effective February 24, 2021.[8][7] Her presidency ended in December 2023 and she was succeeded by acting president Leslie Rodriguez-McClellon.[9][10]
Her death from cancer was announced on March 1, 2026. McPhail was 80.[11]
