Following her PhD, McCluskey joined the faculty at
Washington State University in 1998. During her early tenure, she taught industrial organization and microeconomic theory including the economics of food quality and labeling, firm incentives, and consumer perceptions and behavior. Outside of the institution, she served as director of the
Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) from 2005 to 2008 and Chaired the Food and Agricultural Marketing Policy Section. In 2010, McCluskey became the
principal investigator on a study aimed at researching partner accommodation policies on recruitment, retention, and promotion of female faculty at WSU. Later, she was appointed chair of graduate studies in the WSU School of Economic Sciences before being elected president of the AAEA from 2014 to 2017. In 2017, McCluskey joined the
National Academy of Sciences’s Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources (BANR) to provide advice on requests and inquiries from Congress, federal, and state agencies and identify frontiers of science and policy in the food, agricultural, and natural resources system. In 2023, she was appointed the Chair of the Board of Agriculture and Natural Resources. She is the first female and economist to serve as the Chair of BANR. In 2019, she was also recognized by WSU for her "ground-breaking research in economic incentives, product quality and reputation, consumer acceptance of technology, and women in STEM fields" by being named a University Regents Professor, the highest honor bestowed onto faculty. At the same time, she was elected a Fellow of the Western Agricultural Economics Association and named an editor of the
American Journal of Agricultural Economics. In 2021, McCluskey was elected a Fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science for her contributions to research and leadership in the areas of food labeling, food quality, and product reputation. In 2024, McCluskey became the President Elect of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. ==Personal life==