From Nursing Student to Nursing Chair – Wings Summer 2025
FROM NURSING STUDENT TO NURSING CHAIR
Heritage’s new Gaye and Jim Pigott Endowed Chair of Nursing knows the student experience at the university better than most. After all, she was part of the second cohort in the Bachelor of Nursing program when it started 10 years ago. Now, she brings a passion for educating more nurses from underserved populations and improving healthcare for rural communities in the Yakima Valley.
The new chair of Heritage University’s nursing department, Shelby Clark, Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) — is home, exactly where she wants to be.
Home is the Yakima Valley. Home is the Yakama Reservation. Home is Heritage University. It is where she knows she can make the most significant difference in the health and lives of marginalized communities.
Clark is an enrolled member of the Yakama Nation and the first Native American graduate of Heritage’s Bachelor of Nursing program. In high school, she dreamed of being a helicopter pilot and, later, a flight nurse in the military. She’d travel, have adventures, and save lives.
Today, Clark is in a life-changing — and life-saving — adventure of another kind; she’s leading a program making its mark on the face of healthcare in rural central Washington. Instead of impacting one person at a time, she is multiplying that impact by training nurses who will return to their home communities to provide care.
Her work heading Heritage’s nursing program focuses on recruiting and training students from more underserved populations — primarily Native American and Latinx. What she is most excited about is the possibility that many of them will stay in the Yakima Valley and care for the underserved communities in the region.
GROWING UP-SEEING THE NEED
Clark grew up in the small town of White Swan. Its population is just under 600; most residents are either Native American (67%) or Hispanic (14%). The poverty rate is nearly double that of nearby Yakima and three times the overall average in Washington state. Additionally, there are limited medical services in the immediate area. Indian Health Services operates a medical clinic staffed by a physician assistant and an emergency ambulance service.
The combination of low incomes and limited health services contributes to a community health crisis that is hard to miss. Growing up, Clark saw people struggle with a litany of chronic, serious, and often life-threatening health issues. This hasn’t changed much since she was young.
In her community, Clark’s family was better off than most. She was young when her mother and father pursued their education. Ultimately, her father became an electrician and her mother a teacher. Some of her other family members also achieved professional success: Her grandmother and two aunts were nurses, and other family members served in the military.
These relatives inspired her. In high school, Clark decided to join the military and become a critical care flight nurse. After graduating, she set her plan in motion and enrolled at Yakima Valley College for her first two years of study, and she started looking for schools to earn her bachelor’s degree. She applied to various programs, including Heritage. Dr. Christina Nyirati was the chair of the program then. She invited Clark to visit campus and talk about the program.
“Dr. Nyirati always tells me she remembers me walking into her office clearly stating I was going to be an ICU flight nurse,” Clark said. “I was determined — but something else was meant to be.”
Nyirati described the nursing program, its goals, and how it was established to create nurses for the community and provide meaningful help for the Yakama Reservation and the Yakima Valley patient populations.
“You would literally be fulfilling our mission,” Nyirati told Clark.
Clark knew she had found her place.
“People at Heritage looked like me,” Clark said. “I knew it was where I belonged.”
As part of her education, Clark did rotations in women’s health and public health, both at Indian Health Services (IHS) — the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agency that provides health services to Native Americans. Public health focuses on disease prevention, promoting health, and protecting the health of populations through organized societal efforts.
Clark was familiar with IHS and the care they provided. It was where her family had always gone for their health care. Working at the clinic in patient care gave her a new appreciation for their service and the importance of training more Native American and Hispanic nurses.
As a nursing student, Clark experienced greater trust and welcome from patients than some of her counterparts, “because I looked like them, I talked like them, some of them knew my family,” she said.
She explained that the historical mistreatment of Native Americans has built deeply rooted mistrust of those from outside of the culture in members of her community.
“There’s a lack of ability to trust caregivers when you feel misplaced.”
That, she said, can be a significant barrier to healthcare.
Seeing how she was able to connect to patients and the impact she made in the short time she worked at IHS changed her direction. She set aside her plan to work as a flight nurse and focused on public health.
FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON BACK TO HERITAGE
As Clark neared graduation, she researched graduate programs for her next step, ultimately landing on the University of Washington Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program, ranked number one in the country.
She started the UW’s program in the fall after earning her bachelor’s degree. There, she was trained to look at, discover, and identify problems within populations that could be part of improving outcomes through program planning and evaluation. The focus aligned perfectly with her goal of returning home to the Valley and doing work that would directly improve the health and lives of people on the reservation.
Clark graduated with her Doctor of Nursing Practice (DPN) in Population Health & Systems Leadership in 2022. She applied to various jobs and kept in touch with Nyirati, who ultimately offered her the Nursing Student Success Retention Specialist position at Heritage. In that position, Clark worked closely with nursing students, especially as they prepared for their state license exam.
“I had thought that perhaps my next role would have been with one of our tribal health systems or that I would work for the State
Department of Health,” said Clark. “I ended up loving working with Heritage students. I never intended to enter academia, but I decided this was where I could have the biggest impact.”
WHAT MATTERS IN NURSING: CONNECTION
Nursing professionals need to listen to patients and, when working with Native and Hispanic people, to understand their communication style, circumstances, and history, Clark said.
“From the time of triage and admission to a hospital unit and ultimately discharge, nurses spend so much time with patients. We are usually their most trusted advocates. We can get to the root of many of their issues, so we have the potential to provide the most meaningful help.
“But we must meet them where they are, and for Native and Hispanic people, having care providers who are like them and understand them is critical. Because I am a brown person, I am more welcomed in their space than others.”
Clark explains that this familiarity impacts care when the patient is in the clinic and extends into their homes and lifestyle choices. Nurses can come up against some challenges when it comes to empowering people to take an active role in their healthcare.
“That requires a mindset that begins in childhood and includes a lot of public education and recognition of the importance of self-advocacy — as well as that comfort level with their health care providers.
“We need nurses who look like the people in our community, and we need nurses who understand that because we are rural and unique, our patients think about and approach problems differently. We can have a big impact on many people, like at what point in a health-related situation they decide to seek care, and what can happen after discharge that can improve outcomes.”
HERITAGE’S IMPACT
While Heritage is helping to make a difference, change takes time. Nine people were part of the first nursing cohort to graduate seven years ago. This year, there were 17 graduates. More than 100 nurses earned their B.S.N. from Heritage, most of whom were Latinx.
Clark has taken on a personal challenge to grow these numbers even higher, especially when recruiting and training Native American nurses as part of the cohort.
“Ultimately, I want better health outcomes for all communities. We can make great strides, but more is needed, especially in Native communities. We need to train and graduate more Native American students to fill the need,” she said. “The nurses we train today will be the nursing professionals who will improve our health care systems for all of us.
“I know that most of the work I put into this may not significantly impact outcomes in my lifetime, but we can affect it for the generations that are coming.”