They care

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Rose Clarke Nanyonga ’15PhD

She was 15 years old when she walked 52 kilometers across the Ugandan countryside, from her small hometown to a larger town. She had heard from a friend about an Irish missionary couple who ran a hospital and would hire nursing aides who knew enough English to assist with translation. Her mother had died when she was eight. She had little support in a very large family. “I always had potential, and I knew I had it,” says Rose Clarke Nanyonga. “I just didn’t have opportunity.”

The Irish family, the Clarkes, hired her. This started her second journey: a nursing program in the north of Uganda, then a bachelor’s in nursing from Arkansas Tech University in 2002, then her master’s from Baylor in 2005, and then her PhD from Yale in 2015. Throughout her education Nanyonga also helped the Clarkes, back in Uganda, to establish a training school of nursing and midwifery.

This has since become Clarke International University, which now, in addition to fully degreed programs in nursing and midwifery, offers programs in public health and in business and applied computer technology. “For many years, I thought my best work was at the bedside, and I loved being there,”  she says. Her work over the past two decades, however, has pulled her away from direct contact with patients. Now, as vice chancellor of Clarke International University, she spends most of her time as an administrator, thinking about strategy and governance. She has opportunity to teach. But this shift of responsibility is something that she cherishes.

“By the time I returned to Uganda, I started re-thinking the ways in which I could contribute to a profession I truly loved and had pursued relentlessly since I was a child,” she says. “Now I’m building capacity for vulnerable health systems in sub-Saharan Africa. And that is critically important.”