Alumni Academics

A detour worth taking

10 November 2026

Three years into her career as a physical therapist assistant (PTA), Katherine Houlden thought she had her future figured out.

She was devoted to her patients and to the profession–so much, in fact, she decided to return to the classroom to expand her career as a physical therapist. Having completed an Associate’s degree in PTA at Southeast Community College, her path to PT school brought her to Clarkson College, one of the country’s only institutions offering a Bachelor of Science in Physical Therapist Assistant (PTA) degree. After completing the first semester, Houlden realized her interests were being pulled in a different direction.

“I started to get curious about how health care systems function more broadly, and the policies that govern health law,” she explains. With the goal of PT school still on track, she shifted her degree path to the Clarkson College Bachelor of Science in Community Health program where she could explore these interests, stating “I was drawn to the Community Health program specifically because it is such a versatile degree, and the coursework was incredibly fascinating.”

As her community health coursework unfolded, Houlden found herself wanting to learn all she could about the intersections between health and socioeconomic status.

The more she learned, the more her passion for helping people grew. It wasn’t long before dreams of PT school were in the rearview, replaced by the desire to study law. Having earned her community health bachelor’s degree in 2024, she is now in her third and final year of law school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Houlden attributes her interest in law to her community health coursework.

“I am interested in poverty law, and I feel like my community health education gave me a big leg up. Having a health-related degree has also helped me see the issues that we talk about in law school at the human scale. Laws don't operate in a vacuum, but sometimes the way that we analyze the issues in law school is so far removed from the people affected that it's hard to remember that every lawsuit started with people facing real issues.”

Houlden believes there are many skills gained as a community health student that will shape her career as a lawyer. “I think the most important is seeing the human side of legal issues. A lot of my coursework gave me a deeper understanding of how people work including classes that covered family dynamics, world religions, and child development.”

She also learned to approach problems with a scientific and analytical mindset. “In the same way that Clarkson College sets people up to pursue careers working in evidence-based healthcare, I want to challenge myself to find evidence-based approaches to legal issues.”