PRAIRIE VIEW, Texas (October 13, 2021) – Allyssa L. Harris, RN, Ph.D., WHNP-BC, Prairie View A&M University’s new dean of the College of Nursing, says she always “wanted to be someone helping someone else.” As of this month, she’s landed in a new role at PVAMU that will, once again, allow her to do just that.

Harris joins the College of Nursing’s work in sharing a vision to connect the university with Houston’s Texas Medical Center, and beyond, to produce excellent quality nurses. But for Harris, a nurse herself and an educator with extensive teaching and mentoring experience, it’s about relationships.

“For the last 25 years, I’ve been practicing as a women’s health nurse practitioner in conjunction with teaching,” Harris said. “I’ve always maintained a clinical practice but in an outpatient setting.”

As the first nurse in her family, Harris is passionate about connecting students with a career they can use to help others. She brings experience and expertise to her new role in leading the College of Nursing to new heights, especially as essential workers like nurses continue to be spotlighted for their invaluable contributions.

How can PVAMU continue to be a leader in this field? She’s excited to find out, Harris says.

“When I think about the legacy of the program, I think about how I also started out in an associate degree nursing program,” she said. “Each day, the dean stands on the shoulders of the dean that came before them. Dr. [Betty] Adams has done such great work. I hope to continue that work by continuing to grow the program, as well as make the transitions that are important.”

Harris envisions the College of Nursing as being nationally recognized across the discipline for all students, but especially for students of color. She says that applying hard work and dedication will develop the program even more over time with more access to innovative classes and experiences for students to continue hands-on work and real-world experiences.

“My father always told us that his father said to him: ‘Each generation should do better than the last,’” Harris reflected. “If he didn’t do that for us, then he would have failed. When I think about Prairie View, my goal is to reach back and pull everybody along, so the next generation of nurses will do better than the nurses that are in their current year.”

Helping others to find their place

Harris began her career as a clinician, where she worked for a decade before transitioning to work in an urban community health center in Boston for another decade. It was after that, she began thinking about how going back to school might lead her further into her passion for helping others find their place in the industry, and as she describes, especially, “mentoring other nurses of color.”

“I’ve been really intentional about mentoring nurses of color throughout my career because I’ve been the only nurse of color in a lot of places I’ve worked,” Harris said. “At Boston College, too, I was the only African-American nurse in the majority of my classes. I was really intentional when I joined the faculty about making sure that I mentored students. When I saw and thought about the opportunity for educating diverse nursing students at an historically black nursing program, I said to myself, you really are mentoring people across the city and across the country. This is an opportunity to mentor and grow the program to include more African-American nurses. If we want people to step up, this is a years-long process. The work is continuous. I’m stepping forward, and I hope others see that and step forward too.”

Prairie View was a natural fit for this passion, Harris says. She found in visiting PVAMU and considering it as the next place to land in her career that the university has a history of building up students of color and varied experiences and backgrounds. This translates to them passing that on to others, which she says is instrumental in the context of the nursing program in changing the conversations around health and beginning to eliminate disparities.

“The pandemic has really highlighted all the health inequities and health disparities,” Harris said. “We need nurses of color to step out and advocate for patients. That is the only way that we’re going to achieve health equity and really do away with health disparities.”

Nursing is all about relationships

Harris brings a unique perspective to her new role as dean – even in conversation, she is a teacher, and approachable. It’s that spirit she brings to her new position, where she hopes to continue mentoring budding nurses using her prior experience in the medical field.

She believes passionately in the power of relationships – not just between a student and professor, but also how students take what they learn in nursing school and apply it to their patient relationships. As a nurse, you have a different relationship with the patient than the doctor does, she says.

“I thought about going to medical school, but I’m glad I chose nursing,” Harris said. “It gives you this opportunity to develop a relationship with your patients that is so unique. You have this opportunity to really think about where the patient is: how do they make decisions?”

As a nurse, you develop decision making in the context of their personal lives, and really can help them change the trajectory of their life, Harris pointed out. So when a nurse talks to a patient about diabetes with a patient, for instance, it actually is more understanding of what’s going on in their life.

“They can hear from the doctor that ‘you can change your diet, lose weight, etc.,’ but it’s really this relationship that the patient developed with the nurse that helps them get from point A to B,” Harris said. “The nurse can ask the essential questions in the context of a relationship: What time do you get up in the morning? Where do you buy your groceries? What’s your income? Do you have enough money to buy groceries? They can say, let me help you connect these things.”

This was something Harris loved about working at a community health center.

“I went there as a new graduate women’s health nurse practitioner and was there for 13 years in the adolescent department,” Harris said. “I saw those adolescents grow up. I worked in a women’s health clinic, and I saw the adolescents grow up; I met their mothers and their grandmothers. When they started to have kids, I saw them too. These lifelong, continuing relationships really sparked something in me.”

When she transitioned to education, this perspective was at the forefront of her mind.

“It’s all about helping students understand this relationship context that is essential to nursing,” Harris said. “You have to really meet them where they are. You can lecture all you want, but if you don’t listen to the patient and what the patient’s saying, all those interventions you try will not work. It’s really about thinking about putting the patient and your experiences at the center of the interaction. That’s how you are trained to help their behaviors, which turn around and impact health care.”

Mastering the profession

Harris says she’s learned that nursing wasn’t an easy career choice, but as she’s stepped into education and educational leadership positions, she continues to encourage students to keep going.

“My motto is that you can do anything with a little hard work and persistence – don’t give up, keep your head down and move forward,” Harris said with a smile. “Some days, you may feel like you want to go over in the corner and cry, and that’s okay. I climbed my way through nursing school, and I had to grow my way around the corner some days. But you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off, and the next day you meet a new patient, you need to talk to a new colleague, and you get excited about what you’re doing. That’s the calling that is nursing. Nursing is an art and a science.

You can learn so much in the classroom – evidence on how to change behaviors, theory and application about developing interventions and in the real world or clinical experiences, you practice those ideas,” she continued. “But it’s the one-on-one relationship that you develop with the patients and their families that will keep you going. I would say to nurses at Prairie View: Come on in. Join the fun. It’s a challenge, but it’s so rewarding. And you won’t regret your decision.”

By Meredith Mohr

-PVAMU-