Faculty
Kelly Howard, NBC-HWC
Fall 1980 - Fall 2120
Doctor of Whole Health Leadership Program
kellyhoward@scuhs.edu
Current Position
Biography
Kelly Howard is an Executive Member of the Cornerstone Collaborative and an adjunct professor in SCU's Doctorate of Whole Health Leadership program. She also designs and delivers integrative health curricula at the University of Health and Performance and teaches group coaching at the University of Minnesota's Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing. Kelly also serves as a Colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves, working with the Holistic Health and Fitness directorate on the expansion of yoga and mindfulness enterprise wide.
From 2012-2022 she developed and led the VA's Whole Health Education program, educating and training VA leaders, clinicians, and coaches nationwide. During this time, her team created multiple face-to-face and virtual courses for clinicians (Whole Health in Your Practice, Pain and Suffering, Eating for Whole Health, Mental Wellbeing, Social and Structural Determinants of Health, Coaching Skills for Clinicians, Emergency Medicine, Nurse Leaders, and Inpatient Nursing), for non-clinicians (Whole Health Coaching, Taking Charge of My Life, Partner Skills, and Mentoring), and for leaders and supervisors (Empowering Your Team and Leading Change). Her team also created the Whole Health Library, Passport to Whole Health Reference manual, and nine online courses (Whole Health Foundations: A Personal Experience, Mindful Awareness, Clinician Self-Care, Introduction to Complementary and Integrative Health, Facilitation, Eating for Whole Health, Functional Nutrition for Pain, Pain and Suffering, and Coaching Demonstrations). In total, over 250,000 VA staff were educated and trained during this time, along with nearly one hundred national and local educators to spread Whole Health education at the national, regional, and local levels.
Kelly was in the first class of Certified Duke Integrative Health Coaches through Duke Integrative Medicine in 2010 and the first cohort of National Board-Certified Health and Wellness Coaches in 2017. She has been a yoga instructor (RYT-500) for nearly twenty years and has completed over 1,000 hours of yoga teacher training. She holds additional certifications in breathwork, death coaching, and mind-body nutrition.
She has served in the US Army since 1998: with troops at Ft. Hood and Schofield Barracks, as the Operations Officer for the Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq, and as Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff of the Army at the Pentagon. She deployed twice to Iraq, serving in Tikrit in the first year of the war and Baghdad during the Surge. She is currently assigned to US Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Eustis, Virginia.
Kelly had two life events that drew her in the direction of Whole Health: the first was having her thyroid removed at the age of 14 due to acute onset Graves’ disease, and the second was brought on by efforts to heal physically, mentally, and spiritually after her second deployment to Iraq in her twenties.
Kelly is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point with a B.S. in Political Science, Latin American Studies, and Environmental Engineering, and has a Master of Arts in Human Resources Management. She lives in her hometown of Richmond, Virginia, with her two young daughters.
Degrees
M.A., Human Resource Management, Webster University

Hear from the Students Who’ve Been in Your Shoes
I chose SCU when looking for a PA program because of their Integrative Medicine approach. I am from Michigan, and not many programs focus on this Integrative, Holistic approach when it comes to patient care in the Midwest, and I felt that was very important for me to learn as a future provider. My transition to semi-virtual learning has been very smooth and quite enjoyable. [su_accordion][su_spoiler title="Read More..." open="No"]My favorite part about attending SCU is how tight-knit and diverse the community is. Coming from a large undergrad university and moving so far, it was very important for me to have a PA program that made me feel valued and invested in my success. At SCU, they do a great job of making you feel that.[/su_spoiler][/su_accordion]
Brianna Hadley
MSPA Class of 2022
One of the great things about SCU is we do have a campus layout, so all your classes aren't in a single room. We have our cadaver lab. We have different specialty rooms for physical assessment classes vs. acupuncture classes. All our acupuncture-specific classes have all the herbs in the room. You can pull out the herbs and look at them, whether in class or in between classes to get that extra studying in.[su_accordion][su_spoiler title="Read More..." open="No"]My favorite part of SCU is the collaboration from our beginning terms. We were working alongside chiropractor students, PA students, and ayurvedic students. It's a unique community where we get to learn about these different fields and sit in classrooms with them and work with them in the clinic. It allows you to get an understanding of all the different fields and how they can work together, and what is unique about your field. I think that is a wonderful aspect that I didn't think was going to be as prominent as it is here; even now, in my upper term classes and I am not in class with chiropractic students, I can still reach out to them about a certain aspect I may not understand or if I am working on a case. I want another perspective I know I have them to reach out to, so that has been a great networking community to have resources for.[/su_spoiler][/su_accordion]
Dr. Jamie Kuljis
Graduate, Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine
"There are a lot of things that I love about the program at SCU. The first one is that the faculty come from a long line of Ayurvedic knowledge deeply rooted in ancient classical text. They studied Ayurveda, but they also lived it. When you learn from people who embody this wisdom, it's much easier to grasp this knowledge. The second thing I love is the camaraderie within the cohort. The combination of the training, supportive faculty, and the support of my peers and classmates has given me the confidence I need to start my own practice."
Portia Harris
Student, Ayurveda Program
Some of my favorite courses at SCU have to be the chiropractic procedure classes; those are the classes you get to hone in on your chiro skills, your palpation skills and ultimately work on the adjustments that make you a chiropractor. Those are the classes I feel enhance my knowledge the most and are some of the reasons I chose to become a chiropractor here are SCU.[su_accordion][su_spoiler title="Read More..." open="No"]On top of chiropractic procedures classes, my favorite is the cadaver lab experience. The cadaver classes opened up my perception of what the human body is made up of. It allowed me to get an in-person perspective of how the body works and looks on the inside. I am genuinely thankful for those experiences because they opened and broadened my horizons to the human body and anatomy in general.[/su_spoiler][/su_accordion]
Jordan Vega
Student, Doctor of Chiropractic
Getting Started
View our application requirements above or fill out a request for information to start speaking with an enrollment advisor today.

Financing Your Education
Graduate students have a variety of ways to help fund their education. From graduate-dedicated federal loans to speciality grants and scholarships, paying for your education can be easy at SCU. In addition, our distinctive Fixed Rate Tuition Guarantee for degree programs provides students with confidence in planning for their educational investment.
Fixed Tuition Guarantee Benefits:
- Your per term rate is guaranteed for the scheduled duration of your program*
- No tuition price uncertainty
- Plan your finances in advance
- Learn more about tuition and financial aid.
Attend a Virtual Interactive Information Session
Learn more about SCU and get a feel for campus without ever leaving home by joining an interactive information session. Information sessions include a brief presentation and specific program break out groups so you will have plenty of opportunities to ask questions via chat. Join early and compete in our game to win SCU apparel! RSVP to our Virtual Information Session.
Virtually Tour Your Campus
Not able to attend a campus preview day in person? That’s okay. You can get to know your SCU campus with this virtual tour.
