Sep 2, 2025
‘All that was good about VCU’: Remembering Dolores Clement, pioneering health policy scholar and educational innovator
When VCU Health Administration alumna Roberta Tinch (MHA ’09) thinks of Dolores Clement, Dr.PH, she doesn’t think of lectures or grading rubrics. It’s her presence.
“Even after graduation, she kept checking in — on my career, on my kids, on how I was doing as a person,” said Tinch, now a senior healthcare executive at Inova Health System. “She wasn’t just invested in me as a healthcare leader, but in the person who has to show up every day as a healthcare leader.”
Despite a quiet demeanor and petite stature, Dr. Clement’s presence was felt in any room — and when she spoke, others listened. “She was like those aunties in your life who you want to be proud of you,” Tinch said. “She always encouraged us to be prepared, to be professional and to carry ourselves in a way that reflected the best of the MHA program.”
Dr. Clement, an emerita professor who retired in 2019 after 31 years with VCU, died August 21 after a long-term breast cancer diagnosis. She was 76.
Recruited to VCU Health Administration in 1988, Dr. Clement brought with her a strong background in public health that strengthened the College’s Master of Health Administration (MHA) and Master of Science in Health Administration (MSHA) programs. She also held tenured, joint appointments in the School of Medicine’s Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health.
At VCU, she was instrumental in restructuring undergraduate programs, and worked tirelessly — peers and alumni describe an omnipresence at the department’s Grant House headquarters — to keep its curricula and programs on the cutting edge of health leadership.
“She wasn’t pushy, but she was no pushover,” said Kenneth R. White, Ph.D. (VCU ’96), who worked closely with Dr. Clement to transform VCU’s graduate programs in health administration. “She was a quiet giant. She went the extra mile for everyone — students, faculty, staff. She remembered birthdays, anniversaries. She was everyone’s mother.”
In 1995, she became the first woman to serve as program director of the MHA and MSHA programs and in 1999 the first woman at VCU Health Administration to be promoted to full professor. In 1998, she began serving as associate dean of what was then the School of Allied Health Professions, where her work with Dean Cecil B. Drain, Ph.D., and department chairs designed and launched VCU’s innovative distance-learning Ph.D. program in Health Related Sciences.
White was originally Dr. Clement’s student, then assistant director of the department’s graduate programs and later her colleague. White described their shared mission to model care and connection in the admissions process and beyond.
“Our students had choices — top-ranked schools like Michigan or UNC Chapel Hill — but they came here because they felt they mattered,” said the now-retired White, who directed the MHA program from 2001 to 2008 and is credited with reshaping the department’s curriculum to be more patient-centric and interprofessional. “Dolores and I believed that relationships were at the heart of great education. We didn’t just teach that — we lived it.”
A professor who cared about people
White spoke at Dr. Clement’s retirement party in 2019. “She cares deeply about people, especially students and persons who are marginalized. She walks the talk and embraces diversity and inclusion. She not only feels empathic toward people, she takes it a step beyond, which is the definition of compassion,” White told attendees. “She does the right thing because it is the right thing to do.”
When Cam Atkins (MHA ‘15) first applied to join the department, he was met with a response from Dr. Clement: They weren't going to accept him to the program.
But she gave him some guidance: Gain some experience in the field, then try again. “She saw in me what I now understand, which is that I had interest and potential but the timing wasn’t right for me,” Atkins said.
Deflated but accepting, Atkins got an internship at Carilion Clinic, built his confidence and skills, then reapplied to VCU a year later — and this time, was accepted. “I credit her with setting me up for success. It was some of the best career advice I’ve ever received,” he said.
“There are just certain people in life you want to make proud, and Dr. Clement was that for me,” said Atkins, who today serves as a director at Siemens Healthineers. As their joint class gift, the classes of 2015 and 2016 endowed the Dr. Dolores. G. Clement Community Service Scholarship Fund.
“Dolores Clement represented all that was good and is good about the VCU MHA program,” Atkins said. “If the values she lived by and worked so hard for remain embedded in the program, its future will always be bright.”
Will Maixner (MHA ‘10) grew close with Dr. Clement after graduation. “She never wavered in her support and advocacy for her students and was formidable when she needed to be,” he said. “She was always one of the few professors to be at the students’ graduation party celebration and made sure she congratulated everyone individually.” Dr. Clement even gave a handmade bowl to Maixner as a wedding gift, brought back from an Africa trip. “She told us she preferred to give something unique and meaningful,” he said. “That was Dolores: thoughtful, intentional, and one-of-a-kind.”
Healthcare executive Terrie Edwards (MHA ‘84) graduated four years prior to Dr. Clement’s arrival, but got to know her during her time as a healthcare executive in Richmond. “I had her number and she had mine, and she could call me anytime she needed help placing students in a residency program, securing speakers or gathering insight from alumni. It was that kind of relationship that I truly valued,” said Edwards, who recently left Sentara.
She described Dr. Clement as “the glue” of the department during times of leadership change and transition. Edwards last saw her just before Christmas at The Bizarre Bazaar marketplace in Richmond. “She spotted me, came right over, gave me a big hug, and asked about my family. She was genuinely interested in my life,” Edwards said. “She may not have had children of her own, but she had 30 new kids every year. That’s her legacy.”
From tech to teaching, ‘she had her hands in everything’
As early adopters of distance education technology, she and her colleagues helped lay the groundwork for online learning platforms that would shape the future of healthcare instruction. She later served as the Ph.D. program’s inaugural program director.
“She had her hands in everything,” said longtime colleague Jan Clement, Ph.D., who joined VCU alongside Dolores in 1988. While unrelated, the same last name (Jan by birth, Dolores by marriage) caused confusion as email made its debut during their time at the university. “It’s amazing what she accomplished — program building, reaccreditation, curriculum reform, chairing dissertations — while still mentoring students, publishing research and supporting faculty.”
And Dr. Clement’s influence extended well beyond VCU.
She made lasting contributions through her work with the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) and the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME), the latter of which named its Dolores Clement Fellow of the Year Award in her honor. That pro bono work raised the program’s visibility across the country.
“Dr. Clement has not only been a friend and colleague over the past two decades, but a mentor. She demonstrates qualities of integrity, rigor, compassion, and commitment to excellence among many others,” said 2025 award winner Steven J. Szydłowski, MBA, MHA, DHA, chair of the Department of Health Administration and Human Resource at the University of Scranton.
Emeriti faculty Stephen S. Mick, Ph.D. chaired the department from 1999 to 2009 and remembers Dr. Clement as a rare “triple threat” in academia — a dedicated researcher, celebrated teacher and tireless servant.
“Her students loved her because she was so available and so kind,” he said, recalling her office desk “piled high” with papers. “She was also a force of consistency — if a job needed doing, you knew Dolores would see it through.”
Even in their retirements, Mick and Dr. Clement stayed close, especially after her husband passed in 2022. Dr. Clement joined Mick and his wife for Thanksgivings, and she would attend the couple’s choral concerts. Even undergoing years of cancer treatment, “She never let up. She just kept showing up and doing the work, even when she was exhausted. That’s what defined her.”
A ‘constant presence’ at Health Administration
Dr. Clement earned her bachelor’s degree from the College of Mount Saint Joseph in Cincinnati and entered the Peace Corps as a volunteer in Africa where she worked as an administrative assistant at a cash crop clinic, where she developed a passion for healthcare management. She held two master’s degrees — one in international affairs from Ohio University, the other in health systems management from Rush University — and earned her doctorate of public health in health policy and administration from the University of California, Berkeley.
Clement's own research covered community health and well-being. She conducted rigorous studies on patient satisfaction, access to care and health maintenance organization (HMO) performance during a time of major transition in American healthcare. She investigated patterns of diffusion, growth and survival of HMOs and the use of alternative payment strategies by providers.
She served on national accreditation commissions, conducted international consulting work and chaired countless dissertation committees — often while mentoring early-career faculty.
Dr. Clement’s work ethic became legendary. Alumni and peers recall her at the Grant House late into the evening and on weekends doing faculty work, research or writing student letters of recommendation.
“She was a constant presence,” Jan Clement recalls. “Always guided by what was good for the student, the staff, the department — not herself. She gave so generously of her time and wisdom that we used to joke we were all benefiting from how hard she worked.”
She was lauded with honors: The 2003 Distinguished Alumni Award from Rush University. The College of Health Professions’ 2015/2016 Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence. The Gary L. Filerman Prize for Educational Leadership from AUPHA, the health administration professional association. She retired as the department’s endowed Sentara Professor, earned designation professor emerita from VCU and also earned the university’s Distinguished Career Professorship.
Clement’s 5 simple rules
Even in illness after a 2016 breast cancer diagnosis and its recurrence, Dr. Clement remained a source of strength and grace. White noted her career and personality gave her “amazing insights into her own mortality.”
“A lot of times when people have cancer or a life-limiting disease, they use terms we take from battle: ‘Fighting the good fight.’ ‘Warrior.’ But sometimes it’s not about fighting a disease that has properties that will take over your body. She had an amazing strength to keep going and have the best and most optimistic view, but she did that more through love than through fighting.”
Dr. Clement and her late husband, Sam, pursued many philanthropic interests and jointly established charitable funds at The Community Foundation of Richmond and at the MCV Foundation for the study of managerial ethics. White added that her devotion to Sam and her friendships through letters and social media reflected the same selfless energy she brought to her professional life.
“We learn from her and from others on what we would like our health system to be — to ideate on how we can create the best experience for the patient we've never seen — and she committed her entire life to patients she never saw,” Tinch said. “All we can hope is that we made her proud when she needed us.”
Dr. Clement was the third oldest in a family of 10 children who survive her, along with a stepdaughter, Janet Heide Clement of Herndon and one grandchild, Ryan Hunter Grice of Norfolk. In her obituary, her family cites “five simple rules to be happy” that she had written in a journal:
- Free your heart from hatred; Forgive
- Free your mind from worries; Most never happen
- Live simply and appreciate what you have
- Give more
- Expect less
“Dolores touched so many people,” White said. “She lives on in all of us.”
In lieu of flowers, Dr. Clement’s family asks you to consider donating to a charity of your choice or “performing a random act of kindness in Dee's name.” Donations can also be made to the Dr. Dolores G. Clement Scholarship Fund (select her scholarship in the drop-down), the Shekleton Clement Families Fund for Gerontologic Studies at Rush University, Chicago, or St. Mary's Catholic Church in Richmond.