Remembering Beth A. Kelly

Beth Kelly (Sauerwein) was born in Portland, Oregon in January 1967 to Thomas and Marilyn Sauerwein. A lifelong Portlander, she graduated from Centennial High School in 1984, and started college intending to become a schoolteacher. During college, however, she became interested in health care and graduated from OHSU in 1990 with a BS in Nursing. Beth soon began an extraordinary career of service to others that would last for the next 35 years.

During her career, she always sought to increase her own expertise in Nursing to better serve her patients. While working as an Acute Care and Staff RN in the Providence Health System, she continued her education, earning a Masters in Nursing from OHSU in 1997, and Post-Masters Certification as an Adult Care Nurse Practitioner the following year.  From 1998-2014, Beth worked as a Nurse Practitioner for local counties providing services in Women's Health, Family Planning, and Pre-Natal/Post-Partum Care. While working as an NP, she also provided nursing services overseas during medical missions to Mexico, Honduras, and Uganda (in an active conflict zone). 

After receiving a Graduate Certificate in Public Health in 2014, she combined her earlier interest in teaching with her dedication to health care and became a nurse-educator as an Assistant Professor of Clinical Nursing at OHSU. While serving at OHSU, she helped found the I-CAN program that trained students in serving the health care needs of marginalized populations in Portland's Old Town neighborhood. This innovative program became a national model for teaching public health to nursing students and connected many lower-income people to vital health care services that they had previously lacked. In 2017, Beth not only earned a Doctorate in Nursing Practice, but also received OHSU's Excellence in Teaching Award.

Beth achieved her career capstone in 2022, becoming Clackamas Community College's Nurse Administrator, a position she served in until her death from pancreatic cancer in August 2025. Beth Kelly devoted herself to both nursing and education, and her memorial scholarship has been established to honor her dedication to serving others as well as her commitment to education.