Honors College Alumna Brings Humanities Perspective to Healthcare

Before she began working with patients as an occupational therapy doctoral candidate, Baylor alumna Ella Pursley, B.A. ’24 was learning how to think deeply about the human condition.

As a student in the Honors College’s Great Texts of the Western Tradition program, Pursley spent her undergraduate years immersed in the writings of Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius and C.S. Lewis. Today, as she prepares for a career in occupational therapy, she finds herself returning to many of those same ideas in clinical settings centered on healing, suffering and human flourishing.

“At first, those worlds seemed really separate to me,” Pursley said. “I had this passion for literature and the humanities, and I thought if I went into healthcare, I was leaving that behind. Over time, I realized the opposite was true. The more I learned about occupational therapy, the more I saw how deeply connected it was to the kinds of questions we were asking in Great Texts about what it means to be human, how people flourish and how we care for one another.”

Pursley came to Baylor from Fairhope, Ala., after a high school teacher encouraged her to explore Baylor and the Honors College. While touring campus, she discovered the Great Texts program and immediately felt drawn to its interdisciplinary approach to literature, philosophy, theology and history.

“When I found Great Texts, it felt like exactly what I had been searching for,” Pursley said. “It wasn’t just studying literature in isolation. It was studying the biggest ideas and questions alongside people who genuinely cared about truth and understanding the world.”

Though both of her parents worked in healthcare, Pursley entered Baylor unsure of what her future career might look like. During her time in the Honors College, she began shadowing occupational therapists in Waco and discovered a profession that resonated deeply with both her intellectual interests and her desire to care for others.

“Occupational therapy is incredibly person-centered,” she said. “You’re not just treating a diagnosis or a physical limitation. You’re helping someone participate in life again. You’re thinking about what gives their life meaning, purpose and dignity. That felt very connected to the conversations we were having in my Great Texts courses.”

As she begins her final year of graduate school, Pursley says her humanities background continues to shape the way she approaches patient care, especially in moments where questions of suffering and meaning emerge alongside physical illness or injury.

“One thing Great Texts prepared me for was learning how to wrestle with suffering,” Pursley said. “Patients ask, ‘Why did this happen to me?’ or ‘Why did this happen to my child?’ There’s no easy answer to those questions, but having spent years reading authors who wrestled with suffering and the human experience helps you approach those conversations with more empathy and humility.”

Pursley said she frequently finds herself revisiting concepts first encountered in her Great Texts seminars, particularly Aristotle’s understanding of eudaimonia, often translated as “human flourishing.”

“In occupational therapy, we talk all the time about helping people flourish,” she said. “I find myself going back to Aristotle a lot. It’s not just about physical health or productivity. It’s about living fully as a human being, and that has really shaped how I think about patient care.”

That intersection between literature and healing became the focus of Pursley’s Honors thesis, an interdisciplinary project exploring bibliotherapy, or the therapeutic effects of reading and writing. Pursley led a book club at an independent living facility in Waco and studied how literature fostered reflection, conversation and emotional connection among participants. She is now continuing that research through her doctoral capstone work in occupational therapy.

“My thesis helped me realize that literature doesn’t just stay inside the classroom,” Pursley said. “Stories shape how people understand themselves, how they process grief and even how they heal.”

Looking back, Pursley encourages current students not to see the humanities and practical careers as opposing paths.

“I think there’s this assumption that studying the humanities isn’t practical, but it teaches you how to think well, how to empathize, and how to have difficult conversations,” Pursley said. “Those are skills you carry into every part of life, but especially in healthcare.”