Casey Cooper: From Gardner-Webb Nursing Graduate to Tribal Healthcare Leader

1994 Alumnus Reflects on the Mentors and Mission That Shaped His Path to Leading the Cherokee Indian Hospital Authority

To our readers: Alumni of the Gardner-Webb Hunt School of Nursing (HSON) are leaders in the nursing field, recognized with national honors, and serving in private practices, hospitals, missions, and education. In celebration of 60 years of nursing education at GWU, which began in August 1965, HSON highlights some of its alumni serving around the world. Learn more here.

BOILING SPRINGS, N.C.—Casey Cooper, a 1994 nursing alumnus of Gardner-Webb University, approaches each day with the same mindset. Whether on the job as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Cherokee Indian Hospital Authority (CIHA), serving on the board of a community organization or at home with his family, Cooper’s main objective is the same. “What drives me—the essence of it—is just being significant in the lives of others,” he stated. “We all have our own paths and our own opportunities to pour ourselves into the lives of others.”

Cooper is thankful for the people who took their time to invest in his life. An average high school student, he came from a background of economic hardship. The trajectory of his life was changed by those who supported and encouraged him. One was a counselor in his high school who took him aside, because he knew that Cooper would need financial help applying to colleges.

The counselor gave him vouchers to waive the application fees. They sent them off, and he was accepted to Gardner-Webb University. He chose nursing because of another person in his life who had inspired him. “When I was in high school, I ended up in health occupations class,” Cooper shared. “There was a teacher who took an interest in me and refused to let me fail to meet my potential. To this day, I’ll tell you, she genuinely loved me in a way that made it impossible for me to disappoint her.”

The teacher was also a nurse, and Cooper excelled in the class. “There were some experiences that I had in health occupations in high school that really sparked me,” he reflected. “When I was a HOSA (Health Occupations Students of America) student working in the hospital, I really discovered the kind of the joy and the pleasure of pouring yourself into relieving someone else’s suffering. I knew there was something that just felt miraculous about that.”

However, Cooper remained doubtful about going to college and didn’t follow up with Gardner-Webb. Then, during his senior year of high school, he was surprised to receive a phone call from Sandra Earl, who was the administrative assistant for the nursing school at the time. She contacted him because he needed to submit some additional information to complete his application.

“I was not living at home and somehow Sandra found me,” Cooper related. “She kind of held my hand through the application process. She did all these things for me, invested in me in a way that made an impression on me. She had a genuine care and interest in me and it made me feel safe and helped me to overcome the fears that were preventing me from really engaging.”

Afterward, Cooper visited the campus and could sense the community of support he would have at Gardner-Webb. A first-generation student, he was attracted to the close-knit campus and also to Gardner-Webb’s ADN to BSN program. “I didn’t have the confidence that I could earn an undergraduate degree, but I thought if I worked, I could white knuckle it for 24 months, and I could get a nursing license that I’d have some security to fall back on,” he said. “You know, first semester, my freshman year—I don’t know if the program is still geared this way—we literally had nursing clinical rotations. The work was so rigorous. I think we had to carry 17 hours our first semester. But it was obviously doable with the amount of wraparound support that we had.”

Cooper was encouraged by all of his professors—not just in nursing. He was mentored by several faculty members who are retired now and recognized with the Faculty Emeriti honor: Dr. Tom Jones and Dr. Les Brown in the Department of Natural Sciences, Dr. Tony Eastman in social sciences, and Dr. Sue Camp in business. In addition to teaching their regular classes, Jones, Eastman and Camp taught a special class for students who needed help establishing good study habits. “They taught you how to be successful and to learn to implement processes to strengthen your abilities,” he noted. “What the class taught me was that I had different learning styles and that it OK to use all these different techniques to learn.”

With their help and the support of nursing faculty, like Nursing School Dean Dr. Shirley Toney, and professor Wanda Stutts, and others, Cooper made the President’s List his first semester at Gardner-Webb.

Additionally, Cooper surrounded himself with friends who helped him study. “Trey Gilliam and I, we just decided we wanted to excel and prosper, so we would get together and we would carry a little electric coffee pot to the UC and we would stay in the UC and we’d study all night,” he described. “Trent Jessup was another who was just so accepting of me and was willing to tolerate my rough edges and inspire me. So, it was just all that support, the entire sense of community that I experienced when I was at Gardner-Webb, that built a safety net around me that made it safe for me to excel and prosper.”

Cooper, an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians (EBCI), has served the EBCI and his community since graduating from Gardner-Webb in 1994. He began as a primary care nurse, then worked as a community health nurse, nurse educator, and a nursing manager, before becoming the health director of the EBCI from 1999 to 2004.

As health director, he helped shape public health policy with a focus on chronic disease prevention. He was also part of a community-wide initiative to assume the management responsibilities of the Cherokee Indian Hospital from the Indian Health Services through an Indian Self-Determination Agreement. Cooper, who earned his MBA from UNC-Chapel-Hill, assumed his current role as CEO of CIHA in 2004.

He strongly affirmed that these accomplishments are the result of the EBCI working together. “Nothing that has happened here is a Casey accomplishment, and I’ve just got to be really honest about that,” he stated. “It’s the result of just being able to have all these wonderful, committed people who are getting the same vision.”

Cooper continued, “This tribe in this community made a decision to take its health system away from the federal government in 2002 to take over the health system. Remove the management from the National Indian Health Service and run it ourselves, create our own governing board, our own structure, and it’s been incredibly successful through self-determination and self-governance. This community has proven to itself in its constituents that it had the capability to manage its own health care system, and that’s been tremendous.”

According to the CIHA website, the Cherokee Indians have a saying: U wa shv u da nv te lv. Roughly translated into English, it means, “the one who gives from their heart,” and is one of the CIHA’s guiding principles. This healthcare system in the westernmost corner of the state serves the approximately 14,000 members of the EBCI in the Qualla Boundary.

Since the EBCI took over the hospital, its grown from approximately $25 million a year to $190 million a year in gross revenue; from about 125 employees to over 1,000; and has added services, such as behavioral health, end of life care, and recovery support services. They’ve invested close to $200 million in new facilities. Employees are satisfied in their jobs, and customers are pleased with their care.

“There’s a lot of things that I think are illustrative of success,” Cooper said, “but I would say the most successful thing is that we have become the provider of choice for our local community, and that our local community—even community members who have the ability to go somewhere else—choose to come to us and they’re satisfied. There’s no better illustration of success than to be the provider of choice.”

Gardner-Webb University is North Carolina’s recognized leader in private, Christian higher education. A Carnegie-Classified Doctoral/Professional University, GWU is home to nine colleges and schools, more than 80 undergraduate and graduate majors, and a world-class faculty. Located on a beautiful 225-acre campus in Boiling Springs, N.C., Gardner-Webb prepares graduates to impact their chosen professions, equips them with the skills to advance the frontiers of knowledge, and inspires them to make a positive and lasting difference in the lives of others. Learn more at gardner-webb.edu.