An Ottawa High School graduate has been named the 2022 Alumnus of the Year for Oklahoma Wesleyan University. Dr. Yorton Clark, or Yorty as he is known to his friends. His father and grandfather were both lifelong pastors in the Wesleyan church. He graduated from OHS in 1980 then went to Bartlesville Wesleyan College. He says he felt some pressure to go into the ministry but, his senior year at OHS he says he felt God tugging on his heart in a specific way—it was to be involved in ministry— but to close the gap between the congregation and the pulpit. He wants to be a representation and a model and encourage others to engage in ministry. After Graduating in 1984, he cam back to Ottawa and married his girlfriend, Janean Burke, who also attended BWC.
They began as Youth Directors at the church they attended and he soon moved to Olathe where he worked for 11 years in healthcare administration. Besides raising three kids of their own, he and Janean have fostered a number of children throughout the decades, forming deep relationships that last today.
A friend called one day from Mid America Nazarene University, needing an emergency professor in management and Clark agreed to teach the class and he was hooked. When a full time position opened, he jumped on it and 24 years later, he is the Dean for the School of Professional and Graduate Studies and still teaches that same class in Management.
Clark traces his lineage to a career in service, to the day his senior year in high school when God impressed upon his heart a call to a different kind of ministry. Clark is content to keep chasing that call every day.
Congratulations Dr. Clark.
