[1][4] That year, Clara enrolled in the Northern Illinois College of Ophthalmology and Optometry, graduating in September 1902.
[1] They traveled widely through southern Arizona and Sonora, providing medical care in rural areas.
They were later charter members of the Arizona Optometric Association and Clara was elected as the first female State President in 1926.
[5] Schell helped found the Tucson Business and Professional Women (BPW) and served as its president from 1922 to 1924.
In the position, she organized a meeting with a national speaker to discuss the Equal Rights Amendment and addressed an Arizona minimum wage law for women.
She traveled to Phoenix to lobby against the passage of Representative Rosa McKay's 1923 bill increasing the minimum wage for women, because the Tucson BPW believed it would lead to young girls losing jobs, consumer prices increasing, and Arizona losing business.