Higher education for a higher purpose

Lynn Babington’s nursing background enriches her credentials as Chaminade University’s new president

Story and photo by Patrick Downes Hawaii Catholic Herald

Lynn Babington feels just at home screening the blood pressure of the rural poor in the Dominican Republic as she is measuring the pulse of health care in America as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellow.

Which would make her well-suited to run a Catholic institution of higher learning that distinguishes itself by its culture of contributing to the common good.

Babington, a nurse with a lifetime of experience in both health care and education, is Chaminade University of Honolulu’s new president. She started on Aug. 1, succeeding Marianist Brother Bernard Ploeger, who had held the position since 2009.

“I feel very blessed to be here at Chaminade,” she said. “It is the perfect fit for me.”

Babington talked with the Hawaii Catholic Herald on Sept. 7 about her new responsibility.

Though at her desk for a little more than a month, she spoke with the knowledge and confidence of someone who has been there much longer. Names, facts, figures, details and anecdotes all flowed with assurance and enthusiasm.

“I have always had a commitment to Catholic higher education,” Babington said. “And it fits very well with a nursing background if you think about it. As a nurse, your role is to advocate for patients, and the most vulnerable of patients. I think Catholic higher education does similar things.”

Chaminade has service built into its curriculum, Babington said. “It’s higher education for a higher purpose.”

Whether it’s accounting students doing tax counseling in homeless shelters or nursing students working with kids in community health centers, in all the various disciplines they are given opportunities “to see how they can contribute to their community in a very meaningful way,” she said.

“They want to give back because they’ve seen the difference that it makes. That is a direct reflection of our Catholic Marianist values,” she said, in reference to the religious order that founded Chaminade. “It differentiates us from other institutions of higher ed.”

“You talk to employers and they say the most frustrating thing about college graduates is they come in the door and they don’t know how to work with other people,” she said. “They can’t figure out how to manage a new environment.”

“Well, our students walk in team-ready,” she said. “They are identified as leadership potential right away.”

“But they also bring the values that are so strongly imbedded in our education,” she said.

Wrap-around services

Chaminade is eager to offer a university education to those who may not have that opportunity, Babington said.

“A big chunk of our students are first generation students,” she said.

“We have lots of scholarships that support students, specifically Catholic students,” she said. These include parish scholarships, Marianist high school scholarships and privately funded scholarships.

“We have to debunk the myth that we are expensive,” she said, adding that “97 percent of our students receive financial aid and merit scholarships, and our freshman class — 100 percent.”

“So nobody is paying that sticker price,” she said, which is around $25,000 a year.

“We know that 40 percent of our students are PELL eligible,” she said, referring to the federal grant program for low-income students. “That’s huge.”

In addition to financial support, the school offers “wrap-around services” — from advisors and mentors, to programs that teach students how to budget their money and manage their time, to free tutoring.

“We have very small classes, so if you don’t show up one day, we notice,” she said. “If you don’t show up two days, we’re going to find out what’s wrong.”

Babington pointed out another educational value.

“We have a four-year guarantee,” she said. No matter the major, “we guarantee you will graduate in four years as long as you continue to go full time,” which doesn’t always happen at the bigger schools.

“The diversity of the student population here is amazing,” Babington said. “Not just ethnic and racial diversity. We have socio-economic diversity and we have religious diversity and all of those make such a wonderful educational opportunity.”

“We have a very robust campus ministry,” she said. “One of the real strong tenets of the Marianist educational tradition is a strong commitment and a firm belief in celebrating all faith traditions.”

“There are not just the Catholic kids,” she said. “There are kids from every faith background who work together on spiritual retreats, learning how to discover their own commitment to faith.”

Developing partnerships

Babington recognizes the importance of developing partnerships that will enhance Chaminade’s success. One of the first people she met here was Bishop Larry Silva.

“It is critically important to have a good relationship,” she said. “And of course, he is a great guy.”

The president noted several university programs offered to the Catholic community, including master’s programs in pastoral theology and education, deacon formation and advanced education and training for Catholic school teachers.

Babington has also met with high school administrators, church leaders, Hawaii’s congressional delegation, the governor and the mayor.

She wants to build on partnerships that increase educational opportunities for her students.

One partnership is with Kamehameha Schools which provides four-year scholarships for students in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields.

Chaminade also has agreements with Mainland schools who accept its students pursuing advanced studies in medicine, dentistry, podiatry, osteopathy, physical therapy and other subjects.

“We have an agreement with George Washington Medical School in D.C. that they accept our kids as long as they maintain a proper grade point average,” she said. “They go right into medical school. That doesn’t happen anywhere.”

“We were awarded a Howard Hughes grant. People have no idea how prestigious it is to be a Howard Hughes Medical Foundation recipient,” one of 24 out of 500 universities applying, she said.

“It puts us at the table with all the big players,” Babington said.

“We just found out yesterday that we were awarded a National Science Foundation grant,” she said, for a new program in “data analytics and data science” in collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin.

“So we can’t be everything to everybody, but we want to leverage the areas we are already good at and well known for,” she said.

A most sought after program

Nursing, one of Chaminade’s newest programs, is nationally accredited and going strong.

“Right now it’s the program most sought after,” Babington said.

The program started a few years ago with 25 students. It so far has graduated three classes and this year welcomed 85 new students.

“It’s a highly successful program,” the president said. “Again, it’s imbedded in the community.”

“Take pediatric nursing,” she said. “Instead of just working at the hospital with sick kids, you work in community health centers, out in a rural area, with the community. You might work with a daycare center, with well kids as well as sick kids, as well as in the homes of chronically-ill kids.”

Upon graduation, the new nurses go to hospitals, but also to community health centers in underserved areas.

“They do so because they’ve had experiences there throughout the program and they recognize, not just the need, but the contribution they can make in some of these communities,” she said.

That also goes for geriatric nursing, she said. “We will be developing some post-baccalaureate certificates in gerontology and forensic nursing, which is prison nursing.”

‘Nursing was my calling’

Babington grew up in Detroit in a “big boisterous Catholic family,” the second of six kids all of whom went to Catholic elementary and high schools. She went to the University of Michigan to become a nurse.

“Health care and nursing was my calling,” she said.

After college she worked as a critical care nurse and married Randy Carpenter, a physician. In those years, “in between all the internships and residencies,” they lived all over the country.

They have two adult children, a musician son in Brooklyn and a public defender daughter in Harlem who works with families with kids in the foster care system. No grandchildren “yet.”

Today, her extended family is “spread across the country.”

“I am sort of the gatherer,” she said, the one whose home is the destination for big holidays.

“So they are delighted that I moved here,” Babington said of her new Hawaii address. She will be welcoming many of them for her Jan. 20 inauguration as Chaminade president.

Just prior to coming to Hawaii, Babington served a half year as interim president of Fairfield University, a Jesuit institution in Connecticut, an hour’s drive from New York City. Before that she was Fairfield’s provost and senior vice president of academic affairs.

Babington earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing (magna cum laude) from the University of Michigan and both her master’s and doctorate degrees in nursing from the University of Washington.

After jobs at San Francisco General Hospital and Saint Cabrini Hospital in Seattle in the 1980s, she worked for nine years as an independent health care consultant for numerous nursing organizations, universities, hospitals, institutes and health agencies.

Babington held a variety of leadership positions at Boston’s Northeastern University from 1997 to 2011.

In the Dominican Republic

For the past 30 years, Babington has volunteered for, and at one time was president of, Intercultural Nursing, an organization of nurses, nurse practitioners and nursing students that provides health care to small rural communities in the Dominican Republic on the Haitian border.

There they set up mobile health clinics four times a year, providing primary and urgent care, managing immunizations and blood pressure monitoring and screening. They also trained local health workers to do some of the health screening and referrals.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity, not just to provide nursing care but to help improve the health of the community,” she said.

She has been to the Dominican Republic “at least 25 times,” sometimes with her children who have helped as translators. Her last visit was last year.

“From here (Hawaii) I am sure I won’t go back there, but I hope to have the opportunity to be engaged in that kind of work in communities here,” she said.

“It is always rewarding to be engaged in the community you live in,” she said.

When she was at Fairfield, she volunteered for a Connecticut refugee organization helping Syrian refugee families coming into the city of Bridgeport “find a home and a job and put their kids in school.”

“It’s a way to keep you grounded,” she said. “I feel confident that I will find the right kind of match here.”

While Babington has found fulfillment working among the poor, she has also achieved success in the higher strata of medicine and academia.

She has been active with dozens of professional organizations and associations, and has received numerous scholarships, fellowships and awards.

She spent the summer of 2011 as a Fulbright Scholar at Ben Gurion University in Israel and in 2013 was awarded a Robert Wood Johnson Executive Nurse Fellowship.

“It was just an amazing program,” she said, working for three years with 20 of the top leaders in the nursing field.

“The goal of the program was to develop health care leaders who could begin to move the needle on where health care is going from a nursing perspective,” she said.

“It was a wonderful opportunity to do some really great stuff with some great people,” she said.

She is now enthusiastic about the possibilities at Chaminade.

“The people here are amazing, we have a great team of faculty and staff that are so committed to Chaminade and to the education of our students and that’s rare to find,” she said.

“So I feel blessed and very fortunate to be here. It’s such a privilege for me right now.”