Chaminade University of Honolulu

Education

Hard Work Pays Off

At 19 years old in 2014, Jasmine-Kortney Young-Gusman ’26 began her journey in the health care field as a Medical Assistant and Technician at Straub Benioff Medical Center. After working there for nine years, she found out she was pregnant. The delivery was a harrowing experience for her. She needed an unmedicated, emergency cesarean section. During the surgery, a nurse stood by Young-Gusman, holding her hand, and ensuring she didn’t feel alone in the Operating Room.

“Having her [the nurse] there with me was a comfort in probably the scariest moment I’ve ever experienced,” Young-Gusman said. “After going through that I realized, I could be someone’s comfort and hold their hand and help them,” she explained.

That experience motivated her to apply to and start nursing school even with a ten-month-old son. 

“It took a lot for me to come back to school because I think if I didn’t go through that with my son, I would have just returned to my job,” Young-Gusman reflected. 

Her son is now four years old and will be cheering his mom on at Chaminade University’s Spring 2026 Commencement Ceremony at the Waikiki Shell on May 9. She is graduating with her Bachelor of Science in Nursing and receiving Latin honors. She was also selected for Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing, which has criteria of a minimum 3.0 GPA and being within the top 35% of their graduating class.

Young-Gusman says her biggest struggle in the past four years was balancing being a present mom for her son while also ensuring that she was meeting her goals in school. 

“I had a lot of doubts even though I’m a very confident person and I know I’m smart and I’m capable. It took a lot of sleepless nights, crying and praying,” she said.

There were times she had to miss bed time with her son or was unable to go to his baseball games because she had clinical or needed to study. She said it was very draining but she kept in mind that the sacrifices were temporary. 

“It all paid off because not only am I graduating with my bachelors, I was the first person in my whole family to go to college so I’m a first generation,” Young-Gusman stated. 

Completing nursing school can be daunting. Young-Gusman couldn’t have done it without her support system.  

“I‘ve had professors that have been so loving and supportive,” she said. 

While working towards her degree, Young-Gusman did her nursing preceptorship in the ER. She says she thrives in the ER environment because it’s fast-paced, very demanding and she loves it. 

Young-Gusman has already started working on the next step in her career. She has accepted a job offer from The Queen’s Medical Center – West Oʻahu for the Emergency Technician position and will start soon. She hopes to transition to the Queen’s Hawai‘i Nurse Residency Program in September or January.

She says she’s made life-long friends through Chaminade University. Her advice to incoming students is to believe in yourself, find people that believe in you and hold onto them.

“I didn’t think I could do this, and I did and it’s only because I found the right people. I found the right friends and the right professors who rally behind me,” she said.

Marketing Students Drive Nonprofit to Thrive

Re-Use Hawai‘i has been serving the community on Oahu for 20-plus years.

The innovative nonprofit is a living, breathing example of the circular economy put to good use. Describing itself as an “employment social enterprise dedicated to reducing waste and expanding green job opportunities,” Re-Use Hawai‘i creates meaningful jobs and community good will by rescuing abandoned construction materials from work sites or demolition projects to resell them at bargain prices for do-it-yourself handytypes across the island.

They’re “turning Hawai‘i’s waste into reusable materials and green jobs” as they say on their website, but Re-Use Hawai‘i recently ran into a problem: their newest store front wasn’t generating the kind of foot traffic they were hoping for. That’s where Chaminate University marketing students came in.

Chaminade marketing professor Wera Panow-Loui recently issued a challenge to her students: create a marketing strategy and presentation that can help Re-Use Hawai‘i re-introduce itself and its newest location to the community – revive a business model that’s been proven successful for two decades.

Her students more than met the challenge.

“I believe it was a standout student project for Re-Use Hawai‘i highlighting experiential learning, community impact, and our students’ excellence in their work,”Panow-Loui said.

Chaminade students Christopher Cody, Cory Alfred, Kyla Castro, Madelynne Knowd, and Tessa Stanley joined forces to see if they could aid Re-Use Hawai‘i using the skills they learned in Professor Panow-Loui’s class.

After talking with the nonprofit’s staff, conducting some research, quizzing store patrons, and assessing the situation, the five marketing students devised a strategy that they felt could help Re-Use Hawai‘i solve their conundrum. Re-Use is now using their presentation and training for future business planning.

First, they had to identify the problem. This was fairly straightforward: as their final presentation notes, the nonprofit was contending with “low foot traffic at the new Re-Use Hawai‘i Salt Lake location.”

The goal? Bring the customers back, and improve the experience of the customers who were visiting the new site. So, the students put their market research skills to work. 

They surveyed 97 customers to the new site, quizzing the visitors about what was working and what wasn’t. They broke the survey respondents down along demographic lines, noting gender identities, ages, and where they came from. They then asked them a set of questions designed to measure how familiar they were with Re-Use Hawai‘i, how often they relied on the nonprofit for their do-it-yourself projects, and what they thought of the newest storefront.

The research proved invaluable to Re-Use.

Overall, respondents said they were satisfied with their shopping experience. But there were issues that could use some attention, the students soon discovered.

“Many customers said the new store location took some getting used to,” they reported. That’s not all. Survey participants told them, frankly, that the parking and new store layout was somewhat difficult for them to navigate. They complained about a lack of tools on hand to use at the new store location. “Even long-time customers mentioned it took several visits to feel comfortable,” they reported.

The students’ presentation lays out in detail what the customers themselves were saying, thus informing Re-Use Hawai‘i of the likely reasons for the fall in foot traffic. In short, the 20-year old standard bearer of Hawai‘i’s circular economy had become something of a stranger to the island’s residents again.

The solution? Reintroduce themselves to the DIY crowd, a community in need of a centralized home or hub, one that Re-Use is well positioned to become.

Having identified the problem, Christopher, Cory, Kyla, Madelynne, and Tessa were in a good position to identify good solutions, as Professor Panow-Loui explained.

Her students were assigned “to help the client identify effective promotional strategies to increase foot traffic at a newly opened retail location, using data-driven insights to inform strategic marketing decisions,” she explained.

Their presentation lays out in careful detail proposed strategies that Re-Use should adopt.

They proposed Google Ads, a relatively inexpensive way to improve local customer engagement and re-establish their brand. They also recommended targeted marketing focused on those parts of the island where most of their customer base seems to be located, in particular Kaneohe, Kailua, and Honolulu.

Their boldest recommendation was that Re-Use Hawai‘i create a specialized Facebook page designed to organize the island’s community of DIY enthusiasts. Currently, there isn’t one. Thus, Re-Use Hawai‘i is in a unique position to organize that community and support it through the nonprofit business model that it’s already pioneering, the students discovered.

“It became evident that there were not very many DIY Hawaii Facebook groups despite demand,” the student marketing team noted. “Creating a Facebook group would allow Re-Use Hawai‘i to connect with the DIY community.”

Panow-Loui says that the five students’ market research and consulting initiative has become far more than just a class project. Re-Use is putting their recommendations into practice.

“The client indicated that their leadership team is using the report to actively guide their current marketing decisions,” she said.

The students’ marketing research results are professional, insightful, impressive, and useful.

Re-Use Hawai‘i has been creating jobs and saving Hawai‘i residents money for over 20 years, and thanks to Chaminade University students, they’ll continue their important work for many years to come.

As Panow-Loui put it, her students “completed a professional-grade marketing research project for a real community client, applying strategic marketing and consumer research methods,” and the client and Hawai‘i are grateful for their hard work.

Celebrating National Nutrition Month with Proclamation and Health Partners

Chaminade University brought together healthcare professionals, students, and community partners this evening on the steps of Clarence T.C. Ching Hall to celebrate National Nutrition Month and a formal proclamation issued by Gov. Josh Green recognizing the importance of nutrition in building healthier communities across Hawaiʻi.

The proclamation marked a collaborative moment between Chaminade University and local health leaders, including registered dietitians from across our state, nurses, and academic partners such as University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Attendees participated in an official group photo highlighting the shared commitment to advancing nutrition education, prevention, and whole-person health.

In Hawaiʻi, health is something built  together. Nutrition is foundational to that effort, reflecting our shared values of connection, stewardship, and caring for our communities across generations. This proclamation not only recognizes the work being done across Hawaiʻi but also reinforces our responsibility to educate, collaborate, and serve our communities,” said Dr. Melissa Cline, Program Director of Nutrition and Dietetics and Assistant Professor at Chaminade University of Honolulu.

The event underscores Chaminade University’s continued leadership in developing future healthcare professionals through its Nutrition & Dietetics programs. With a focus on interdisciplinary education and community engagement, the university is expanding opportunities for students to enter high-impact fields that address chronic disease, health equity, and preventive care.

Chaminade also recently announced the addition of its B.S. in Nutrition degree program. The program will go beyond human nutrition and explore social impacts of food, sports nutrition, current diet trends, behavioral nutrition, food science, and sustainable food systems.

National Nutrition Month®, observed each March, is an annual campaign that promotes informed food choices and healthy eating habits. Chaminade’s recognition reflects its growing role in supporting Hawaiʻi’s health workforce and fostering partnerships that extend beyond the classroom.

The celebration concluded with informal networking among attendees, reinforcing the importance of collaboration in advancing public health initiatives across the islands.

Doctoral Students Gain Practicum, Serve Community Needs

With practicum, internship, and dissertation requirements, hands-on learning and intensive scholarly inquiry are critical parts of Chaminade’s Doctor of Psychology in Clinical Psychology. 

And thanks to the University’s assessment center, graduate students can tackle some of that patient-focused work right on campus.

The Chaminade Assessment Center (CAC), launched in Fall 2023 gives PsyD students the chance to conduct psychological evaluations and fill a community need at the same time.

Dr. Sean Scanlan, director of the Clinical Psychology program at the University, said the CAC started off small but with a strong mission: To offer children and young adults psychological evaluations so they can get the right  treatment and educational accommodations.

“We had Chaminade PsyD students searching for practicum sites, and we saw community members needing these psychological assessments,” Scanlan said.

The center’s first clients were Chaminade students. From there, the clientele was expanded to include students referred from nearby private schools. Scanlan said the center was able to serve about 30 patients in their first year and almost 50 in their second.

Meanwhile, about three PsyD students at any one time work under a supervisor at the CAC. Scanlan said each client requires six to 15 hours of testing, which may include an interview and cognitive, personality, and learning assessments. From there, the psychologist and PsyD students synthesize the findings and issue a report with a diagnosis and recommendations.

“For our PsyD students, it’s a lot of work,” Scanlan said. “Because it’s not just the student preparing  to be with an actual client; they have to be prepared to sit and listen to real world problems, all the while trying to conceptualize a diagnosis.” 

But Scanlan said that this real-world, experiential learning experience is critical to their training, similar to that of trainees in the medical fields. He stressed, their clinical supervisor is always there to offer expertise and guidance. The supervisor also handles initial and critical client interactions so students can see practiced psychological evaluations and interactions at work.

Sammie Wilkinson, PsyD ’27 was one of Chaminade’s first PsyD students to serve at the center following its launch and has since put in additional time there as an administrative and assessment specialist. She summed up her practicum experience at the center in one word: “Rewarding.” 

“I learned about comprehensive psychological evaluations and assessment, which are major components of the role of a clinical psychologist and a focus of the PsyD program,” Wilkinson said.

“During my practicum, I was able to support both Chaminade students and clients in the community by conducting assessments, identifying and diagnosing various challenges that often impact academic performance and social functioning. Since completing my practicum, I have continued to support the CAC with scheduling and helping clients access services.”

Wilkinson explained that assessment and diagnosis help clients put a name to specific mental health challenges they’ve been experiencing and provide a starting point for healing and support. 

“It has been a privilege to work with clients from diverse backgrounds, which has deepened my appreciation for taking a comprehensive and thoughtful approach to assessment,” she said. “One of the biggest challenges is determining an accurate diagnosis, as many conditions can resemble one another. For example, trauma may present similarly to ADHD. Therefore, it is so important that we are thorough, take our time to rule out diagnoses and consider each client holistically.”  

She added that helping to broaden access to community-based services has been especially meaningful—and she’s excited about the center’s continued growth. “Psychological assessments are in high demand but often come with long waiting lists or high costs so it has been wonderful to be part of a center that provides these services in a timely and affordable way,” she said.

Scanlan noted that the center started to accept insurance in 2025.  In the program’s first two years, services were free and mostly referral-based. “I think we have the foundation now where we can begin to increase the number of PsyD students we can take and, as a result, the number of clients we can see,” Scanlan said. “We’re happy to be providing this service to the community.”

The center’s growth comes as Chaminade’s School of Education and Behavioral Sciences also launches another win-win program for aspiring mental health professionals and clients in need of services. In spring 2026, the University’s Marriage and Family Therapy program launched its new MFT Training Clinic, where graduate-level MFT therapists in training provide care under the supervision of licensed clinicians. Services are affordable and open to anyone on Oahu. 

“This clinic is a training ground for future marriage and family therapists,” said Blendine Hawkins, Ph.D., LMFT, director of the Doctor of Marriage and Family Therapy program at Chaminade. “By focusing on couples and families and embracing culturally humble, evidence-based approaches, the clinic is a meaningful new resource for our local community. We’re excited to share this development with those who value strengthening relationships and supporting families.”

Our Capacity For Hope

Dr. Carolyn Woo bowed her head in prayer before addressing the audience gathered in the Mystical Rose Oratory. Then she began simply: “I’m here to talk about hope.”

As the latest guest in the Marianist Lecture Series, Woo offered far more than reflection. Through personal experience and global perspective, she challenged listeners to recognize both their responsibility and their capacity for hope—even amid devastating news and uncertainty in the United States and around the world. Her speech aligns with the University’s commitment to community partnership and impact, one of the commitments of the Strategic Plan.

Drawing from her years of humanitarian leadership, Woo shared vivid stories and metaphors. She recounted how a Guatemalan corn farmer, facing the loss of his land, adapted by cultivating papaya and ultimately built a thriving livelihood. She described how Chinese Christians, confronted with the destruction of religious statues, responded creatively—crafting an image inspired by a folk legend of a peasant woman carrying a light on her head, symbolizing Mary and the Christ Child. In each example, adversity became an invitation to resilience and renewal.

“The biggest blessing of my work at Catholic Relief Services is realizing that problems can be solved in significant ways,” Woo said.

Woo served as president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services (CRS)—the official humanitarian agency of the U.S. Catholic community—from 2012 to 2016. Founded in 1943 by the Catholic bishops of the United States to assist survivors of World War II, CRS has grown to serve more than 200 million people in over 100 countries across five continents.

Before leading CRS, Woo built a distinguished career in higher education. From 1997 to 2011, she served as dean of the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. Under her leadership, the college earned national recognition, including top rankings for undergraduate business education and consistent distinction for excellence in ethics education and research.

Acknowledging today’s social and political tensions, Woo reminded the audience that history, too, has known periods of darkness, including World War II. Yet resilience, she emphasized, is the signature of hope. Drawing from the theological virtues, she explained that hope emerges when faith is joined with charity—when belief is put into action.

Her international impact has been widely recognized. In 2013, Foreign Policy named Woo among its 500 Most Powerful People for her global leadership, identifying her as one of 33 individuals considered “a force for good.” In 2015, she was one of five speakers at the Vatican press conference introducing Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudato Si’, and she later co-coordinated the Vatican’s Energy Transition Dialogues in 2018 and 2019.

Woo concluded with a call to personal responsibility: “Agency is the offspring of responsibility and capacity,” she said. When individuals recognize both, they can “build back better.”

At the close of the lecture, Woo was presented with the Mackey Award for Catholic Thought, named in honor of Fr. Robert Mackey, S.M., the first president of Chaminade University.

The Marianist Lecture Series—sponsored by The Marianist Center of Hawaiʻi, Chaminade University, and St. Louis School—fosters inclusive dialogue on Catholic thought and social responsibility. Gathered on the Kalaepōhaku campus in a spirit of community and shared purpose, attendees were reminded that hope is not passive optimism, but a call to resilient action.

Criminal Justice program awarded $1 million grant for new training institute

Legal and law enforcement professionals from throughout the Pacific region will soon enjoy additional training and support thanks to one of Hawai‘i’s senators in Washington.

Chaminade University’s Criminology and Criminal Justice program, part of the School of Education & Behavioral Sciences, is receiving a $1 million federal education grant. The money will be used to establish a new institute for training criminal justice professionals from the Pacific Islands, especially South Pacific island nations and territories.

The new institute will be housed at Chaminade.

Kelly Treece, Associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice and director of the program, said the name of this new institute hasn’t been decided yet. Whatever it’s called, the new institute will serve as “a hub for training and development for every aspect of the justice system,” Treece said.

“There’s nothing like it in the whole state and of course nothing like it in all the South Pacific.” Treece said the funds will be used to offset costs for professionals to travel to Hawai‘i to receive specialized training “so it makes it much more affordable.”

Chaminade University is home to the state’s oldest and largest criminal justice education program. The program already hosts students from Guam, Saipan, and other Pacific islands.

Chaminade University’s Criminology and Criminal Justice program is renowned throughout the Pacific.

The grant was secured as an earmark to a spending bill thanks to the legislative work of U.S. Senator Brian Schatz. Schatz has been serving in the Senate as Hawai‘i’s senator since 2012.

The $1 million grant is part of a larger appropriations package that Senator Schatz negotiated for the state as whole.

“Despite some challenges in Washington, we secured nearly $34 million in new earmark funding for Hawai‘i and expect more to come,” Schatz said in a statement. “These earmarks will give local non-profits and infrastructure projects more resources to serve communities across Hawai‘i.”

His office said additional earmarked funds for the state could be announced within weeks.