Chaminade University of Honolulu

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Service in Action, A Peace Corps Volunteer’s Story

“When I’m older, I want to join the Peace Corps.”

Her uncle’s stories of the Peace Corps, living in a faraway place called Togo (West Africa) among people very different from him yet who became lifelong friends, had captured the imagination of Alice Potter ’18, a precocious 4-year-old. It was in her blood. 

Potter and her family grew up in California while her father worked as a software engineer, and they also spent years living abroad, in Italy, Germany and France. Returning to the United States for college was never part of Potter’s plan; however, her mother did an internet search for colleges in the U.S. “with a good record of acceptance and graduation rates,” and Chaminade University of Honolulu popped up. The positive reviews about Chaminade’s student-to-faculty ratio, affordable tuition, overall quality, coupled with its location and Hawai‘i’s mild weather, all sounded very appealing. Her mother told her that if she got in, she would be going to the Marianist university. And to Potter’s surprise, the acceptance letter came. She was anxious to be going back to the U.S. and of all places the most remote 50th state.

There’s no place like Hawai‘i

Intimidated at first, she soon made new friends and began thriving in Chaminade’s customized learning experience. She also shared its values of serving the community by volunteering at the  Waikīkī Aquarium. Aside from her studies, Potter also fell in love with Hawai‘i’s marine life and flora and enjoyed learning about the islands’ rich history. “Never before had I encountered a place so profoundly connected to its people like in Hawai‘i,” she says.

Living her dream of joining the Peace Corps
Alice Potter '18 with her counterpart in the Peace Corps
Alice with her counterpart Mrs. Irma

Potter graduated with a bachelor’s in communication degree with an environmental studies minor in 2018. At age 23, ready for a new adventure, she jumped at the opportunity to live her dream and join the Peace Corps. Because she spoke conversational French, Potter had hoped to be assigned to Africa specifically in Senegal; however, there was an opening to teach English in Southeast Asia. She had lived in a variety of places, yet she remembers experiencing culture shock when arriving in Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country with more than 267 million people with a Muslim majority. She was immediately struck by the language barrier and the lack of personal space in this bustling yet conservative, spiritual society.

The Peace Corps helps new volunteers acclimate to their new country through an intensive two to three months Pre-Service Training (PST) program. Potter explains this included language lessons, cultural classes, as well as learning about Peace Corps procedures and the country’s rules and local customs, providing the skills and knowledge you need to thrive on your own. During this time, she lived with the first of three host families. 

“My host family during PST was especially kind, patient, helpful and accepting, and I became very close to them,” Potter says. Her host family warmly welcomed her into their home, introducing Potter to many delicious Indonesian dishes, such as sate (marinated meat skewers), cap cai (stir-fried vegetables sometimes mixed with meat), nasi goring (fried rice) and rawon (beef soup), which became her favorite. Potter was relieved that one of her host twin sisters, Dhea, spoke English, helping her with the transition and translating for her twin, Adhe, and their parents. 

Once her assignment began, Potter lived with two other host families: a single mother with grown children, a driven career woman who worked as a caterer for weddings and funerals, as well as a seamstress and a make-up artist; and a young couple who introduced her to carp rearing, bird catching and coffee time. A neighboring family acted as her “mom and dad” when Potter needed adult assistance and they took her on day trips.

Teaching is learning

Potter was assigned to a vocational training high school near East Java, where she taught English to 15 to 18-year-old students, 85 percent of them male and the rest female. School was held seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with extracurricular activities held on Saturdays. Potter says she taught two or three classes each day; class periods were two hours long for sophomores and juniors and one hour for seniors. The school offered career paths for students in fields such as auto mechanics, electrical work, computer work and broadcasting.

Alice Potter '18 with her students while in the Peace Corps

“Most of the time my students called me ‘Mister,’ or ‘mbak’ or ‘kak,’ which is equivalent to saying young miss or older sibling,” explains Potter. “I was the youngest teacher at the school,” she adds.

Halfway through her service, Potter was riding her bicycle back to school after a lunch break when she was hit by a motorcycle from behind. “Even though I was wearing a helmet, I had a pretty serious concussion. A piece of asphalt got inside one of the helmet vents and cut my scalp,” she says. “I also had cuts on my upper lip, under my eye and the edge of my forehead and some gashes along the right side of my face, arms and legs. Fortunately, I only needed stitches,” she adds.

The Peace Corps kept her in the capital for a few weeks for regular check-ups at the hospital. When she returned to school, she smiles as she remembers how the entire community—her host family, students and teachers—all offered to drive her home so she wouldn’t have to walk. “Student after student kept begging me to ride home with them,” she says with a laugh. The community was close-knit, reminding her of her ‘ohana at Chaminade. 

“The insight I gained from the students was invaluable,” she readily admits. As a teacher’s assistant, Potter adds she learned so much more from her students than she could have ever imagined. “My students taught me patience and acceptance. They also taught me to acknowledge the cultural differences of education in Indonesia versus in the U.S. and that young adults, no matter where you are in the world, want to be heard. It was amazing to watch them blossom,” Potter says. Their hospitality and intelligence impressed her day in and day out.

Potter learned to speak English, French, Italian and German while growing up and could now count Bahasa Indonesian as her fifth language. 

A lasting impact
Alice Potter '18 with her fellow faculty members while in the Peace Corps

The Peace Corps profoundly changed Potter’s life. She learned the importance of keeping an open mind and welcoming others from different backgrounds with appreciation and understanding. While the Peace Corps may not be for everyone, Potter believes everyone could benefit from broadening their perspective by experiencing other cultures. “Immersing yourself in a different country with a foreign language and culture will humble you, and you’ll learn so much about yourself,” she confesses. “The Peace Corps was a beautiful, eye-opening experience that made a lasting impact,” she adds.

Potter keeps in touch with her first host family and hopes to go back to Indonesia as soon as it’s safe to do so. Saya meninggalkan sesuatu istimewa. “I left behind something special,” she translates.

What’s next?

After her 27-month stint in the Peace Corps, Potter moved back to California. Today, she continues to serve youth by teaching part-time in an after-school program. What’s next for Potter? She hopes to put her communication degree to use and strive toward her next goal of becoming a producer or film director.

Coming Full Circle

Kristine Stebbins ‘87 remembers completing a long list of internships as a Communication undergraduate at Chaminade, including the one that would launch her whirlwind career and eventually bring her back to the islands for an executive role created expressly for her.

Kristine Stebbins '87, senior vice president and director of digital experience innovation and technology at Bank of Hawai'i

Stebbins was recently named senior vice president and director of digital experience innovation and technology at Bank of Hawai’i. The position is an opportunity for the longtime marketing entrepreneur—who has been breaking ground in the industry for decades—to come full circle, returning to the place where she met her husband, attended college and began to build her marketing philosophy.

She described her work at Bank of Hawai’i as “one of those awesome roles.”

“I have the opportunity to look five years down the line at the ways we’re planning to build these amazing digital experiences,” she said, adding that digital innovation is an exciting and growing area of the banking sector that has been put on a fast-track because of the pandemic. “Today when you’re looking at marketing in particular, you need to think of yourself as a marketing technologist.”

Stebbins said her projects at Bank of Hawai’i have allowed her to bring her marketing and digital innovation expertise to bear to create excellent digital customer experiences. Stebbins joined Bank of Hawai’i full-time after previously serving as a consultant for the company, including on a key digital transformation project that helped put the institution on the right footing for the pandemic.

In other words, she was designing for the future.

And that was a role she was completely comfortable with. After all, Stebbins likes to say the only constant in marketing is change. Every five years or so, there’s a big disruption in the industry—the kind of seismic shifts that companies can learn to dread. Great marketing strategy, she says, is about harnessing those moments and using them to create new opportunities to reach customers.

“The pandemic has been a moment where it’s basically made digital interactions in banking a requirement,” she said. “So we’re trying to build out digital experiences that bring humans together.”

Her message to young marketing professionals is one she learned early on, too, including as a Chaminade student: Be ready for those moments of disruption by embracing adaptability and change.

A start in Hawai’i—and at Chaminade
Kristing Stebbins '87 at her Chaminade graduation

Indeed, change has defined some of the biggest moments in her life.

Stebbins secured her first position in marketing with an internship, which she acquired through Chaminade, at top-rated advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather. She worked in their Honolulu office and got hired shortly after graduation. It was a dream come true.

It was also far from the life she’d imagined for herself just a few years earlier.

Stebbins had first come to Hawai’i with no intention of staying. She was visiting for the summer to spend time with her brother, who was in the Navy. Stebbins would take the bus into town and then back to Makakilo. And it was at a bus stop at Ala Moana Center that she met her future husband.

Kristine Stebbins '87 with her husband John Stebbins

She’d asked him for directions and the two ended up spending the day together. And then summer together. When it came time to head back home to Texas, she did—and he followed. John Stebbins ended up driving her to the East Coast to drop her off at college and then going back to the islands.

A semester later, it was Kristine Stebbins who was knocking on his door. She’d transferred to Chaminade University and he enrolled a short time later. They were both taking classes together and would graduate within a year of one another. They married in 1988 at Seabury Hall on Maui.

Stebbins says she is still grateful to have transferred to Chaminade, and not just to be closer to her husband-to-be. She said Chaminade offered a more individualized experience and gave her access to opportunities she wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else. She counts her experiences at the University as central to setting her up for success and can still rattle off the names of some of the professors who served as her Chaminade mentors, including Communications Professor Dr. Mary Jude Yablonsky.

In addition to an internship at Ogilvy & Mather, Stebbins also worked at Chaminade’s student newspaper and the radio station and secured an internship at Hawai’i Public Television. She says of her mentors at Chaminade, “Obviously, they stuck with me.” Speaking to Chaminade Magazine, she added, “They were so supportive. They really guided me and encouraged me to get that real-life experience.”

Kristine Stebbins '87 with Dr. Mary Jude Yablonsky
Kristine Stebbins ’87 with Dr. Mary Jude Yablonsky

Experience, she said, that was invaluable. It gave her an opportunity to apply what she’d learned in classrooms in a real-world setting—doing everything paid employees were doing—and she was hooked.

After graduation, Stebbins and her husband stayed in Hawai’i for several years, building their careers.

And then they headed to the mainland, moving to new cities—San Francisco, New York City, Seattle—as new opportunities emerged. Stebbins worked as global account director for IBM, senior marketing manager at Microsoft, and as a marketing consultant to some of the world’s biggest brands.

She also started her own marketing company, which she later sold.

All the while, the two maintained a strong connection to Hawai’i, especially after their daughter was born. (She’s now a junior in high school.) John Stebbins still has family in the islands, and this is where they one day saw themselves returning. They didn’t think it would be quite so soon, Stebbins said.

But then, as she often says, embrace change—because it’s inevitable.

During the pandemic, Stebbins started to assess her life and her work. She realized she’d been doing the work she wanted to do already, with Bank of Hawai’i. Fast forward several months and they were offering her a position, a new digital innovation role at the company created just for her.

She joined the bank in September, taking the first step in transitioning her family back to Hawai’i.

‘The world is definitely changing’

In addition to a passion for marketing, Stebbins is committed to helping the next generation. She believes strongly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) education programs, especially those targeted at young girls. She’s even coached a Robotics team for the Girl Scouts.

Stebbins is also proud to work for a Hawai’i company with a strong commitment to diversity—and no shortage of women in executive positions. Things weren’t always that way in executive suites, she said, and in some places they still aren’t. In fact, Stebbins recalls that when she first started out at Ogilvy & Mather she couldn’t speak at meetings with major clients even when she was a topic’s expert.

“You laugh now because it’s so outrageous but is indicative of the experience in terms of how far we’ve come,” she said, adding that there have been many times in which she was the only woman in a boardroom. Her advice if they underestimate you: Let them—so you can prove them wrong.

“Quite frankly, I’m pretty smart and I know what I’m talking about,” she said, adding young women entering the business now may not face all the same barriers she faced but will undoubtedly face some of them. “You need to be confident in your abilities. It’s all a matter of being true to who you are.”

Plus, she added, “The good news is the world is definitely changing.”

And Stebbins is all in for that.

Radio CUH Receives Grant

Student Ronni Gallegos in the Radio CUH studio

It’s a place for students to find their voice. For poets to slam, DJs to jam and loyal listeners to tune in.

In November 2011, Radio CUH started streaming 24/7 thanks to a handful of passionate faculty members and students who understood the value of an independent college radio station. Nearly 10 years later, the station is still going strong, broadcasting to listeners in Hawaii and around the globe.

And now the station is also getting some national recognition.

The College Radio Foundation recently named Radio CUH as a recipient of its Bret Grant Award, designed to help support college radio programming. The $2,000 grant can be used for equipment, licensing, continuing education or other expenses.

Tom Galli, a senior lecturer in Communication at Chaminade, helps oversee the radio station’s management. He said Radio CUH was the brainchild of Communications Professor Cliff Bieberly. “The technology to do streaming music was really ramping up. An online-only radio station was a possibility,” Galli said. “It was also something that our students were in interested in and would bring up.”

After a few tests, Radio CUH was officially launched on November 15, 2011.

The initial music library consisted of a few professors’ CD collections. At first, just a few students participated. Fast forward a decade, and Radio CUH has a library of over 100,000 songs and is getting an average of 500 new songs a week from music distributors. It’s also gained a loyal following, with fans tuning in from as far away as Nevada and Micronesia to hear DJs take to the microphone.

Galli described the station’s programming as “eclectic.”

Professor Tom Galli in Radio CUH

“Students play what they want. We have a wide range of genres, much of it very new,” he said, in a recent interview. “Part of the promise of college radio is that there’s no commercial pressure so the idea of adhering to consistency of programming is somewhat anathema to the ideal.”

In addition to music, Radio CUH has teamed up with professors and departments on special projects.

Every year, for example, the station partners with the English department to stream a slam poetry festival presented by Chaminade and Kaimuki High students. Several professors have also worked with the station on special pre-recorded readings of poetry or personal essays exploring certain topics.

Galli said the number of student DJs fluctuates each semester.

Students can participate in their free time or learn there as part of a three-credit elective (COM361). Prospective DJs can expect hands-on training on the system and a test to ensure they understand the responsibilities and liabilities the radio station is subject to. COM361 is offered every semester.

“College radio is supposed to be an alternative to commercial radio and our DJs embody that,” Galli said. The station’s DJs, he added, “can practice skills to make them more effective presenters, expand their musical horizons, record demo reels if they seek a career in broadcasting, and have a good time.”

Mulatta—Not So Tragic

To commemorate Black History Month, Chaminade English Professor Dr. Allison Francis recently collaborated with Karla Brundage, an adjunct professor at the university, to present a thought-provoking virtual renshi poetry reading session entitled, “Mulatta—Not So Tragic?”

Mulatta—Not So Tragic Poetry Reading - Allison Paynter

As part of the event, Francis and Brundage also engaged in a conversation with participants on the history of “mulatta”—which they described as a controversial label “traditionally used to signify progeny of African and European parents.” In unpacking the term and its history, the two also touched on their own life experiences and those of family members seeking to grapple with identity and race.

Renshi poetry is also known as “linked poetry.” It’s a contemporary form of verse that relies on collaboration to uncover new understandings of the world and explore shared themes. Collaborators connect their poems by repeating the last line of the previous author’s work.

Francis and Brundage said renshi poetry was uniquely equipped to allow them to explore the “sometimes devastating and celebratory dynamics of being bi-racial women in the 21st century.” Brundage noted that renshi poetry doesn’t just connect verses, it links the poet collaborators.

Mulatta—Not So Tragic Poetry Reading - Karala Brundage

She said the two started examining the theme of “being mulatta or being mixed” about a year ago.

It was Francis who started the spoken word performance of their poem, “We Feel the Thunder.”

“Such a brave woman,” the poem begins, “Rolling words through our heads like boulders.”

Following the reading, Francis and Brundage delivered a joint presentation to further explore the themes of “being mulatta.” Francis noted that Hawai’i presents unique—and refreshing—conversations about “hapa” identity, but stressed it is not a place devoid of racism or discrimination.

“I think there is a space that many of us can create here living in the islands that allows for us to embrace both worlds and not have to entirely dismiss one or the other,” Francis said, as she showed a photo of her daughter and explained she grew up in Hawai’i. “But,” Francis added, “that might just be a bubble we created for her and it’s something we continue to explore in this poetry.”

Francis teaches and conducts research across a range of topics, including Victorian and Scottish literature, African-American and Caribbean Women’s literature from the 19th century, and women’s literature with a focus on science fiction and fantasy. She has published extensively, is a performance poet and playwright, and is currently collaborating on a scholarly collection on Scottish literature.

Brundage publishes poetry, short stories, and critical essays. In 2020, her poem “Alabama Dirt” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She holds a Master’s in Fine Arts in Poetry from Mills College and is currently working to co-create a Hawaii-based publishing company, Pacific Raven Press.

Watch their full renshi poetry reading and related presentation below.

Leader at the Bottom of an Inverted Pyramid

Nothing can quite prepare you for the kind of unparalleled economic crisis the world saw as the coronavirus shut down so many aspects of daily life, locking down cities, shuttering stores and bringing tourism to a standstill. But there’s no doubt Anthony Shipp, MBA ‘19 was more prepared than most.

Anthony Shipp, MBA '19 (President and CEO of M. Dyer Global)

Shipp is a Marine veteran who served three combat tours in the Middle East—so he knows a little something about overcoming adversity. During the Great Recession, he was a business owner who saw revenues plummet and the economy go topsy-turvy—so he knows about the importance of preparing for a rainy day, too. And going into the pandemic, as president and CEO of M. Dyer Global, Shipp also knew he’d be relying on his decades of experience in logistics, IT and managing through crisis.

That doesn’t mean 2020 was smooth sailing for Shipp or his logistics, freight forwarding and international relocation company, by any stretch. But he’s grateful to have ended the year in a strong position, even while the industry—and many of his competitors—suffered major losses.

Anthony Shipp, MBA '19 (President and CEO of M. Dyer Global) with his crew

And he attributes his successes to understanding the importance of acting quickly, taking a few calculated risks and staying true to his servant leadership style. He also takes lifelong learning seriously and says the mentor and peer relationships he built throughout his career, including as a graduate student at Chaminade, have helped him stay on top of—or in front of—market trends.

“Nobody would have been able to predict this—everything that’s happened,” Shipp said, in a recent interview with Chaminade Magazine, adding that remaining adaptable and nimble have proven essential to surviving as the economy only now starts a slow and painstaking recovery process.

“As a business leader, you need to be prepared for change at all times.”

In fact, when the pandemic first started, Shipp turned his office into a “war room,” gathering his senior leaders to prioritize top projects and prepare for the rocky days ahead. One lesson he learned during the Great Recession, which was solidified in Chaminade’s MBA program, was a seemingly simple one: “cash is king.” So in those early days of the pandemic, he did everything he could to free up cash in his company and prepare for the worst. It was the right move, his first of many amid the crisis.

Weathering the crisis

Shipp likes to say that he’s never really taken a direct route to anything before.

Not to logistics. Not to leadership. Not even to Hawai’i.

Straight out of high school, at just 17 years old, he enrolled in the Marines and later completed his undergraduate degree in computer science at Chapman University. After leaving active duty, he worked in IT then moved to operations and eventually worked his way up to management. But he had to put his career on hold several times to serve his country. While in the reserves, he got called to active duty three times, serving two combat tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan before leaving the service.

That was in 2006, the same year Shipp designed to open his own trucking and logistics business.

“I had big dreams and aspirations,” he said, and they were quickly tempered by the 2008 economic crash. Shipp said he nearly lost his business in the downturn, but was able to keep it afloat and then see it become profitable again as the economy improved. He ended up selling the business around 2010.

It was about that time that he took a well-deserved sabbatical to Hawai’i, getting his first taste of the islands and the aloha spirit. Two years later, he would move to the state permanently—and quickly start to learn about the unique logistical and regulatory challenges Hawai’i companies face.

He became first the chief technology officer and then the chief commercial officer at Hawai’i Transfer Company, Ltd., a family-owned transportation services business. He was also able to revolutionize their operations, bringing in new efficiencies and successfully wooing big national accounts.

Opportunity knocks

Shipp was happy where he was, but opportunity came knocking on his door. An executive search firm sought him out to see if he was interested in taking the helm at M. Dyer. It was an opportunity he couldn’t turn down. And so in August 2017, he took over as the company’s president and CEO.

Anthony Shipp, MBA '19 (President and CEO of M. Dyer Global) with his crew

About that same time, Shipp was just starting his Master of Business Administration program at Chaminade. “I was in my early 40s and I was coming into a program traditionally for students to learn and gain knowledge,” he said. “I was approaching it from a different student perspective.” And it was a perfect fit.

Shipp said Chaminade’s MBA allowed him to build on his foundation of knowledge and focus on academic areas where he wasn’t quite as strong, including finance. Shipp also found great value in the Hogan Entrepreneurial Program, hearing first-hand from Hawai’i executives about how they approach leadership, prepare for market ups and downs and set their companies up for successful futures.

Anthony Shipp, MBA 19 at his Chaminade University graduation

“I really loved it because I got to learn from them,” he said, adding he was able to build relationships with those entrepreneurs—along with professors in the program—that remain strong today. “I captured an enormous amount of knowledge and know-how from their perspective.”

That knowledge helped guide Shipp as he took his first steps as M. Dyer’s CEO, focusing first on learning everything he could about the business he now led and reshaping its culture from one in which employees worked in silos to one in which they felt like they were part of a team.

When 2020 started, Shipp was hitting his stride and preparing to craft a strategic vision for a quickly-evolving industry. And then, seemingly overnight, everything seemed to change. Relying on his experiences, Shipp knew two things: he had to prepare for the worst—and now.

So he gathered up his senior leaders to develop key strategies for weathering the crisis.

And in the weeks and months that followed, Shipp continued to remain out in front of the markets, doing everything he could to retain customers, attract new business and steel the company for more economic pain. One project that was put on a fast track: a plan to move to paperless transactions.

Before the pandemic, the company had a two-year timeline to become paperless to improve the customer experience and streamline the company’s processes. Because of the pandemic, with in-person transactions severely limited, the project was finished in months.

In business, Shipp said, “you have to be nimble. Be prepared that things are going to happen quickly.”

‘I’m here to serve everybody’

As a leader, Shipp imagines himself at the bottom of an inverted pyramid.

M.Dyer and Global company photo

It’s a servant leadership approach in which Shipp serves as a guide, a mentor, a motivator and a relationship builder. “I sit at the bottom and I’m here to serve everybody,” Shipp said, adding that in working with his leadership and broader team he hammers out a project target and a timeline and then asks, “What do you need from me? How can I support you? How can I encourage and motivate you?”

Approaching leadership this way, he says, helps bolster empowerment and accountability. Employees know they can make mistakes, as long as they learn from them, in pursuit of shared business goals. They also see themselves as subject matter experts, which means they’re more likely to bring new and innovative ideas to the table and look for efficiencies across departments and the company.

Shipp, who is a Hogan Entrepreneur, says he frequently offers three pieces of advice to the next generation of business professionals: while in school, develop lifelong mentor relationships because good counsel is never overrated; never stop learning; and know the one constant in life is change.

“You’ve definitely got to be a lifelong learner,” said Shipp. “Don’t just encapsulate what you learn at school and think that it stops there. It sets the foundation, but you should constantly have this thirst to learn.” After all, Shipp enrolled in post-graduate studies in supply chain management at MIT after graduating with his MBA from Chaminade. And in September 2020, he completed an executive education program in freight transportation and logistics from Northwestern University.

As for professional relationships, those also come in handy in hiring decisions.

Anthony Shipp, MBA 19 with his employees

Shipp said he first met his vice president of business administration, Jana Paz, when the two were in Chaminade’s MBA program. (She graduated in 2018.) Shipp likes to say the company has a “little nucleus of Chaminade alum”—plus more than a few parents who have sent their children to the university.

That’s linked to M. Dyer’s identity, Shipp said, as a local business with a global reach. Shipp said he’s sought to ensure the aloha spirit and Hawai’i’s community-oriented values are baked right into M. Dyer’s brand. “We have this element of a family within our company’s soul,” Shipp said.

As a servant leader—situated at the bottom of that inverted pyramid—Shipp doesn’t only expect his company to embody the aloha spirit. He holds himself to the same standard. “Here in Hawai’i, the bigger picture is at the community level. We have to have the highest level of integrity of trust,” he said.

And from his experience, the rest will follow.

New Online School Counseling Program for Neighbor Islanders

Say you’ve just graduated on one of the neighbor islands with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. You want to get a master’s degree next, so you can become a school counselor and make a positive difference to your community’s students and their families—but there’s no appropriate master’s program on your island. Chaminade University is the only Hawai‘i university that offers a Master of Science in Counseling Psychology (MSCP) program with a concentration in School Counseling. You’d have to quit your job and relocate to O‘ahu for two-and-a-half years.

Or rather, that would have been your only choice last year.

Starting this spring semester, exclusively for neighbor island students, Chaminade will offer an online version of its Master of Science degree in Counseling Psychology (MSCP) with the School Counseling concentration. It solves two problems—not only that of neighbor island student demand but also the state’s need for more trained school counselors throughout Hawai‘i.

Dr. Darren Iwamoto, clinical director of School Counseling in Chaminade’s School of Education and Behavioral Sciences, says neighbor island students have always been interested in the MSCP program, and it’s always been hard for the school to meet that need because administrators assumed they needed to teach it in person. Pre-COVID-19, they had started working on a plan to send instructors to Maui and Hawai‘i Island to offer the MSCP program there.

But then came the pandemic, and with it, of course, remote learning. Iwamoto says the university discovered something surprising.

“Our faculty found they can be just as effective at teaching using Zoom and other kinds of video conferencing,” he says. He said they found online education still provided personalized learning and allowed students to connect with one another. “Our instructors found that even when they couldn’t teach in person, they were successfully getting that human interaction over video. It was working.”

The department conducted a needs assessment to see if there was current demand for the MSCP program among neighbor island students, and it came back positive. So they decided to start an online program specifically for neighbor island students.

While the School Counseling focus starts this spring, Chaminade will begin offering online versions of the other two Counseling Psychology concentrations, Mental Health and Marriage and Family, in the fall. Once all three concentrations are offered this fall, they will be available to students located anywhere.

“At that point, we’ll be running a complete MSCP online program alongside the in-person program,” says Iwamoto. “So students won’t have to fly to O‘ahu. Although they can participate in the in-person commencement.”

The online, 60-credit-hour, cohorted School Counseling program is taught in four 10-week terms per year. The year-round program, geared toward working professionals, can be completed in 30 months.

Upon completing the program, students not only receive a master’s in counseling psychology but are also eligible for a provisional K-12 counseling license and to be hired as a school counselor. “Because they’re trained in school counseling in general, they will also have the skillset and knowledge to work as a counselor in our private and charter schools,” says Iwamoto.

He says that while school counselors have always been crucial, that need has been even more significant since the COVID-19 pandemic began a year ago. He says stress, anxiety, and mood challenges, which were already high, have increased with COVID.

“What we’re finding is that the lack of social connection has probably played the biggest role in altering people’s moods,” he says. “That’s where counselors can really help, especially in regards to social-emotional learning and helping students, especially the younger ones, learn how to regulate their emotions better.”

As the school developed its MS in Counseling Psychology program, it carefully considered the university’s Marianist values, including the importance of providing an integral quality education. The program was specifically designed with an “integral quality education” in mind by ensuring it educates the whole person. It does this by not only focusing on academics. “We also educate them in terms of their personal and social development, and spiritually, in terms of getting them in tune with who they are and their value systems, ethics, and morals,” says Iwamoto.

“When students go on to become school counselors, they pass those same values on to the community,” he says. “They support students and their families and make a positive difference in their lives.”

The program also meets the Chaminade value of educating for adaptation and change. “That’s really what all this is about,” says Iwamoto. “Educating students to improve on their social-emotional skills is actually educating them for adaptation and change, for that ability to adapt and be flexible. That’s really been a theme with COVID, and so that’s what we’re promoting.”

The Master of Science in Counseling Psychology program is part of Chaminade’s School of Education and Behavioral Sciences. Dr. Dale Fryxell, Dean of the School of Education and Behavioral Sciences, says there’s long been a need for more trained school counselors, who play such an essential role in helping students, on the neighbor islands. “This program will really help our neighbor island students get the training they need to help students in their own communities with mental health and other issues.”

“School counselors really do help mold the future by emphasizing the importance of education and promoting students’ success,” agrees Dr. Lynn Babington, Chaminade University president.

“We’re so glad to be able to take the MSCP school counseling program online,” she says. “There’s a need on the neighbor islands, and when more of our neighbor island students become licensed school counseling professionals, they will truly be able to make a powerful difference in students’ lives.”

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