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In the sixth episode of the third season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Debra A. Schwinn, President of Palm Beach Atlantic University. Schwinn opens by discussing the current state of medical education. As a physician scientist who served in several different capacities over the course of her career, Schwinn encourages the next generation of physicians to persist in their calling with hope and dexterity. With those ends in mind, she explains that the Christian liberal arts are amongst the best ways to cultivate such qualities. Schwinn then transitions to her own calling, initially as a concert violinist but eventually to chemistry and to anesthesiology. Such a commitment led her to serve in larger ways as someone called to exercise administrative insights, culminating as dean of the school of medicine at the University of Iowa. When the time came to make a transition, Schwinn found herself called to serve as president of Palm Beach Atlantic University (PBA). While her tenure began during Covid, Schwinn soon found that the rapid growth West Palm Beach was experiencing was also creating opportunities for PBA students in the form of internships, PBA’s Workship program, and PBA’s new business school. Such rapid growth, however, has also meant PBA leaders need to think in disciplined yet creative ways about how they continue to foster the university’s relationship with the Church.
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Deborah A. Schwinn, Professor of Health Science and President of Palm Beach Atlantic University. Thank you for joining us.
You’ve commented that serving as president of a Christian liberal arts university is an example of how a career as a physician scientist prepares one for leadership inside and outside of medicine.
As a physician scientist and as a president, what is your assessment then of the quality of preparation future physicians are presently receiving during their undergraduate years on our campuses?
Debra A. Schwinn: Well, Todd, that’s a two part question, so I’ll answer both parts. First of all, I get a question a lot, how did you go from being a physician to being a president of a Christian university? And I say, well, it’s not quite that direct. I was in academics my whole career, that’s what a physician scientist means. It means that I ran a research lab, did publishing, got federal funding to run the lab, and I taught in a medical school and I gave anesthesia for heart surgery. So that’s my clinical specialty.
In academics, typically you would become a chair of a large department, and in my case, I became dean of the medical school at University of Iowa. And that’s a lot like being a college president. You come in every day with a schedule that you think you’re going to do and then things pop up, and the day is always unique. Every single one of them.
Going to the second part of your question, how are we preparing physicians today, particularly when you think about pre-med students? Well, I would say, first of all, being a physician is really an honor and you’re put in a place where you can help people at their most vulnerable point in life often. And as an anesthesiologist, I saw that because people are very scared before they go into surgery, particularly heart or lung surgery. And you have about 10 minutes as an anesthesiologist to create a bond of trust before you actually have them go to sleep. And they put their lives in your hands during this operation while the surgeons are operating, the anesthesiologist is keeping you alive.
And so I think it’s really critical when you’re a physician, particularly a physician scientist, that you earn that trust. And part of that is knowing your craft. So when you’re an undergrad being very careful to be good in science and in your classes in general is important, but science isn’t enough. Yes, you have to shadow and get clinical hours, but I think it’s far more important to have a broader education, histories, humanity, ethics. You want to be able to think big and think across disciplines, not just your major.
Because the biggest questions in science and in our world today, need to have input from many different people. And that’s true in my career in academics for sure. So that would be my answer, really have a broad based education. And a Christian liberal arts university is a great place to do that because it’s truly whole person education. It’s your mind, your heart, and your soul, and that does truly prepare you for the future.
Todd Ream: Over the course of your career then in what ways, if any, has the preparation of future physicians changed perhaps for the better, and then maybe in some ways for the worse?
Debra A. Schwinn: You know, science and just knowledge in general is exploding exponentially. And so it’s hard to keep up with that. And as a result, sometimes people focus too narrowly. I just finished telling you how important it is to stay broad and have context of history and ethics, et cetera. But the volume sometimes forces people to be thinking more narrowly.
Fortunately, we get many different ways in life that we can speed up that process. So the most recent example that is with AI. So now you don’t have to have every single piece of knowledge in your head memorized. You can appropriately and ethically use tools, your iPhone, Google, AI, to pull up data. But then it’s really important that you have integrity and you are able to synthesize that data.
So I think, as we go through each of the decades of medical education, we’ve learned how to use those techniques well, how to prepare students to use them in their practices, but more importantly to be able to be lifelong learners because medicine is not going to stop the day they graduate from medical school. And I would say that is a transferable skill to many, many other professions. At a Christian university, when you exit with a business major, you’re going to need to keep learning the rest of your career, or as a nurse, or as even an English teacher, you have to keep learning.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Are there any particular experiences that you would strongly encourage an undergraduate who is expressing a calling to serving as a physician that they have during those undergraduate years that can shape some of these sorts of sensibilities that you’re talking about?
Debra A. Schwinn: Sure. You know, PBA is a bit unique in having a program called Workship, which is community service as a form of worship, and every one of our students does free community service for 45 hours every single year. For 180 hours total in order to graduate. And frankly, in those moments of serving others, you begin over time to understand that you’re receiving more than you’re giving. There is no better training for medicine or any of our giving professions, ministry, teaching, medicine than our Workship program.
So I would say get yourself into a place where you’re serving others and where you’re volunteering. Yes, you need experiences in whatever the discipline is you’re going to go in. And whether you have an internship in business or an intern, you get an experience with an internist in medicine and follow them along. Those are all good. But I actually think serving others is a rock solid foundation.
And as a Christian university understanding that that’s really what Christ did, standing on the rock of Christ in terms of what He was teaching. And once you come to have Him as your Lord and Savior, then saying, how can I give to others? Because those are the two biggest commandments, honor God and honor your neighbor.
Todd Ream: For these future physicians then what insights would you offer them concerning the opportunities and challenges that they may face over their careers as physicians? What is the landscape going to look like as best you could discern for them?
Debra A. Schwinn: Well, I would say today, be flexible because medicine is changing very rapidly. Our whole culture and the world is changing rapidly. But in medicine, you used to be able to do independent practice and now there are big systems and increasingly those systems are getting even bigger to be mega systems.
So if you’re going to be a clinician, you need to be wise about aligning what you love with what the system needs, but I was a physician scientist, and so I would say even though there’s always ups and downs federally in terms of funding research, don’t let that discourage you because the best and the brightest are still, once you get an education in medicine and an education in science, you are uniquely placed to be able to ask some of the most important questions in the planet.
For example, in anesthesiology, we could ask questions like, what is consciousness? What is sleep? When are you asleep? What is the transition between acute and chronic pain? How can we intervene to help people? What are the molecular tools within the cell for a particular disease? How can we uniquely intervene? It’s really an exciting world and a lot of that is true across many disciplines, but medicine is such a privileged place where you can do both clinical and science at the highest level. So I would just be encouraging. Don’t let others discourage you and stay flexible.
Todd Ream: Thank you. You’ve talked about the value of a liberal arts education and a broad based undergraduate experience. You’ve also talked about commitments to serving others. In order to prepare themselves to be then flexible for what then may come, what’s the best advice you can offer?
Debra A. Schwinn: You know, I think the Christian walk itself, if done with humility, openness, and honesty, is one of the best preparations. Because once we become a Christian and understand, as I said earlier, really the saving grace of Jesus Christ, once we understand that, that’s just the beginning of our journey the whole journey called sanctification, which lasts all of our life, is really a deepening of our faith, opening ourselves more and more to God and to what He wants and not necessarily what our ego wants.
And so I think being very intentional about practices that open ourselves to God, allow us to really be the best, you can say clinician, you can say physician scientists, but frankly, any discipline you go in, it allows you to be the light on the hill for Christ in your profession. So I really think that that’s the best advice. Any other advice I give you would be human advice and so.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to transition now to asking you about your own discernment especially as you then began to discern you might be called to this path to serve as a physician. But you earned an undergraduate degree in chemistry from the College of Worcester and then a medical degree from Stanford University.
At what point did you discern the practice of medicine would play a critical role in how you understood your vocation?
Debra A. Schwinn: You know, some people grow up thinking they’re going to be a physician or a mechanic or an artist. I grew up thinking I was going to be a professional violinist, and so the violin brought me to a music camp where when I was 16 I became a Christian. And I treasure that to date.
But as a result, I never applied to university. I was not thinking about being a physician at all, and I only applied to conservatory. And then I had a very important conversation with my father in February of my senior year of high school. After all of the university applications has closed, January 1st back then is when they closed, and it made me think, it really made me think, what am I going to be able to do with my love of science if I go to conservatory? And he would’ve been supportive of my going into music, but the questions he asked really made me look deep in myself, and I really love music, but I also love science.
And the minute I decided not to do music professionally, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to be a chemistry major, so that March, mind you, all the deadlines are closed now, but I had done very well in school, so I went over to the a nearby school that was very strong in chemistry, went in on a Monday, interviewed, was accepted by Friday accepted, and I went and knocked on the door the very first day of classes my freshman year and said, where do I sign up to be a chemistry major? And they said, you can’t do that yet. This is your first semester first quarter.
And so I came back the first day of the second semester and signed up as a chemistry major. I knew what I wanted and loved that, but it was a liberal arts school and so I was able to take many different subjects. I did some very interesting Bible courses. I did an interesting course my senior year on Africa and the history of Africa. And I think that really changed my view of the world and colonialism and the pros and cons more than almost any other class that I’d taken. So I think it’s very important to have a well rounded education.
And that prepared me to go to Stanford Medical School. So I had applied about halfway through college. I was beginning to discern I wanted to go to graduate school, and at first I thought it might be in physiological chemistry or pharmaceutical chemistry, and then I thought, well, I do like people, maybe medicine would also be good.
I actually forced myself to become a phlebotomist one summer. I don’t like blood in particular, and the first three days were awful. I was nauseous. I would sit on the stairs where nobody would, would see me and get cool again and then go back to the next patient. But after three days, I was fine. And I realized, oh, okay, I can get past that. And so, off to medical school I went.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I do have to digress to ask, do you still play the violin?
Debra A. Schwinn: I do. In fact I played in a bluegrass band in college. I taught violin to the professor’s kids. I didn’t have a car back then, but I found the dean of students’ daughter went to Cleveland from Worcester in Ohio every Saturday morning for lessons. So I took violin lessons, I continued taking them from someone in the Cleveland Orchestra. So I continued my violin at a pretty high level.
And then when I went off to medical school I played in the orchestra the first year and it just got to be too much. And so later during my internship and residency, I was at the University of Pennsylvania and I did take some time and, and self-aggregated with some faculty and other students to have a string quartet. And we gave a little performance and, and I started reengaging with violin lessons with some very amazing people.
And I realized 15 minutes of practice a day, which is all I could do when I’m working a hundred hour weeks as an intern in resident, little kids go very far, very fast at 15 minutes a day, as long as it’s consistent. And that’s what I found helped.
Todd Ream: Yeah. Well that’s great. That’s great. Thank you. Thank you.
Debra A. Schwinn: I still play every once in a while in the EVP for Advancement makes me play in some of our videos that we do.
Todd Ream: That’s great. Thank you. You mentioned your father and his pressing questions that he asked you, other mentors who helped shape this sense of discernment that you had?
Debra A. Schwinn: I would say that my husband and I—I met my husband when I was at Stanford Medical School, we married out there—he was working as a computer scientist in Silicon Valley, but he had decided to go back to seminary. So we were both very active in our church and were always very active in small groups.
And I would say that Christian small groups have been such a grounding point in my life because I would be off doing fancy things in medicine even later in my career where I was publishing, but having the grounding of having multiple people from across the spectrum of economics and jobs. And I remember once when we were in Seattle, we had a researcher that was working with the neuroscience of songbirds. We had a guy that built houses, a wife that helped him with the finances of that.
Another one that was off, you know, in the Silicon Valley equivalent in Seattle. I mean, just all different kinds of people, stay at home parents and those people would put, we would push each other to say, but how does Christ making a difference in what you’re doing at work today? And can you say that about this past week? What can we pray for you where you can grow? To me that was just so important.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Are there any authors that you’ve read or perhaps continue to read who have helped shape your sense of vocation?
Debra A. Schwinn: Sense of vocation, I’m not so sure, but I would say just off, Tim Keller, I love reading his books. I’m reading Romans, you know, a commentary in Romans by Tim Keller right now. And I just think he’s so grounded in, understands the reaching people for Christ in New York City and in other areas is just a matter of loving them and being honest and open about who Christ is. And I think sometimes we’re afraid to do that or we just don’t do it because we’re busy. And so I always come back to Tim Keller’s books.
Todd Ream: You mentioned that you completed a residency in anesthesia at the University of Pennsylvania, and then you began a tenure of service at Duke University that lasted for almost two decades, including serving as a research fellow, a faculty member, and a director of cardiovascular genomics for the Center for Genomic Medicine.
Would you please describe the questions that fueled your interest in anesthesiology?
Debra A. Schwinn: Well, when I was in medical school, I looked at what disciplines I loved. And really they were physiology and pharmacology. I loved clinical medicine. Every rotation I went on, I wanted to enter that subspecialty. So in the end, you can’t do them all right? And I wasn’t sure I wanted to be an internist in an office because I loved the operating room.
And so putting together pharmacology, physiology, and the operating room, anesthesiology became natural because we give drugs, we look at physiologic parameters, make sure patients are safe, but also the levels of anesthesia depth is crucial. And how do you teach that? How do you practice it, then how do you take complicated medical problems people have? Even terrible car crashes where you’re running down to the emergency room.
And when the emergency room physicians can’t handle it anymore, guess who they give it to? The anesthesiologist who rushed them up to the O.R. keeping them alive until the surgeon can plug the hole in the dike of the big vessel, you know? And so I just love that. How do we safely, very quickly assess this, earn the trust of patients, and then manipulate in a positive sense, the physiology so that the patient can safely get through the procedure.
I always make a joke with my surgeon friends that they push the patient to the edge of the cliff. Physiologically, my job is to keep them just the side of the cliff so we can get that unique thing done but done safely. So that’s how I decided on anesthesiology. I have always loved cardiology and cardiovascular medicine. And so it was natural also to do the field of cardiac anesthesiology.
So when I finished my internship and then residency at University of Pennsylvania, when I moved to Duke, my very first year, I was a clinical fellow in cardiac anesthesiology. And then I spent five more years in the laboratory of Bob Lefkowitz. And again, I think it was, you could say I was lucky. I think it was God’s blessing that I happened to be training in the lab of a man who 15 or 20 years later was going to earn the Nobel Prize in chemistry. So it was at the highest level.
And there were about 30 people in that lab, most getting their second postdoc. When you get a PhD in science, you do your first postdoc. These folks were doing their second postdoc before they went off to run their own labs, very high level science. And you had about five physicians like me who didn’t know what they were doing at the beginning. So what an incredible learning environment.
And it taught me not to be afraid to ask the big questions and not to be afraid to hire PhDs and postdocs into my lab that knew more than I did about an area because I knew enough to know we needed to move in that direction. And my mentor, Bob Lefkowitz modeled that for us. And that really helped me throughout my career. So that’s, that’s how I got to asking some of the bigger questions in science.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Can you describe the sense of satisfaction as a physician scientist you encounter when efforts in the laboratory that you’ve been pursuing intersect with care afforded to patients, see that transaction and experience that transaction?
Debra A. Schwinn: There are two parts to the answer to this question. One is I had a very basic science oriented lab, that’s because, learning how cells work and in disease states, et cetera, really provides the aha moments for potentially new drugs or new pathways that drugs could target, can be elucidated and then you can do the translational science. But I also had always a second arm that was in parallel where I did clinical studies doing exactly what you’re saying.
We had different ways of treating patients during heart surgery. I had a research nurse that worked closely with me and some research fellows, and we would do studies in the operating room. In the laboratory, I would have some undergraduate students, medical students, postdocs, PhD students, and it was just a wonderful group of people where we were looking more at the cellular level.
I think the most satisfying thing for me was an unexpected off target finding, and that is, I was a cardiovascular person, but when I looked at a cardiovascular, cellular model, there weren’t any for the smooth muscle. Everybody was using an endothelial cell, which is what lines the insides of your vessel. But I was interested in looking at the smooth muscle part that causes your vessel to contract. And there were no models.
So we created a model using human prostate tissue. I went out to the Fred Hutch Cancer Institute. They had retroviruses. We learned how to immortalize these cells and use them as a model. And then because it happened to be prostate, we, as a side project only because I was cardiovascular, I had a urology resident in my lab and he said, well, we don’t know how to treat prostate disease non-surgically. And so we discovered that some of the alpha one adrenergic receptor blockers that we were working with could relax smooth muscle in the prostate and delay surgery for men for many, many years.
So sometimes it’s easier to get funding from Congress when you’re dealing with a disease that directly affects Congress. So, you know, that helped a little bit. So while my main focus was cardiovascular, there were some really key things we did that had fundamental ways of changing the way we do medicine. That was incredibly satisfying. And again, just a blessing.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In 2007, you then began accepting appointments with incrementally greater levels of administrative responsibility, including service as the the chair of the Department of Anesthesiology, as you mentioned, at the University of Washington, dean of the College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, and then associate vice president for medical affairs at the University of Iowa.
Going back to where we sort of opened our conversation then, would you please describe the discernment process that led you to embrace administrative appointments and administrative work?
Debra A. Schwinn: You know, it’s so interesting because I’ve been doing administration my whole career. Why? Well, because when you run a research lab, you have a little mini world. You bring in the money by writing grants, you make sure it’s distributed properly, the experiments get done, they get written up. You apply for more funding and you’ve gotta keep track of all of that. So you have experienced a lot of HR experience through that. It’s incredible.
And so by the time opportunities came to be a chair, I actually had to say no for a while because when you’re a scientist, if you really take a big administrative role, I mean, I was 80% in the research lab, 20% clinical. And a few call nights a month. And so I was predominantly a research scientist for most of my career. Once you start becoming chair of a large department, there’s a lot of HR, a lot of administration, and you just don’t have the time to spend on your lab. And as a result, if you’re going to have an impact in science, you tend to delay when you start that administrative role.
So I was in my early fifties before I considered a chair position. And chair positions in an academic medical center are broadly kind of what a dean does at a regular undergraduate institution that’s a small liberal arts school. Lots of faculty but the discernment process to answer your question specifically, I remember being offered, you know, exploring and going out and talking to a couple different departments, and when I was offered the chair at the University of Washington, it’s the first time in my career that I had done this. I mean, I had prayed about it, but I had never actually spent a morning in silence at our church.
And so I had a clinical day. Now, mind you, when, when I’m doing cardiac anesthesiology, it’s two rooms, two cases in each room, four cases in a day, and I kid you not, both of my morning cases were canceled the morning, one morning, when I was thinking about how was I going to get to the church, so I just went to the church, laid down on one of the pews, and spent the morning in silence and was paged before lunch to come and start my afternoon cases. It was such a blessing, but I really had a sense of peace and a calling to go to the University of Washington.
And that, that was just the most wonderful experience. I had 86 faculty when I started. And five years later when I left, we had 190 faculty because we had many, many sites and operating rooms were increasing and we were building science.
So at the University of Washington, there are four major hospitals at that academic medical center. One is Harborview, which is the trauma center for 20% of the land mass of the entire U.S., Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. And so that was growing, and trauma. The children’s hospital was growing. The University of Washington Medical Center was putting on additional operating rooms, and I covered the VA as well. And so because of that, we grew.
It taught me a lot. I partnered with people across the university to start a couple of academic centers. One was in pain medicine that covered. eight different specialties, that was clinical. Another one was basic science mitochondrial metabolism center, because University of Washington didn’t have that. I saw that as the next horizon in medicine and I thought, why not an anesthesia, you know? We could have it there and we could partner with the diabetes center and just people all across campus, chemists at MMR on campus and in chemistry. I mean just all kinds of people. So I learned how to create centers there and it was fun.
And then to finish answering your question, when I was called to University of Iowa, we went through the same discernment process. In fact, my husband said—I still remember—that’s inland. I’m not going any place where there’s not any water. And, and I said, honey, there’s a river right down the middle of campus. And anyway, you never get your first interview for a dean job, but I did. And so he went and it was some of the best years he had as well, great university.
Todd Ream: It’s inland. Yeah. I mean Iowa, most certainly. In Indiana, certainly.
Debra A. Schwinn: Right, right.
Todd Ream: There’s a lot of us that live in these places and spaces. That’s great.
In May 2020 then, you accepted an appointment as professor of health science and as the ninth president of Palm Beach Atlantic. Same theme, different context.
Can you describe for us the discernment process that led you to leave direct service in medical education and embrace leadership of a Christian liberal arts institution in Palm Beach Atlantic?
Debra A. Schwinn: Sure. Well, when I was dean at the University of Iowa for their School of Medicine, that included all of the faculty. There were about 1200 at the time. It included all their clinical work. It included the faculty practice plan, which is a lot of finance based. And each department had to be optimized in its own unique way. Pennies on the dollar so a lot of nuance there.
I learned a lot about leadership and influencers and really the nuances of leadership, interpersonal leadership, and we also had undergraduate teaching. So we had the medical school, we had a PA school, we had undergraduate biochemistry, physiology, pharmacology, radiation science. So it was a rather comprehensive job. So the job of president is not that different, frankly, from the job of a dean of a large academic medical center. So that made the transition smoother.
But the path that I had was, we had some transitions going on in the presidency of my university at the University of Iowa. Wonderful president that we had that was coming to the end of that tenure, and as they brought in a new president, there were some changes in structure. And my job became a little more clinical than the full gene research, et cetera. And so that opened the door for me to wonder, hmm, I wonder if maybe I should just start looking.
And during that search process, I felt nudged to apply to a Christian university presidency. In general, I was looking at dean jobs that were the original constellation that I had had at Iowa with research teaching and education, and the practice plan as well. But that particular job at that moment in time, it didn’t work out. And I’m actually glad in retrospect because I’m not sure I would’ve been the best fit for that institution at that moment in time.
But I do remember being called about another particular institution, and it was PBA. I didn’t really know much about PBA. I knew many other names just because I’d run across them. But when I was growing up, my parents were not tuned into Christian colleges and universities. And so I didn’t know as much as some others perhaps who were steeped in this area. But I knew enough to know that there were some wonderful Christian universities that combined faith and academics very well.
And so I was excited about that, because I was yearning instead of having these two parallel important things in my life, my job and academic career, and then in parallel my faith in God and sort of spiritual formation. I love the idea of being able to integrate the two. And again, I was looking more at dean jobs and provost jobs and so this was a bit on the fringe. But when I came to interview and when I was sent a book about the history of Palm Beach Atlantic University, I fell in love with it.
We were started 57 years ago by a pastor of a church and the pastor, it’s a Baptist church. He was so involved with starting a Christian university in South Florida. His name was Jess Moody, that he became the first president. I think his congregation said either you stay as our pastor or you become the president, but you can’t do both.
And then someone in his congregation, Don Warren, who was a cardiologist here locally, was the rainmaker, helped make it all happen, and was the board chair for 40 years. Always a very Christ first university, built truly on the rock, the solid rock of Christ and, and the Bible.
And so at the same time, the university really wanted to do academics at the highest level possible, but we started small and that grew gradually. And so when I came and interviewed, I could see that PBA was just, I mean, we were in a unique place in downtown West Palm Beach. I mean, at the time when I came, it was just, when I accepted, it was before COVID. I started two weeks into COVID. We can talk about that.
But it was very clear to me and to the board chair that I was being called. I mean, it was just a, deep, sense of, yes, this is your next step. And I would never have predicted that someone in academic medicine would end up the president of a Christian liberal arts university. It’s mostly master’s level, but we even have a PhD program in practical theology and a school of ministry as well.
So I look back now and know that this very unusual journey that God had me on is the only way that I would’ve been prepared, uniquely for the moment in history that I started as president here. Like I said, I started two weeks into the pandemic. I did not think my clinical skills would be helpful at all, and they came in handy. We stayed open, prayer and science working together, following CDC guidelines, and I haven’t looked back.
But I recognize training grounds of the various parts of my career. And part of that was at the University of Iowa where when my job changed, that was a blow to me and God dealt with me for two or three years, taking off all of the dross, you know, that I didn’t think I had ego, but I really had some ego. And that really needed to be let go of before I could be a good president at a Christian university. So I’m so deeply grateful for that experience.
Todd Ream: During those early months and points in time in service at Palm Beach Atlantic, in addition to grappling with COVID too in what ways did you engage in an assessment of the university’s potential?
Debra A. Schwinn: So when I was looking for a job, I came in second a lot at major university jobs, so I got to the point where I could suss up a place in less than a week. I had done major digging for PBA before I came, but, but the pandemic just made everything different because we couldn’t take the usual time for a strategic plan. We couldn’t take the first year where I understand and get to know the influencers and the faculty and the key staff, and then put together the committees the next year, and then the following year come out with the report, and then in my fourth year start. That would be a historically typical pattern. We had to have answers to important questions at the end of that first year.
One of our deans go to each of the faculty meetings, they wanted this to be faculty led, and ask them 12 questions, five questions about the future, 15 to 20 years from now, what is going to be needed in education? Where is the church going to be? What are fields and disciplines that we can’t imagine now that might be on the horizon? And then the other five questions were, what’s truly unique about PBA, our location, our Christ first emphasis, our academic disciplines, et cetera? And then the final two questions were, what are your ideas of how we could trace our strengths into one of those futures and lead others into that future?
And from that, those answers, the faculty gave back, we put together a very in-depth questionnaire and sent it to everybody, our board, our students, our alumni, our parents, our, you name it, faculty, staff, and even our broader community churches mayor, I mean, you name it. And from that, we put together a strategic plan, which is the foundation of fiscal sustainability and three pillars.
The first pillar is mission with excellence, so that means Christ first with excellence in everything, academic excellence, highest accreditations, best practices, many of which we had to really put in place. And that’s pillar one.
Pillar two is people, and you think of students, but really how do we care for our faculty and staff? How in this expensive environment are we going to get the salaries up to at least the 50th, maybe 75th percentile so we can be supporting our faculty. We’re not there yet, but we’re working our way toward that.
And third, what are the possibilities? What are the things that we could build in this campus? What are uniquely thick programs that we could add? How can we take our current programs and leverage them for more strength? And we call that our God-Sized Dreams Campaign, so.
Todd Ream: That campaign includes what’s now the Rinker School of Business, a health science complex, a welcome center, and a performing arts center, if I remember correctly. How did you and your colleagues decide to invest in those four efforts, and in what ways are they to be leveraged to advance PBAs Christian mission?
Debra A. Schwinn: Well, first of all, our students, many of them have lived off campus their junior ,senior year because we’re downtown and there was relatively cheap apartments. Now, COVID changed everything because everyone in the world started moving to West Palm Beach. In our county a few years ago, we had a thousand people a week moving to our county. Yes, it’s a big county. It’s one of the biggest in the country, but still that’s a lot.
So rents have tripled, housing prices have doubled in the last five years. So all the students now want to live back on campus, so we find ourselves in a situation where we are filled to capacity for classrooms and we were close to capacity and, and soon falling behind in terms of bed space for our current students.
So when I first arrived, we had addressed making sure that we had some value statements because we’re a non-denominational university. We were started by a Baptist church, but we’ve always been from the very beginning, non-denominational Christian. So anyone, the remnant who claims Jesus is Lord and Savior can teach and work here. And most of the students here come from Christian families. And so we had done that heavy work and I think that was being rewarded by more and more applications. And so we quickly, actually not only put together this plan for these possibilities in the south side of our campus, but we were guided a little bit.
End of my second year, one of our donors, John Rinker, who’s no longer with us, called me and Laura Bishop, my executive vice president for advancement called us both to his office and said, how would you like $26 million? And we said, for what sir? And he said, a business school. Now, that was just before all Wall Street staff started moving here.
I told you the people that were coming, but businesses are coming. The global financial headquarters for Goldman Sachs is about six blocks from our campus now, and 250 other companies are following them. Not all financial, but many different companies, and so our students can walk for internships. So we said, I mean this, this was prescient. It was basically a God-wink because God was preparing us to prepare this business school to be the first building.
And in fact, that business school is being built today and it will open in January and it will provide the classroom space that we desperately need. We had to then pause and say, we need, we need beds on campus now all of a sudden. And so we have just, literally, the ink is just drying on the signatures where we are putting up a PPP with a residence hall complex, which is 990 beds, 25 stories. And significant amount of parking garage behind it. And the bottom two floors will be a new cafeteria. The third floor will be a wellness center, all of which we need on campus, and that will provide for our current students today.
So we’re going to pause at the end of that because you can imagine, it’s when we get new students here in South Florida, it costs us more to build than we’ll ever bring in in revenue and tuition room and board, that is very different from the rest of the country, where you can bring in more students, have more revenue, and build more buildings, and it’s just goes like that. Here, we bring in more students, we have to pray more because we need more philanthropy because that residence hall complex is a $230 million complex. Why? It’s 25 stories tall. So it’s a skyscraper in a downtown city, you have to drill down to hit rock in a hurricane zone, you have to have hurricane glass.
Okay, so it’s going to, it’s very expensive, but it’s exciting because we literally, have been graced with the ability to, to make that work. And so we’re going to pause when that’s built and say what’s next? Should we be doing something in health science next, perhaps, should we pause on the auditorium? We need something for where admissions can be. We have a lovely place right now, but maybe we want to develop that corner.
So we’re just looking at ways that we can partner not to sell or give land in any way, or even do a ground lease, but to really partner with someone for long-term sustainable income to support the university in addition to our tuition. So it’s exciting times, great time to innovate here.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Unfortunately, our time is beginning to become short, but I want to ask you about the academic vocation as you’ve understood it over the course of your career, but then also as it’s practiced there amongst faculty and co-curricular educators who serve students at Palm Beach Atlantic.
What are those characteristics or qualities in your estimation that define that understanding of the academic vocation?
Debra A. Schwinn: I’ve come to understand that PBA is one of a subset of Christian universities that actively integrates faith and academics in everything we do. That is in the classroom, it’s in chapel, it’s in our mission trips and it’s in our Workship program where all of our students do community service as we talked about earlier.
And I think that merging the co-curricular and the curricular and embedding both with faith issues allows us to have students who come, most of whom are Christian, but when you’re 18 to 25 years old, that span of years is so important to go from having a strong faith of your own, but within a family and growing up context to having it in the tough times as an adult is becoming your own faith and deepening your walk. And so those are just very precious years.
And our faculty, I give them a hundred percent credit because they’re strong academically, but they’re also right there for the students and willing to have those conversations, so that makes a difference.
Todd Ream: Thank you. When seeking to exercise such an understanding of the academic vocation then, what virtues are important to cultivate amongst educators who serve at Palm Beach Atlantic?
Debra A. Schwinn: Well, you can read that on our website very quickly in two clicks. So I’ll tell you how to do that, when you go, if you want to look up our, our faith statement, which is our guiding principles, and then we have a diversity statement, a human sexuality statement, they’re, they’re board statements, value statements, and we did that because we’re in an era where churches are splitting over social issues and we want to make sure that everyone that works here and everyone that sends their students here or interacts with us, understands how we define biblical truth.
And so we, the board, created these statements and we worked together with leaders across our campus, and those can be found very easily by going to our website. In the top right corner, there’s about PBA, and then you look under the menu there and click values. And you’ll come up with six real quick values. But then if you keep scrolling down, you’ll find our guiding principles, entire statement. You’ll find our diversity statement, which is really representing the throne room in Revelations where every tribe and tongue are together worshiping the Lord. And then you’ll find our human sexuality statement.
And so we wanted to do that because clarity is kindness. Now we want to be able to have conversations and we actually have our faculty staff, whether they’re full-time, part-time visiting or even adjuncts, sign that they’re supportive of these statements so that they know that this is where we land as a university. And that’s really been a really rock solid foundation for everything that we build. And so I would encourage people that are interested in that to take a look.
Todd Ream: Thank you. For our last question then today, I want to ask you, in what ways is the health of the academic vocation on a Church-related university campus then reflective of the health of the relationship that the university shares with the Church?
Debra A. Schwinn: Well, you know, because we’re a non-denominational Christian university, we are privileged to interact with many churches. We have students from non-denominational backgrounds, from various different, Christian churches across the spectrum. And so just having strong relationship with the churches is a really high priority for us.
We do have strong relationships with Family Church because they’re the church that started us, but we don’t have any church that’s actually functionally on our campus, not even Family Church. They’re next door. And so we think that developing students that can be ministers of the future, PhDs in practical theology is created to really look in-depth at issues that are not just academic but also very practical, literally, that are important to the Church.
But I think it’s very important for me to state right now that we do not view ministers as the only ones that are carrying the Gospel. I mean, every single student in every single calling that they respond to, whether they’re an accountant, a business person, a nurse, a minister, a Christian counselor, a teacher, all of them can carry the light of Christ into their own job in the future. And they are the servant leaders that I think the world wants today. In fact, our applications are rising rapidly, which is different than many universities today, and I think people are responding to that. So we feel very blessed.
Todd Ream: Thank you very much. Our guest has been Debra A. Schwinn, Professor of Health Science and President of Palm Beach Atlantic University. Thank you for taking the time to share your insights and wisdom with us.
Debra A. Schwinn: Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
