With the soft pitter-patter of rain outside, Dr. Paulina Van confines herself in her small office as she works away.

Despite being the chair of a department that has over 1,500 students, as well as doing research and presentations on the side, she maintains her composure as the positive, encouraging department chair her colleagues have become accustomed to.

Van has been the chair of CSU East Bay’s Department of Nursing and Health Science since last August. According to nursing professor Dr. Lindsey McCrea, who served as a member of the search committee, they had a difficult time finding someone to take the position of department chair. As a result, former department chair Dr. Carolyn Fong stayed on several years past retirement.

Prior to taking on this role at CSUEB, Van has worked at other institutions; including Samuel Merritt University, University of San Francisco and UC San Francisco. Despite working in such different environments, one thing she has learned from her experience in academia is that the nursing programs have a lot in common.

“How finances are handled may be different, but when you’re talking about educating future professional nurses, we have the same challenges, we have the same vision, we have the same goals, and what’s core is that we care,” explains Van.

Van knew she wanted to be a nurse when she was just 10 years old. As she watched a nurse care for her grandmother, who was recovering from a stroke, she was fascinated by how caring the nurse was as she spoke softly to her grandmother.

Despite not knowing the name of the profession at the time, Van knew she had found her calling.

In addition to her involvement in academia, Van also has nearly two decades of experience in nursing. She has held several jobs in the field, such as as an administrator for Home Health, a consultant for Maternal Child Health and as a licensing surveyor for the state of California.

“[Being a licensing surveyor] was particularly fulfilling, because I saw myself not as a police, but as an educator, a trainer, a developer, because I had opportunities to teach staff about safety and patient rights and making a difference in peoples’ lives who were most at risk like the elderly,” comments Van. “So that was very rewarding.”

At 27 years old she was even the director of nurses at an acute care hospital, a role she held for 10 years.

Van also devotes a lot of time to studies she conducts on pregnancy loss. It was while she was serving as a consultant for Maternal Child Health that she became aware of the high pregnancy loss rate amongst African-American women. While she ventured forward into her doctorate program in hopes of finding a solution, she quickly deemed that impossible due to so many factors playing into the cause, such as cultural and political reasons.

Instead, Van has studied the impact of pregnancy loss on women of all backgrounds since the mid 1990s and has since developed a theory on how women cope with such a loss.

Her theory has been featured in the Omega Journal of Death and Dying and she makes presentations on it throughout the country and the world. She recently came back from making a presentation in Bangkok, Thailand.

Van’s “internal engine”- as she described it – drives her to do anything she is involved in to the absolute best of her ability.

“Even if the task is very minor, I will do that,” explains Van. “There is nothing in this department that I wouldn’t pitch in and help.”

It is that kind of determination, as well as leadership skills and the ability to work well with the community, that the search committee was looking for when they met with Van during the interview process last year.

“I think that [kind of dedication to the community] is a huge strength that she has and I think that the more we can have leaders and faculty in our department who mirror the student population as well as the community we served and the nurses we produce, the better,” explains McCrea.

Nursing professor Dr. Maria Cho is also very familiar with Van’s passion and leadership skills as the two have worked together over the years. She met her while doing her doctorate program at UCSF, only to meet up with her again while they both simultaneously worked at Samuel Merritt University.

Cho describes her colleague as approachable and accessible, as well as very encouraging.

“Even though I knew her from UCSF, she’s really calm and encourages you to do something more,” says Cho.“She inspires me.”

Van has even more goals set for the future that include entering the Academy of Nursing, making the department stronger and continuing to learn. Her primary goal though involves the people she works with and channels what she witnessed from the nurse who cared for her grandmother.

“People come first for me. I believe in treating people with respect and dignity,” says Van. “Even when they’re challenging a situation, that is always my response.”