Address by Paul Coyne, DNP ’08 at the Mondor Center for Nursing and Health Sciences dedication
Editor’s Note: Paul Coyne, DNP ’08 was the featured speaker at the dedication of the Ben Mondor Center for Nursing and Health Sciences on April 26, 2025.
By Paul Coyne, DNP ’08
St. Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa, wrote that “it is necessary to attribute Providence to God.” And therefore, it is necessary that I begin by attributing the role that Providence has played in my life to God.
I certainly don’t believe it a coincidence that one of the first times that I felt the feeling of God’s providence for my life was here at Providence College on accepted students day in St Dominic Chapel about 21 years ago. My mom and I had been driving around New England visiting schools for a couple of months and at every other school I just felt nervous and sad. Not because I didn’t want to go to college, but because like every teenager, and really every adult if we are being honest, I had gone through some challenges that made me feel different and alone — and it made me question if I would be able to connect and be accepted by others.
I was born with a congenital heart disease called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which makes it harder for the heart to pump blood. At age 10, I could no longer play competitive sports. At age 15, I spent much of the fall of my sophomore year of high school in Boston Children’s hospital due to complications of pacemaker implant surgery that led to infection and side effects of medications that caused extreme pain, paralysis from the neck down, and many nights not knowing if I would wake up.
And so, when it came time for me to go to college, I was trying to find my way like my peers but with the added weight of that experience and the continued worry of my heart disease. And I’m sitting in St. Dominic’s at accepted students day and Manny Vasconcelos (He’s Father Manny now, he became a priest, but he was a sophomore at the time) and he’s cantering with the liturgical choir singing to a packed chapel. And I am sitting there feeling like I might not belong, and my mom, who of course knew I love to sing, turns to me and says, “That could be you, you know.” And I felt God say, “That will be.”
And so, I came here. And over the four years that followed, this wonderful place and the wonderful people here revealed to me that it is not just a heart disease that can make someone feel different. Through a strong liberal arts education, and the understanding of various cultures since the dawn of western civilization, I learned that everyone has their own reason to feel different.
Race. Religion. Economic Status. Nationalities. Language. Gender.
All of these things, and so many more, have the potential to make someone feel different and be a reason to not belong. But they also have the potential to help us see that it is because we are all different that we all belong — in our humanity. And that each of us belongs to God. And that simple yet profound truth, that we discover here in this place, is life changing. Because if we all belong to God, then we all belong to each other. And if we belong to God and each other, it is impossible to be alone.
When I had a stroke a week after I graduated, when I moved to New York with long-term memory loss and limited ability to speak, when my girlfriend died three years later, when I was placed on disability from Goldman Sachs after developing tonic clonic spams and convulsions, I felt a lot of things. But alone was never one of them. Because when I was there at my lowest, God showed me where to go again, the same way he told me to come to Providence College. He said, very clearly, be a nurse. And, again, I simply listened.
And because of the foundation laid forth by Providence, I had the strength to overcome a stroke and get five additional degrees in four years in my late twenties. I had the courage to write books, and poetry, and speak around the country. Because of Providence, I had the ingenuity and creativity to invent medical technology and launch businesses. I could find the provision and influence to be named one of the youngest chief nurse executives in the country at 36. And most importantly, because of Providence, I was able to begin walking a path that led to a life of joy and purpose with my wife, and for the last five years, the greatest gift of raising our son, Thomas, who is right there.
How can this be?
What is the reason that a man just as, if not more, sick and different than he was when he was crying as he was dropped off by his parents 21 years ago up the hill at Guzman, returns again today with his parents and wife and son, not alone and scared, but sought after and confident, to speak at the opening of this school of nursing and health sciences.
There is only one answer.
Providence.
You see, this isn’t just another new beautiful building on the campus. This isn’t even just one of most cutting-edge facilities with the best simulation and technology of any school in the world. It isn’t just a place that will bring nursing and the health sciences together with health policy and management to ensure policy becomes action and action becomes policy. This isn’t just a place that will bring a renewed sense of purpose and pride to all alumni and the community. This is the manifestation and fulfillment of our mission — to pursue the truth, to grow in virtue, and to serve God and neighbor.
This is Providence.
And there is no better way for it to be demonstrated than this.
When I think about the potential for students to gain both the skill and the wisdom that I had to learn in a nonlinear way, in an intricately woven manner through a program like the one that has been developed for nursing and health sciences, I have so much hope.
Hope for our future. Hope for healthcare. Hope for humanity.
Combining the existing outstanding curriculum and experience here that encourage true understanding of self and altruism, together with clinical training, will have a transformative impact on healthcare and the world.
I think it’s so fitting as we open a school for nursing and the health sciences that we have embraced a campaign that Providence is “for those who seek.” For there are so many patients in this world, like me, who are seeking desperately to be healed, who will better find what they are looking for thanks to the work that begins here.
Because here, on this campus, so many people are also seeking, like me, to learn how to better heal all those in need of healing. And they will find what they seek as well because of what we are celebrating today.
So, Mom, turn to some of these students here today. Tell them that this person talking at the podium could be them someday. Because I have found — and they will, too, thanks to this building — that I am not alone. Because every person here today and every person learning in that school is just like me. An imperfect person. With flaws and things that make them different, who wonders if those differences will make it possible for them to make a difference. But who never stop trying to make one anyway.
And, as a result of this mindset, they will not only lead healthcare but lead it in the right direction. Because, though they received superior education, though they received superior clinical experiences, they will never forget that they are not superior. They will never forget they are human. They will never forget that every patient they are caring for belongs to God.
And as a result, when they look at the patient they are caring for, they will not just see a patient — they will see a person. Just like them. And as a result, every patient they care for will feel less alone. And so will they.
How beautiful is it that a concept of mutual healing, purpose, meaning, and fulfillment can even be contemplated?
How sad is it that the majority of those working in healthcare are not thinking this way and therefore don’t get to experience fully this wonder?
How important then, that this building exists so that more of healthcare and our world is truly healed.
Why are we called to be so lucky to be part of it?
The answer to that question is Providence.
