Sister Rose Kershbaumer, BSN’69, MSN’71, a former faculty member at Penn Nursing and the founder and director of several Penn centers that had global impact, passed away on March 20. She was 94. 

Sister Rose received her RN degree from the Thomas Jefferson University School of Nursing in Philadelphia in 1951, then joined the Medical Mission Sisters. She trained as a nurse-midwife at the Catholic Maternity Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In 1954, she went to Ghana, where she spent ten years as a nurse and administrator at MMS Hospitals in Berekum and Techiman. Afterward, she served as director of nursing and local superior in Fort Portal, Uganda. She returned to the U.S. and received her BSN (1969) and her MSN (1971) from Penn Nursing, then earned a MEd and a PhD in education from Columbia University. Afterwards, Sister Rose resumed her work abroad, serving as a nurse educator for the World Health Organization (WHO) in Kenya and Malawi for ten years. At the Ministry of Health in Malawi, she worked as Chief Assistant Nursing Officer for several additional years. She was also a nurse-midwife educator consultant for many organizations, including the Peace Corps and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Sister Rose returned to the U.S. again in 1990 and dove into international education advocacy. She took a faculty position at Penn Nursing, where she co-founded a post-master’s Teacher Education Program. She also served as associate director of Penn’s PAHO/WHO Center for Nursing and Midwifery Leadership and coordinator of the Penn-Malawi Women for Women’s Health project. In Malawi, she delivered between 1,500 and 2,000 newborns. Inspired by Sister Rose, eleven Malawians came to Penn Nursing for their master’s degrees and doctorates. 

“They’re all currently serving in Malawi, and I think that’s really fantastic,” she said in a 2007 Philadelphia Inquirer piece. “You hear so much about brain-drain among professionals there, but they are all actively engaged.” 

Sister Rose also used her expertise and Penn’s resources to initiate and maintain a continuing education program for nurses in Haiti, successfully recruiting Penn Clinical faculty for several programs in Haiti. In 2015, she joined Penn’s 25-Year Club.

Over the course of her career, Sister Rose published several journal articles and book chapters about her work, including multiple works discussing how she learned to incorporate Western medicine with the traditional medicine she encountered in Africa. After retiring from the WHO Collaborating Center in 2003, Sister Rose took on more work with the Medical Mission Sisters of North America, with whom she served in several administrative roles at their North American headquarters in the Fox Chase neighborhood of Philadelphia. 

“She spent five decades working to make motherhood safe across Africa,” said Penn Nursing Dean Antonia Villarruel in an online tribute. “Here at Penn Nursing, Sister Rose worked collaboratively with colleagues to setup innovative programs to keep women and infants healthy in remote villages in Malawi and Uganda. They brought infant resuscitation techniques and prenatal care to women before obstetrical complications turned deadly.”

Sister Rose is survived by her brother, Lou Kershbaumer. A funeral mass will be held March 29 at 10:45 a.m. at the Medical Mission Sister’s Chapel, 8400 Pine Road, Philadelphia, PA 19111. The mass will be livestreamed at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81248015261. Remembrances of Sister Rose can be shared at www.medicalmissionsisters.org. 

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