Hi Eric,
I have a feeling that you are talking about using badges in this plugin https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=auth_mcae
You are right that badges are displayed in profile, but they are not a field in a user table in database and and I am not sure how that can be added in this case. Might be a better idea to contact plugin maintainer and ask if they could add this feature to their plugin.
Yuliya