School of Pharmacy Hosted First In-Person Advisory Board Meetings Since Pandemic
May 15, 2024 was a very busy day for the School of Pharmacy. Not only were the halls bustling with students as finals were finishing up, lockers getting cleaned out and graduating students did exit interviews, but we hosted the first in-person Advisory Board Meetings since the pandemic! It was exciting to see everyone's faces as we all greeted one another and discussed the common passion of pharmacy and the passion of our School and students.
The School of Pharmacy Advisory Board met first for a working lunch, where we reacquainted ourselves once again by hearing about one another's backgrounds. As a team we talked about our overall program, as well as getting a status update on our latest 5-year extended pathway, where we are the first accredited PharmD program in the nation that offers such an option. Members were informed that we're regularly keeping in touch the students who are currently taking this pathway and some of them are finding the program flexible enough that they can work up to 32 hours. It's our goal to ensure that this pathway maintains a healthy balance for our students. We were also able to provide our members with information about our our 2-year MS in Pharmaceutical Sciences terminal degree. This high touch mentorship, provides interdisciplinary networking and advanced health related education. There is a research emphasis with 44% of the entire program credits being research-based coursework, including hands-on experiences and training. Self – designed/directed research projects helps provide skills training for these students.
In addition to our School of Pharmacy Advisory Board getting together on May 15th, later that afternoon our Preceptor Advisory Board met for an informal luncheon meeting. Four of ten current Preceptor Advisory Board members Uche Nwizu (Neighborhood Health Center), Sean Ottum (Legacy Health), Amy Kirkbride (Kaiser Permanente), and Aron Beugli (Santiam Hospital) attended. Just as the School of Pharmacy Advisory Board, this was the first in person meeting for the Preceptor Advisory Board since before the pandemic and was an exciting day focused on re-orienting our preceptor advisory board members to our program through networking and relationship building.
After the luncheon meetings, these four Preceptor Advisory Board members, along with our School of Pharmacy Board members attended exit interviews for our graduating students focusing on improvements to our curriculum. It was a great opportunity for our Board members, faculty and staff to hear directly from our students about their educational experience with Pacific University School of Pharmacy. These takeaways will help assist our Advisory Boards collaborate with us about the best directions to steer our program, both now and in the future.
We look forward to more opportunities like these in the near future!
- by Amber Hieb, BA | Senior Manager of Administrative Operations | School of Pharmacy