ADDITIONS OR MODIFICATIONS IN PROGRAMS

Department of Pharmaceutics

ADDITIONS OR MODIFICATIONS IN PROGRAMS, CURRICULA, FACILITIES

The faculty continued to actively participate in the assessment process and respond by modifying curricular content of the departmental doctoral program.  These changes will be submitted to the Graduate Council in the Fall of 2010.  In addition, four elective courses were developed and approved for inclusion into the professional program.  The first elective course coordinated by Dr. Soumyajit Majumdar will be taught in the Fall of 2010.  Changes in faculty expectations of the doctoral students, who are provided graduate teaching and research stipends, were successful in graduate student production and collegiality. This culture modification continues to move forward with a continuous emphasis being placed on graduate scholar mentoring. The Department Staff Assistant, Deborah King, is instrumental in attaining these outcomes.  She continued her significant contributions in all areas and provides the cohesiveness between the Department faculty, students and post-docs. Graduate student and post-doctoral scholar diversification has been demonstrated by Department recruitment efforts. All recruited graduate students for the 2009-2010 year were guaranteed stipend support for the fifth consecutive year. This trend was continued as higher stipends were implemented by the School of Pharmacy (SOP) Administration for Teaching Assistants as well as via grant support by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), other Federal agencies and industry.  Last reporting year, a research laboratory was renovated and converted into an undergraduate teaching lab for handling parenteral products and mixing via state-of-the-art hoods.  Six such hoods were placed into this lab for enhancement of hands-on involvement within the Skills Lab. This has been a major accomplishment in enabling student handling of these types of products. Other facility improvements and equipment availability were enabled to provide a main laboratory area more conducive to learning for Department courses, as well as interdisciplinary instruction.  Dr. Bonnie Avery served on the SOP’s Curriculum Committee and Dr. Michael Warren, Director of the newly implemented Skills Laboratory, attained state-of-the-art Rx dispensing software for use in the unit’s laboratories. This software will be fully utilized in the upcoming Spring of 2010.  Activities such as these are indicative of Departments within the School of Pharmacy working together.  These types of collaborations continue to lead to the positive changes in the Department’s mission for undergraduate education, as well as that of the School.  Continued improvement has been demonstrated in the compounding abilities of our professional program graduates due to those changes in the Department’s hands-on, problem-based educational approaches.  The research laboratory space that was converted into the parenteral lab was replaced by renovation and expansion of an existing Department laboratory.  These improvements continued and were made possible by SOP administration, spearheaded by Dr. Charles Hufford. In addition, a recent award has enabled the renovation of a new state-of-the-art research laboratory within the unit to house the Center for Thermal Pharmaceutical Processing (CTP2), which focuses on hot-melt extrusion and other pharmacy industrial activities.  This renovation project is close to being finished, with an approximate completion date of August 31, 2010.  This Center could not have been possible without the full support of Dean Wells, Dr. Hufford and Dr. Alice Clark.