As we approach graduation, ¡t's the season for a variety of awards and honors, including our annual teaching awards. Every year, each of the first three PharmD classes selects one professor to single out for his or her exceptional skill and talent in the classroom. In addition, the Student Senate separately recognizes one member of the entire faculty for overarching achievement in teaching. The recipient of the Student Senate Distinguished Teaching Award also represents the School nationally at the summer meeting of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) and receives an all-expense paid trip to that conference in recognition of the award. Recipients are out of the running for the following 2 years to "spread the wealth," so to speak.
For only the third year now, we've been able to offer a $1,000 prize to our Teachers of the Year to go along with the recognition. The monetary awards are only possible because of the generosity and commitment to excellence in teaching by Dean and Professor Emeritus Mel Weinswig and his wife Pat and Dean and Professor Emeritus Gus Lemberger and his wife Char. Thanks so much for this generous support of such important and meaningful awards for our faculty.
This year's Teachers of the Year are: Henry Young (SAS, DPH-1); Warren Heideman (PharmSci, DPH-2); Joe Bonnarens (SAS, DPH-3), and Scott Rajski (PharmSci, Student Senate). The awards were given at the Rho Chi Initiation Ceremony on Friday, Mar. 24, along with the celebration of student academic excellence.
In addition to the teaching awards from the PharmD students, the Pharm/Tox students also choose one faculty member to honor for teaching excellence. This year's Pharm/Tox Teacher of the Year is Tom Rudy (PharmSci). This award and a $500 prize will be given at the annual Pharm/Tox brunch for graduates and their families the weekend of graduation.
This is a wonderful opportunity to recognize and reward exceptional teaching among our faculty. I commend the award winners for their dedication to this critical aspect of our academic mission and for their commitment to our students to be partners in their learning. Congratulations, all!
I'm pleased to tell you that faculty recruitments are moving along. Beth Martin (PPD) has accepted the offer to move from the clinical to the CHS track and expand and enhance her research interests centered around the scholarship of teaching. In addition, Weiping Tang, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, has accepted the Drug Discovery position in PharmSci and will be joining the School in late May. Offers for the Drug Delivery opening and one of the two Drug Action positions are under construction.
Keep that search enthusiasm up! Considerable work remains.
Many people have already met and worked with Diane Stojanovich, the School's new Director of Communications, on one thing or another. She will be coming to you about a variety of media opportunities, publications, etc., but if you have news, story ideas, or anything else that falls under the communication umbrella, don't hesitate to track her down. You can find Diane in 1126D.
The year 2008 marks the School's 125th anniversary...amazing! A working group, chaired by Curt Johnson (PPD), has been meeting over the past year or so and has recommended a wide array of activities and events to commemorate this milestone. You'll be hearing more and more about these things over the next several months. Needless to say, I encourage extensive celebration, early and often! A couple of the items require targeted planning groups. Two committees are being formed as we speak. First, Dick Peterson (PharmSci) will be chairing a planning group responsible for organizing and conducting a 2-day scientific symposium. If all goes according to plan, the symposium will be held on October 2 and 3, 2008, to coincide with the exact dates the first pharmacy classes were held in 1883, and will also include the 2008 Rennebohm Lectures. An invitation is out to Dr. Victoria Hale and her husband Dr. Ahvie Herskowitz, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Medical Officer, respectively, of OneWorld Health (http://www.oneworldhealth.org/). This amazing organization is the first and only nonprofit pharmaceutical company in the world, challenging virtually all existing beliefs about drug discovery and development, social justice in health care, and social entrepreneurship. (Thanks to everyone who nominated potential Rennebohm Lecturers. All nominations will be kept active.) Second, Curt Johnson will chair another planning group responsible for the US-Thai Consortium Meeting in July. This is a long-standing collaboration of multiple pharmacy schools in the US and in Thailand that meets every 2 years. I'll be forming another group centered around students and student events soon. An integral part of the anniversary year will be moving into the "public phase" of our now "quiet phase" capital campaign. Stay tuned as things unfold and, undoubtedly, change multiple times.
The SOP hosted the 2007 American Indian Health and Science Symposium on Mar. 23. Dozens and dozens of Native American high school students, teachers, and family members from Wisconsin, Michigan, and Minnesota attended to explore educational opportunities in the health sciences at UW-Madison. Thanks to Amber Ault (Director of Diversity) for organizing our participation, as well as to students, staff, and faculty who attended or participated as activity coordinators, hosts, ushers, and greeters.
Immediately following this event, Rho Chi held their annual dinner and initiation ceremony, as mentioned above. Thanks to faculty advisors Karen Kopacek (PPD) and Mel de Villiers (PharmSci) for their leadership with the group, as well as to the many students who organized and hosted the initiation and teaching award presentations.
The second SOP Discovery Day, this one for high school students, was held on Saturday, Mar. 24. Thanks to Pam French (Student Services, transitioning to Director of Alumni Affairs) as the main organizer with outstanding assistance from and participation by the Student Services staff, UW staff, faculty, students, and practitioners. We had a packed house and a long waiting list, demonstrating continuing interest in our PharmD and BS Pharm/Tox programs.
Special thanks to Tom O'Connor (Business Office) for transforming the Commons time after time after time to accommodate the multiple events we now hold there, especially in a very short timeframe. And to Mike Pitterle, Chris Spencer, and the rest of the Instructional and Information Technology (IIT) staff for the expert audio-visual support these events require.
Last fall, four of our PharmSci grad students received pre-doctoral fellowships from the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE). I thought it was worth mentioning again. They are: Joe Su (Burnette lab), Joshua Schmidt (Li lab), James Dowell (also Li lab), and Matt Slattery (Heideman lab). These awards are incredibly competitive, and it's a great honor for us to have four students selected. I'm happy to say that each one just recently received an additional APFE Pharmaceutical Sciences Graduate Student Recognition Award as well.
Chris Sorkness (PPD) was featured prominently in Badger Herald coverage of the new Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (ICTR) (see http://www.badgerherald.com/news/2007/03/22/new_facility_gets_go.php). Chris serves as Associate Director of the Institute, a leadership position rarely held by Pharmacy faculty in similar structures emerging across the country. To remind you, this is focused around the new NIH Roadmap Initiative called the Clinical and Translational Sciences Award (CTSA) that is transforming how clinical research and training is conducted in this country. UW-Madison has a grant pending for this huge award at the moment...thanks to Chris for playing a lead role in the proposal preparation and for others throughout the School that participated. The proposal funded by the Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery (WID) in which Sandro Mecozzi (PharmSci) is participating received special coverage in Wisconsin Week recently (see http://www.news.wisc.edu/13567.html). The work of Bonnie Svarstad (SAS) and coworkers on the ability of pharmacists to impact blood pressure control in African-American populations was featured in a press release last week that is expected to be picked up by the press in Kenosha and Milwaukee and hopefully other outlets.
Amber Ault and I attended a forum recently on the Governor's proposal to provide domestic partner benefits to all state employees. Channel 3 featured a brief interview with Amber on their evening news, as well as coverage on Channel3000.com. Amber and I also attended the first NAACP Health Awareness Luncheon, which will undoubtedly open channels to the African-American community for research and student recruitment opportunities, key strategies to eliminate disparities in health care.
Thanks very much to the classified staff of the School for meeting with me recently to discuss issues and brainstorm about solutions.
I chair the Admissions Committee for the MPH program, and I'm happy to report that letters of admission will be going out to 38 students, including one PharmD, to begin in the fall. In addition, the School's Academic Planning Council (APC) gave their "permission to plan" last semester for a joint PharmD/MPH degree, and our Educational Policy and Planning (EPP) Committee is nearing completion of the curricular design. This will complement joint degrees already in place between the MPH and Nursing, Medicine, Vet Medicine, and the La Follette School of Public Affairs. Public health is of dramatically enhanced importance in pharmacy education and practice moving forward, so the connection is very necessary and very appropriate. Mary Hayney (PPD) is currently a part-time student in the MPH program, which will bring additional important expertise in-house as well.
The search process, of which I'm a part, for the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of UW-Madison is moving along at a reasonable pace. We're in the initial interview stage now with the idea of having the new person in place in mid to late summer. This newly crafted position is intended to much broader than just the director of DoIT, to truly transform the IT infrastructure and mode of operating on this campus.
Don't forget...the West Campus Utilities Project (ripping up Highland Dr. for a 2-year period) will begin after graduation in May. The first effect will be the relocation of those of you who park in lots 85/85A, which will be unavailable for parking throughout the project. The second effect will be changes in the north entrance and the Commons in an attempt to better direct the increased pedestrian traffic through the building.
The Wisconsin Pharmacy Forum, a consortium of the School, the Pharmacy Society of Wisconsin (PSW), and the Pharmacy Examining Board (PEB), met in March. The entire meeting was dedicated to rural pharmacy workforce and practice issues, an area of growing concern in this state and others. Guests from the WI Rural Health Cooperative, the WI Hospital Association (WHA), UW-LaCrosse, and UW-Milwaukee were invited. Dave Mott (SAS) provided excellent background data about the current numbers of practitioners in rural vs. urban areas and their demographic profile. Marty Kieser (PPD, Experiential Education) also provided data on where our students do their clerkships. We had a far-ranging discussion about numbers of graduates, where they go, why they go where they go, etc. This is one of the continuing threads involving a second school in WI that continues to pick up momentum. I also held a conference call with UW-Madison Provost Farrell, UW-Milwaukee Provost Rita Cheng and Dean of the College of Health Sciences Randy Lambrecht, and CEO of the Aurora System, Nick Turkel, to discuss the nature and extent of potential partnerships between the two campuses to understand and reasonably respond to pharmacy workforce needs in general. I also met with a group in the Wausau area concerned about these same topics. Gary Robb and Colleen Hoerneman from St. Clare's Hospital/Ministry Health Care, Judy Warmuth from WHA, and Lori Weyers, President of Northcentral Technical College came to share their perspectives. More to come on this topic for sure...
At the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) meeting in Atlanta, I hosted a dinner for UW students and faculty who attended the meeting...a wonderful evening. The UW reception for alumni and friends (sponsored jointly by the School, the Pharmacy Alumni Association (PAA), and PSW) was equally terrific, reconnecting with alumni of all descriptions, with a chorus of "Varsity" thrown in for good measure. Thanks to Madelyn Alt (Dean's Office) and Pam French for setting up these important gatherings. SOP alum Dale Wurster received the 2007 Takeru Higuchi Research Prize from APhA this year. Dr. Wurster was unable to attend the Atlanta meeting, but I was able to pass along our congratulations and a wonderful CD about the award (including the extensive history of Dr. Higuchi's time here at the School) put together by UW alum Mike Schwartz, former dean of pharmacy at the University of Florida. I mentioned last month that 4th-year PharmD student, Marie Ganski, received the inaugural Student Good Government Award from PSW. In Atlanta, she also was honored with the national APhA Good Government Student Pharmacist-of-the-Year Award. And while we're on student news, I just learned that 2nd-year PharmD student, Kajua Lor, was selected for an AMCP/FMCP/Pfizer managed care internship this summer, after competing among a national pool of applicants. Outstanding!
I had a nice visit recently with Bonna Robinson, Joe's widow, who really appreciated the DVD of his memorial service held at the School last September. Linda Frei (Graduate Student Services) also prepared a photo album of pictures from Joe's retirement symposium and dinner celebration to accompany the four-DVD set generated at that event. More thanks here for the IIT Group.
I mentioned the extensive coverage of Lenor Zeeh's $1M gift to the Zeeh Pharmaceutical Experiment Station last month. His interview with reporter Doug Moe ran in the Cap Times on March 2...a wonderful story about a wonderful man.
The save the date list includes:
- The next Executive Committee meeting will be held on Tuesday, Apr. 10 at 12:00 in room 1128.
- The second annual Staff Recognition Event has been scheduled for Tuesday, Apr. 17, from 3:00-5:00 in the Commons.
- The School's Board of Visitors will be meeting on Friday, Apr. 20.
- My annual town hall meetings with PharmD and BS students will be held throughout Apr.
- Our spring Faculty/Staff Meeting will be held on May 9 at 3:00 in room 2002.
- The Hooding Ceremony and gala reception (this is an amazing event!) for MS, PhD, and PharmD graduates will be held on Friday, May 18 in the Memorial Union Theater, with graduation occurring later that evening at the Kohl Center. Graduation for the BS Pharm/Tox students will occur Saturday morning, followed by brunch with the students and family members immediately after.
- Nominations from division chairs for faculty to stand for election to the Academic Planning Council (APC) and the Faculty Activities Review Committee, as well as to serve as faculty representative to the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) and faculty liaison to the School's Board of Visitors, are requested by May 15.
Wow...sorry about the length. Best wishes on the remainder of the semester and enjoy spring break! Jeanette