Members of the UWSOP CI Guidance Team shared their thoughts about the Pharmacy Curricular Innovation Panel event on May 17th, where we had the pleasure of hosting and hearing insights from honored guests from four outstanding pharmacy research and teaching institutions. Dr. Tina Brock from the UCSF School of Pharmacy, Dr. Scott Singleton from the UNC Eschelman School of Pharmacy, Dr. Susan Stein from Pacific University School of Pharmacy, and Dr. Gundy Sweet from the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy summarized their institutions’ curricular models, change and selection rationale, outcomes, and key insights in short presentations and a panel discussion where they took questions from the audience. Afterwards, they also joined our guidance team at an executive session, to share more insights and brainstorm ideas.
At our next Guidance Team meeting, we debriefed the visit and shared some of our thoughts on similarities and differences in these programs, how they related to insights from the recent curricular changes at the UW School of Medicine and School of Dentistry, and the potential applicability to our own program here at the UWSOP, including:
- How to incorporate ways to include student progress assessment, educational remediation, and performance milestones into a new program to promote a dynamic, responsive pharmacy education and training opportunity
- Full vs. hybrid models of practice/residency requirements for students
- Degree options (PhD, PharmD, MPH, MBA, dual degree tracks, emphasis areas, etc.)
- Pragmatic considerations on the impacts that the curriculum changes and design will have on faculty and students (student workload/satisfaction, faculty job satisfaction), and how that is ultimately crucial to success of a new program
- Issues of strategic course oversight, including how to create transparency across courses to allow for all course content creators to have full knowledge of other courses in terms of content/prereqs/outcomes, to avoid redundancy or create consistency, and how to create a logical progression or threading through courses that share dependencies
- How curriculum design (including different educational approaches such as active/didactic/Socratic learning) can accommodate different learning styles, personalities, etc.
- What unique contributions to pharmacy education can the UWSOP provide, and how we are uniquely positioned (i.e., to partner with some of the top researchers and health care institutions in the nation)
The Guidance Team also discussed specifics of the June 3rd Northwest Pharmacist Conference where the UWSOP will conduct a focus group session among attending Pharmacy students and practitioners.
At our next meeting, we will be hearing from guidance team member Dr. Katie Taylor from the UW College of Education on the topic of adult learning and her insights as to special considerations for the UWSOP.