Theme 2: Education—2017 Update

Note: This is an archived version of the 2017 progress review and update to Leading Change: Strategic Plan 2015–2022 (originally 2015–2020).

Back to current: Theme 2: Education

Theme 2 in Leading Change: Strategic Plan 2015–2020 is:

Education: preparing leaders who think critically, work across fields, and lead in rapidly changing marketplaces

Goals

  1. Produce a distinguished, professionally skilled, and compassionate PharmD graduate, with an unmatched scientific mindset

  2. Improve teaching and learning through continuous evaluation

  3. Expose our PharmD students to the medication challenges of the world

  4. Expose our PhD students* and postdoctoral scholars to new ideas and directions

  5. Build new and unique educational partnerships

  6. Clarify the links in our curricula between basic science and the medication needs of patients

Changes to theme in 2017

*PhD programs administered by the School: Bioengineering, Bioinformatics pathway, Biophysics, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics

Goal 1: Produce a distinguished, professionally skilled, and compassionate PharmD graduate, with an unmatched scientific mindset

2.1.1

Move forward seamlessly with curriculum transformation … by creating, supporting, and implementing structured curriculum design and rollout processes.

Driver: Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH

With: Education Leadership Team, Education Policy Committee

Progress to 2017

The process to create and roll out a new PharmD curriculum for students entering the program in 2018 is complete as of May 2016. Curriculum development milestones to January 2017 include the following.

June 2014

School wide curriculum retreat that addressed the question, “What kind of graduate do we want to produce?”

August 2014

A curriculum planning team, called the Design, Resource, Integration, Visioning, Execution (DRIVE) team formed to oversee the creation of a blueprint proposal for the new curriculum.

February 2015

Curriculum Design Work Groups were established to create the blueprint proposal for the new curriculum.

June 2015 and January 2016

The blueprint proposal for the new curriculum was released for discussion by the faculty and incrementally endorsed in June 2015 and January 2–16 respectively.

March 2016

The DRIVE team retired.

May 2016

A new curriculum planning team, called CTT (Curriculum Transformation Team) formed with the appointment of curriculum planning leads.

Aug-Sep 2016

The CTT created procedures for how decisions are to be made during the design and rollout process. Timelines and action item lists were created covering all areas of the design, build, and rollout of the curriculum itself and all mechanisms needed to support the curriculum (space, scheduling, student well-being, faculty and staff well-being, faculty development, student monitoring, etc.); Staff leaders who were overseeing curriculum support areas joined the CTT team.

2.1.2

Begin the transformation of the curriculum … by immediately and continually instituting necessary changes.

Drivers: Education Policy Committee

With: Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH; Education Leadership Team

Progress to 2017

In September 2016 a new Education Policy Committee (EPC) chair was appointed and membership was reconfigured to make a leaner committee. Bylaw were updated. The incorporation of students into the EPC was changed to more efficiently gather data around student concerns and questions of current courses.

2.1.3

Heighten the clinical relevance of the curriculum … by immediately introducing real-life practice and patient experiences and cases from the first day of the first year of class.

Driver: Valerie Clinard, PharmD; Education Policy Committee

With: Education Leadership Team, Experiential Science and Practice Committee (Inquiry and Exploration)

Progress to 2017

Our Introductory to Pharmacy Practice Experiences began in winter quarter of the first year of the current PharmD curriculum; in winter 2016, first-year students were placed in community pharmacy settings for a longitudinal experience.

2.1.4

Make interprofessional and team practice a natural outgrowth of the curriculum … by integrating shared group learning across all UCSF professional degree programs.

Driver: Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH; Cathi Dennehy, PharmD; Kirby Lee, PharmD, MAS

With: Education Leadership Team, Education Policy Committee

Progress to 2017

In the first and second years of the current PharmD curriculum (for students entering in 2017 and before) students now participate in didactic learning with students from the other UCSF professional degree programs. The topics are the core principles of interprofessional engagement. In the third and fourth years of the current curriculum, PharmD students on rotations in Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences participate on interprofessional patient care teams.

2.1.5

Take advantage of the novel research in the School … by consistently exposing our students to new research ideas and directions.

Drivers: Education Policy Committee

With: Education Leadership Team, Frontiers in Science and Practice in Therapeutics Committee (Inquiry and Exploration)

Progress to 2017

In fall 2015 and spring 2016, a research pilot seminar series course called “Frontiers” was introduced to current PharmD students. The seminars were well received, and as a result, this format is being integrated into the new curriculum for students entering the PharmD program in 2018 and beyond.

2.1.6

Instill in students the roles they can play in health policy, advocacy, and population health … by incorporating these concepts throughout the curriculum, exposing students to agents of change, and encouraging students to experience their own advocacy potential firsthand.

Driver: Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH

With: Education Leadership Team, Education Policy Committee

Progress to 2017

Students have ample opportunity to be exposed to these concepts in our co-curriculum program launched in September 2016 as a new accreditation standard for the doctor of pharmacy degree program. Our current curriculum has a core course in health policy and electives in leadership. These opportunities and content will be integrated into the new curriculum.

2.1.7

Create core competencies shared by all UCSF health professions graduates … by collaborating with campus education leaders.

Driver: Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH

With: Education Leadership Team, Education Policy Committee

Progress to 2017

A Program for Interprofessional Practice and Education at UCSF has been under way, with full engagement of the School of Pharmacy, for the past four years.

Goal 2: Improve teaching and learning through continuous evaluation

2.2.1

Improve our use of education technologies … by applying and evaluating new education tools, technologies, and methods.

Driver: Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH; Rebecca Miller, MS

With: Education Policy Committee

Progress to 2017

The evaluation of our current education technologies is ongoing. Our Office of Education and Instructional Services staff is working at the School and campus levels to create efficiencies and garner central campus support for education technology. A large campus project, in collaboration with colleagues in the dental and nursing schools, is the Shared Education Data Solutions due to launch October 2017.

2.2.2

Improve our teaching … by expanding and reinforcing the continual development of faculty teaching skills and assessing success.

Driver: Education Policy Committee

With: Education Leadership Team

Progress to 2017

The Education Policy Committee has taken a more active role in providing faculty and students with information to improve current courses and to reinforce to students that their comments and concerns are listened to and acted upon by faculty members. Funding has been provided to begin faculty development training opportunities for faculty members—from teaching methods, to assessments, to curriculum design. A faculty development training was attended by Curriculum Transformation Team and Office of Education and Instructional Services staff in November 2016.

Goal 3: Expose our PharmD students to the medication challenges of the world

2.3.1

Increase the quality of global health experiences available to our student pharmacists … by establishing criteria and prioritizing the nature of our global education collaborations.

Driver: Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH

With: Rebecca Miller, MS; Education Policy Committee

Progress to 2017

Currently students and residents participate in established global experiences supervised by faculty members. As of January 2017, the School does not have an overall education plan for global involvement.

2.3.2

Demonstrate the global reach of pharmacy practice … by purposefully integrating global health concepts into all appropriate coursework.

Drivers:; Curriculum Transformation Team; Education Policy Committee

With: Education Leadership Team

Progress to 2017

Currently students in the current doctor of pharmacy curriculum can pursue an emphasis in global health. These concepts will be integrated into the new curriculum. Students interested in global health are encouraged to participate in the Global Health 101 elective, which is interprofessional.

Goal 4: Expose PhD students* and postdoctoral scholars to new ideas and directions

*PhD programs administered by the School: Bioengineering, Bioinformatics pathway, Biophysics, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics

2.4.1

Expand the unique interdisciplinary curriculum of School-administered graduate programs … by building new ties to the physical, engineering, and therapeutic sciences at neighboring institutions.

Driver: Tejal Desai, PhD

With: Kathy Giacomini, PhD; Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences faculty; PhD program directors

Progress to 2017

We successfully renewed the bioengineering training grant to the joint graduate program between UCSF and UC Berkeley for five years of new funding, and held discussions with San Francisco State University and the University of San Francisco regarding potential collaborations.

2.4.2

Respond to future needs in big data science, bioengineering, integrative therapeutics research, and precision medicine … by leading the development of innovative programs in partnership with industry.

Driver: Patricia Babbitt, PhD; Esteban G. Burchard, MD, MPH; Tejal Desai, PhD; Kathy Giacomini, PhD; Deanna Kroetz, PhD

With: Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences and Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry faculties; Institute for Computational Health Sciences; PhD and postdoctoral program directors; UCSF-Stanford CERSI

Progress to 2017

To meet the future needs of big data science and precision medicine, we have been actively participating in various large-scale whole genome sequencing projects, such as the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine project. In these projects, we continue our effort to increase the diversity of the study populations and include under-represented populations in disease and pharmacogenetics research. We also collaborated with Stanford University and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to become an analysis center in National Human Genome Research Institute’s Genome Sequencing Project. We are in progress of developing web-based platform to analyze “big data” for admixed population (see Section 1.3.3). See objective 1.3.

Goal 5: Build new and unique educational partnerships.

2.5.1

Create new coursework in regulatory science … by working in partnership with Stanford University through the new UCSF-Stanford CERSI to offer online training, certificate, and degree programs.

Driver: Kathy Giacomini, PhD

With: Russ Altman, PhD (Stanford University); industry partners; U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Progress to 2017

A Certificate of Completion Course has been established in regulatory sciences as well as two courses at UCSF. In addition, our CERSI educational team is working with Shuvo Roy, PhD, to establish a new course and to consider a track in regulatory sciences in the Masters of Translational Medicine program.

2.5.2

Sustain a robust Master of Translational Medicine program … by working in partnership with UC Berkeley, expanding the cohort to 35, and recruiting more PharmDs and MDs in addition to engineers and basic scientists.

Drivers: Tejal Desai, PhD; Shuvo Roy, PhD

Progress to 2017

We conducted a curriculum review with input from Masters of Translational Medicine program alumni, teaching faculty, project sponsors, and potential and actual employers. This review lead to refinement of the capstone project class format as well as development of new courses focusing on drug development and clinical trial design.

Goal 6: Clarify the links in our curricula between basic science and the medication needs of patients

2.6.1

Increase understanding between the School’s basic science and clinical faculty members about how their work intersects … by creating a formal faculty exchange program that places the science faculty in complicated medication management situations with faculty pharmacists and places faculty pharmacists in relevant basic science research discussions.

Driver: Sharon L. Youmans, PharmD, MPH

With: Education Leadership Team

Progress to 2017

An “exchange” program is a work in progress.

2.6.2

Increase the interdisciplinary exposure of physicians and other providers to pharmacy practice … by creating pharmacist-coordinated experiences for UCSF medical interns and residents in pharmacy practice settings, such as the UCSF MedList Clinic.

Driver: Valerie Clinard, PharmD

With: Education Leadership Team, Education Policy Committee

Progress to 2017

The UCSF MedList Clinic is no longer in existence; other ambulatory care pharmacy initiatives have evolved, based on the principles of the MedList Clinic (e.g., patients having an accurate medication list).

Two initiatives are under way involving interdisciplinary exposure of providers.

  1. Clinical Microsystems
    This involves first-year medical and pharmacy students working together to solve real-world health system problems and clinical services (e.g., the 48-hour discharge phone call program; experience of first-year medical students in the Medication Outcomes Center).

  2. School of Pharmacy and School of Dentistry strategic initiatives fund project
    This is an interprofessional education experience in the dental school’s Oral Medicine Clinic to result in an accurate medication list for oral medicine patients. School of Pharmacy faculty members Judie Tran, PharmD; Valerie Clinard, PharmD; and Marilyn Stebbins, PharmD are working with dentistry to institute a new workflow whereby second- and third-year pharmacy students partner with third-year dental students to conduct a medication review prior to a patient’s appointment, so the patient has an accurate medication list coming into the clinic visit.

Changes to theme in 2017

  1. The DRIVE (Design, Resource, Integration, Visioning, Execution) retired in March 2016. Objectives that were the responsibility of DRIVE were reassigned by Vice Dean Sharon L. Youmans

  2. Reworded Goal 1 to reflect the evolving distinguishing characteristics of the UCSF PharmD graduate

  3. Reassigned objectives to new faculty/staff drivers in light of appointments, hires, departures

See original

Go to: Leading Change: Strategic Plan 2015–2020