Town Hall: PharmD Updates

Kathy Giacomini

I think I can truly say good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our Spring Town Hall for the School of Pharmacy in 2024.

Kathy Giacomini

So today we've got a pretty exciting agenda. I'm going to give an update, and then we're going to hear about two new pipeline programs, one headed by Sharon Youmans and the other by Igor Mitrovic. And they'll describe those pipeline programs, which we're all excited to launch. And then next, we're going to hear about new reorganization in our educational unit, which will advance our PharmD curriculum, we think in a better way than it's been done before. And then finally, we're going to end with a wonderful panel discussion on how we increase our applications and matriculation into our PharmD program. And we'll present some data there. And these are the experts in that area, and then we'll take Q&A.

Kathy Giacomini

So my announcements? Well, we are—in 2016 we were ranked number 3 by U.S. News and World Report in 2020. They rank pharmacy schools every four years. So in 2020, we were ranked number two and we have maintained our number two ranking, and we're very happy with that. We're the number one ranked school by US News and World Report pharmacy in the state of California. Just a quick little update something I didn't know until I became dean, that U.S. News and World Report rankings for schools of pharmacy are based exclusively on votes from other schools of pharmacy and each school of pharmacy—and there are about 140 of them in the country—has four votes. So it's very important that our faculty maintain their high visibility at all sorts of pharmacy meetings and pharmacy events and we've been doing a great job of going to American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, ASHP, etc. That's how we stay in people's minds. All right. Strategic Plan so I'm or— [silence during inaudible dialogue from Les Benet]

Kathy Giacomini

Yeah, all right. Les Benet has just said we do not do a good job at APhA, so we need change there. So, Les, I'll put you in charge of the APhA [laughter], and we will move forward with APhA.

Kathy Giacomini

Yeah, I think it's true. Although in Orlando—were you in Orlando this year at APhA? You were there? Sharon was there right? Sharon was there.

Kathy Giacomini

Okay. All right. Yeah, we got to get—we should do more APhA.

Kathy Giacomini

Yeah, well, we're gonna do better, Les. All right. Um, so I have arranged my talking points around our strategic plan themes and goals that we developed last year. So this one and you'll see it in the lower right hand corner, left hand corner. So this one's related to education. This is going to be the subject of our panel discussion. As you can see, our income and class size has maintained from last year to this year, but we need to have more applicants. And we want to brainstorm about how we can do that.

Kathy Giacomini

I had described last year and maybe last time about our new proposed master's degree program in artificial intelligence and computational drug discovery and drug development. And we are now—it's got approved through Joanne Chun as well as Michelle Wang. Those are the two key faculty members. It has been approved and they're accepting applications. This is already out of date. Joanne told me this morning they're at 60. So we're moving up in terms of the number of applications. Application deadline doesn't close until May 1, so we'll see what we get and will matriculate our first class in the fall. Our residency matches have continued to be at a very high rate. UCSF is shown in the left hand panel, and it's followed next to it by—what is it?—UC San Diego and over there by—what is that?—USC? So we're showing very high match rates to residency programs consistent with our outstanding PharmD curriculum and program—education program.

Kathy Giacomini

A lot of faculty have been recognized. We sent out notes to the chairs that tell me the faculty that have received awards this year. And this is from Pharm Chem. So you can see that we have a lot of Pharm Chem faculty receiving all sorts of prestigious awards, including Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher, etc. So we've got a lot of well known faculty that keep everything going.

Kathy Giacomini

This is in Clinical Pharmacy. A number of them have won local as well as regional and national awards as well. So you're celebrating our pharmacy faculty and, again, this kind of—

Kathy Giacomini

These awards give recognition to our faculty, but they also recognize the School of Pharmacy which is also very important for us.

Kathy Giacomini

Here's a particular one that we just received, the AACP Award for Excellence in Assessment. And we've got Katherine Gruenberg, Yuki Watanabe, Laura Armstrong, and Jaekyu Shin. And so I want to congratulate them that is a fabulous award. We should give them a hand.

Kathy Giacomini

And Rada Savic just brought in a fabulous NIH grant focused on tuberculosis regimens. And that is over $30 million from NIH, so that was just awarded. So that's also—yeah, Rada!

Kathy Giacomini

What about staff? We have a number of new staff shown here in our three departments. I'm just checking to see if Sahru—Sahru you count as a new staff even though you've been around. So we have a lot of new staff here that have joined us, and I want to welcome the staff to our school and hope you find a very happy place there. So let's give a hand.

Kathy Giacomini

And I would be remiss if I didn't say we've got outstanding students. We won the 28th annual ASHP skills—clinical skills competition with 133 teams from 133 schools of pharmacy. We placed number one! I mean our students, unbelievable!

Kathy Giacomini

And for the second year in a row, we won the Industry Pharmacists Organizations Value of Industry Pharmacist Case Competition, second year we won that and that's also competing with a lot of schools of pharmacy. That, to me, highlights the diversity of our training program that we can win clinical skills and industry, both of them with our students, so they're fabulous.

Kathy Giacomini

I want to say something about our alumni. So I spent the weekend with some of you. I think I saw you there, Conan, so there were some people there at Alumni Weekend and a lot of alums. And so that was great. I want to thank LeeAnn Mutchler and Brigid was there, Brigid Riley, she had me meeting with all different alums. That was great. And Lucy Saldana has been our chair this year, so I want to thank her. And that's me with some of the award winners. So that's also great.

Kathy Giacomini

All right, these are our new pathway programs which you're going to hear about them from Sharon and from Igor, in a few minutes. I want to get close to the ending here, yes, here I want to say we're going to have a tribute the day after commencement, which is 16th of May, to Les Benet. And Les Benet, we are honoring Les Benet for all his many years of work all his great work that he's done, great research, what he's done for our School of Pharmacy, and his birthday as well. So everybody should RSVP and attend that. And we will—it's kind of a spoiler alert, but we'll be possibly announcing a professorship in his name [laughter] at that, so congratulations, Les, for that.

Kathy Giacomini

I think I want to end by telling you that we're having our retreat finally scheduled, hopefully, we will not change the date. But on September 16, the focus of the retreat will be on two things. One, the living, breathing strategic plan that we keep making progress on. So we are going to look at that plan and make decisions on whether it needs alterations, or whether we're going to stay the course for the different areas in our strategic plan. And two, and very importantly, AI. And that is being organized a bit by Tanja Kortemme. I know. Conan is also organizing that. Sam Hawgood has agreed to come and give the keynote speech—lecture—on AI. think he's learned a lot about AI in the last year. And then we'll have we'll have lightning talks—what are we going to have? It should be a fun retreat. And then of course, a poster session for students and a reception. So it should be fun. And it'll be right over here at Mission Bay. So those conclude my remarks. Am I allowed to ask for questions? There's probably no questions.

Kathy Giacomini

No, there's no questions. [laughter]

Kathy Giacomini

All right. So I'm now turning it over to Sahru—I think?—to let Sharon present her recording.

Sharon Youmans

Good afternoon, everyone. I am very excited to present our new Pharm tech to PharmD program.

Sharon Youmans

Under the leadership of Dean Giacomini, this program is funded by a grant from the California Health Care Foundation. The program is an exciting opportunity for the school to provide an alternative pathway to those who are currently working as a pharmacy technician and may be thinking about becoming a pharmacist. I have the honor and privilege to serve as the program's director.

Sharon Youmans

The program is a response to the need to increase the workforce with those from historically underrepresented and economically and socially disadvantaged communities. As an example, as you can see on this slide, Hispanics make up 39% of California's population, 51% of pharmacy technicians, but only 5% of pharmacists. The program is designed to provide information so that those interested can make informed decisions and determine their readiness to apply to pharmacy school. The program will consist of a variety of seminars on the diverse career paths for pharmacists, information on our admissions process, and in-person event at our UCSF campus, and other events to be determined. Each participants readiness to apply to pharmacy school will be assessed, particularly with respect to the prerequisite courses. Participants will be recruited primarily from the Central Valley and Northern California. There are no academic requirements and no costs to participate in this program. We will have an advisory council comprised of faculty, alums, preceptors, staff, and students. We are in the very early stages, and our timeline is to make applications available for our first cohort in March of 2025. This is a one-year program and a plan to follow participants for three years. We welcome any ideas or suggestions that you may have for marketing, recruitment, contacts, and/or fundraising ideas. Feel free to email me with questions or suggestions. And finally, I am excited about this proactive community outreach initiative. I do believe that for most people, they don't do or they can't do because they don't know how or what to do. This program will provide information that is powerful and transformative. It is our desire that for many, we can make possible what may seem impossible. Thank you for your attention.

Igor Mitrovic

Okay, well, thank you for having me here to talk about something that we've been working on with UC Merced. So, as some of you know, UCSF School of Medicine has started JVC PRIME+ program with UCSF Merced. And I've been part of that program … organizing the bachelor's part of that program. And as I was working on this, working with colleagues from Merced being clear that there's no reason for us not to do something along the lines with our for the pharmacy, particularly given the fact that Merced has been established there because this area is severely underserved.

Igor Mitrovic

Access to care—to health care—is very poor. And, as we heard from Sharon, a number of pharmacists in—that are coming from those communities—is very, very low. So, what we decided to do is essentially to try and set the program—and I've already shared a little bit about this—but the program is going to be UCSF, UC Merced to UCSF, Bachelors of Science to PharmD program. We're going to have five students from San Joaquin Valley.

Igor Mitrovic

We are going to be targeting senior high school students and first-year students at UC Merced. They are going to spend three years at UC Merced taking their classes for bachelor's degree program and then matriculate if they maintain the academic performances. We could preset— [Igor moves closer to the microphone]—as we preset.

Igor Mitrovic

They will matriculate to our PharmD program. They will get their bachelors of science degree after they finish our first year because UC Merced does not grant any BS degrees with three years. So we are working with them to actually make this a possibility and at the end of the first year, they're gonna get their bachelor's degree at UC Merced. And what we're going to do for these students is actually guaranteed and rotations at our Fresno program. Since these are only five students that shouldn't represent a problem. We will also continue to work with UC Merced to increase the number of students who are regular program from the UC Merced. So, as Sharon has nicely shared with you, we have thanks to our dean managed to secure funds to support this program, $426,000 for three years. $100,000 each year is going to go to Merced for the services because major work is actually going to be done by them. So on our end, we will not have to do too much work. So where are we now? We have actually already started. We have lead faculty and PI administratively, Dr. Ryan Baxter there.

Igor Mitrovic

He is recruiting a program administrator and three committee members. This is going to be done by the end of June. Here at UCSF, I will be the faculty lead. We have also Joanne Chun who has already moved her program through—master's program—and she has plenty of experience of how to do that. So we've already had a meeting Joanne, Ryan, and I, so we are working on that. We also have a program administrator and two faculty committees and these are just some milestones to see where we are. We have already as I said started moving in the right direction. By December 1 our hope is that we will have the program ready to go to Academic Senate both here and Merced. And hopefully by July or August will have the program approved. This is actually timeline that Joanne thinks is feasible. And then we're going to—that fall ’25 start actually taking first applications we're going to work with our admissions team with Robert and Joel, who are going to be included with [?] in this and then we should have our first students starting in Merced in 2026. So, that's it from me. I'm exceedingly excited about this program, and I'm hoping that you're all going to participate with it. We're gonna need some faculty, and please help us in any way you can. Thank you. [silence while question is taken from Les Benet in the audience]

Igor Mitrovic

We have not contacted them to have them not oppose this. Why do you think so? [silence during inaudible dialogue from audience]

Igor Mitrovic

Yeah, we will— [silence during inaudible dialogue from Les Benet in the audience]

Igor Mitrovic

—that's an interesting point, Les. I have to say, I didn't think about that. I have to say that there is a precedent: medical school is doing that already, and there's pretty much no issue for them so. [silence during inaudible dialogue from audience]

Igor Mitrovic

and we don't so. [silence during inaudible dialogue from audience]

Igor Mitrovic

Yeah. [silence during inaudible dialogue from audience]

Igor Mitrovic

Oh, the question is: did we did we actually get in touch with Irvine and San Diego because they may be opposing this program on the grounds that we are doing that without them and they have pharmacy schools? And as Kathy said, they have undergrad—we don't. And Medical School has already done this thing with UC Merced. And there are more medical schools than pharmacy schools in UC system. So we don't anticipate any issues around that. So thank you, Les. [silence during inaudible dialogue from audience]

Igor Mitrovic

I think it's around five to six, but Joel? [silence during inaudible dialogue from audience]

Igor Mitrovic

Okay, so hopefully we're going to be increasing on May 1, I'm going to be there actually talking to their students. I've set up things so hopefully we're going to have even more.

Conan MacDougall

Thank you. [silence during inaudible dialogue from audience]

Conan MacDougall

Okay. Thank you, I'm going to provide an update on some of the progress we've made in really a reorganization of our PharmD education unit. So, just to review, the goals of this reorganization were to have organizational structures that actually reflect the functions of the units, and to have the organization of each unit or the title of each unit reflect what they're actually doing, to address some of the emerging needs that we have with our students and our curriculum, and especially in student professional development, as well as assessment and accreditation, and to strengthen our faculty and staff administrative partnerships, because the relationship between the faculty and staff is really the essential component in making all of our organizational systems work.

Conan MacDougall

So this [shows large orgchart] is a sort of functional description of what our system looks like at this point. So here we have Kathy at the top. And this is again, for our PharmD educational program, not inclusive of the graduate programs. Igor is the Co-Vice Dean for PharmD Education, he will be sort of the big boss and really have a key role in integrating each of the four different functional units. I will somewhat reluctantly retain the role of Co-Vice Dean for PharmD Education because Igor has to go on vacation sometimes.

Conan MacDougall

But most of my administrative work will be as the lead of the new sort of integrated core team, which focuses on our didactic and early education. So our core skills and inquiry programs. I will be doing this in partnership, so all of these units are designed as a partnership between the faculty member and a lead staff member. Alexa Tan will be serving as the lead staff member, until we hire—until we actually create the position here—this will be in an interim capacity, supervising a number of our excellent staff and this unit, including a couple of new folks we have coming on board: Manucher Buicki and Rachel Lynch, who will just be starting next week. And Fran [Aweeka] of course, overseeing inquiry. Our Office of Experiential Education will be sort of spun off into its own independent unit, led, as usual, by Valerie Clinard, and then with James Ferguson as the sort of staff lead, and you will see our various staff personnel that assist with Experiential Education, Judie Tran in charge of IPPEs, and then our various program directors for our different sites in our curriculum.

Conan MacDougall

The assessment and accreditation team, we're happy to announce that Dr. Jaekyu Shin has assumed a role as associate dean for assessment and accreditation, so, providing that faculty lead working alongside Yuki Watanabe, who has already been doing a great job along with Laura [Armstrong] and providing us, you know, the data we really need and the perspectives we need for our curriculum.

Conan MacDougall

And then now our Office of Student Affairs, renamed Student Affairs from Office of Student and Curricular Affairs, since that sort of curriculum component hasn't really been a big function of that unit for a while. And I am happy to sort of reveal today that the position of associate dean for student affairs has been accepted by Dr. Tram Cat. So she's back here [in the audience].

Conan MacDougall

So she will of course—the purpose of this role is to work alongside and expand what Pam [Schultz] has been able to do and everything she's been able to accomplish in her leadership role. So this is really meant to provide a partnership between these two folks to expand the needs that we increasingly find that our students have, and to help them really, especially in professional development, which is one of the things that Tram is very interested in. And then you can see, of course, our excellent staff noted here from our admissions unit, which you'll hear about soon, as well as our other sort of student life units, as well as our advisors.

Conan MacDougall

So again, some of these pieces will still take a while to fully put in place. Tram, as you'll see has a couple jobs—there's a bunch people on this thing that have a couple jobs—and we are try—doing our best to make sure everyone only has one job. But some of those will be coming. We will be hiring a new faculty member for Tram's position as director of experiential education for the [San Francisco Bay Area Program]. So she won't be able to fully assume all of her responsibilities in Student Affairs until she's able to do that, but we hope to give her a little bit of a taste. So I will—is there a question? Yeah. [audience member asks question from chat inaudibly]

Conan MacDougall

Yeah, this doesn't live anywhere, partly—yet. Oh, yeah. The question was, where does this document [orgchart] live? It doesn't yet live anywhere partly because this is a little bit of a hybrid document that doesn't necessarily report/reflect exactly like reporting structures. So we've got folks like, we've got Marley [but he pointed to Marisol Fratovitch] here who's in Clinical Pharmacy, and so, wouldn't report directly up through that. But we wanted to provide a functional unit.

Conan MacDougall

But we will be updating the website and other places with the like official functional or the official organization. But we wanted to provide a snapshot of: What does this actually look like in terms of people's daily business? But good question, and that will be put up. Okay. And now I'm being booted. [silence a few seconds while Conan steps down and Joel steps up]

Joel W. Gonzales

Thank you, Conan.

Joel W. Gonzales

So my name is Joel Gonzalez. I'm the Director of Admissions. And before we get started, I just want to thank the dean and the leadership team for elevating outreach and recruitment, and matriculation to our program, to a schoolwide initiative.

Joel W. Gonzales

We—if anybody is familiar with sort of this landscape of pharmacy admissions—you know, that it's been quite challenging for almost a decade in terms of the number of applications and number of applicants, the number of pharmacy schools opening. And so, you know, to have this burden of recruitment and outreach on just a handful of people has been quite challenging over the past couple of years. And so we've benefited by the new leadership in the school to really help us understand this a lot better and to kind of bring other people into the fold. And in doing this, I just want to thank the dean for that.

Joel W. Gonzales

So before we get started, I just want to kind of lay a little bit of groundwork: In terms of traditional methods that we do for outreach, trust me, we have this completely covered. Things like pre-pharmacy student organization connections, undergraduate career and pre-health fairs and events, both in Northern California and the Southern California pre-pharmacy symposiums, we have a major presence in California.

Joel W. Gonzales

I'm always on admissions panels throughout the state. Our approach is very high-touch, meaning we really, really interact closely with anyone who has expressed an interest in our program. And so we really define ourselves as a high-touch program.

Joel W. Gonzales

And then finally, we—through the pandemic, we really, really learned and took advantage of—giving monthly information sessions, as well as student panels, really tapping into the opportunity to reach students not only who are out of the area, but also out of state.

Joel W. Gonzales

Just to kind of give you a brief background of sort of the last 10 days of our outreach efforts: Last Wednesday, we had an online information session. On Saturday, I was in Southern California for the pre-pharmacy symposium. The same day our outreach and recruitment coordinator, Lauren [Anderson], was at University of Nevada, Reno, for a pre-health conference. On Thursday night, I presented at UC Santa Barbara's pre-pharmacy society. On Wednesday night, Lauren was at the UCLA pre-health fair. She would have been here but her flight is delayed coming home. Next week, we will be at CSU Long Beach health professions fair. We have a representative at UC Santa Cruz graduate school fair, as well as presence at Chabot Community College health career day.

Joel W. Gonzales

So we got the traditional methods under control with our staff. Where we need help is how do we tap into untapped, unique student populations that may not be part of that pre-pharmacy pipeline? How do we engage a larger group of our stakeholders to recruit? So students, faculty, staff, who are outside of admissions and recruitment specifically.

Joel W. Gonzales

And then finally, you know, how do we redefine what a PharmD is, or can do? And this is something that the academy is challenged with, we heard it for many years, in terms of really, really putting information out there that gives prospective students and people who were in the health professions a better idea of really what you can do with a PharmD degree.

Joel W. Gonzales

So that being said, We've assembled a group of members of our community to give us some input and their perspective on what we can do better and what we can do that we may not be doing currently. So in the interest of time, I'm going to have just each of the panelists introduce themselves when they begin answering their first question. And so we're gonna go ahead and start, and the question I have is, are there opportunities to reach and cultivate prospective students, the school has not yet tapped, and we'll begin with Igor.

Igor Mitrovic

Okay, thank you, Joel. Thank you for everything you do. And your team. It's really truly remarkable. I am Igor Mitrovic, professor of physiology and co-vice dean with Conan. And so one thing that I have experienced that—lately, I've been actually sort of working with Merced and a few other places—I've been struck by how little students who are in college know what pharmacy as a profession is. So that, I think, is our huge, huge, huge barrier. Most of them, when I start talking, know—even people who are in pre-pharmacy—know, CVSes and Walgreens of the world, but when you start talking to them to them about clinical pharmacy, about industry opportunities, government opportunities—none of them know.

Igor Mitrovic

So I think us, as faculty, at least covering Northern California, which is not too far to travel by car, and getting into classroom, rather than working with pre-pharmacy kids, who already kind of know what they want to do. This is what I think that we should try to work on. And this is one thing that I'm working [on] with people in Merced.

Joel W. Gonzales

Robert?

Robert Chalkley

So I'm Robert Chalkley, and I'm chair of the admissions committee for [the] PharmD program. So it's gonna be along the same sort of theme. So, pharmacy as a career, for some reason, has dipped in popularity. So these U.S. News & World Reports, if you look, 10 years ago, pharmacy was seen as top five job to do. Now it's 60-something, and in a few previous years, it's dropped out of the top 100. So for some reason, pharmacy used to be very attractive, and now students don't see it as attractive. So we need some sort of PR exercise to say what a pharmacist actually does, and particularly beyond working in CVS, which is, as Igor says, what most people know of pharmacists. And so we need to sell what are the career paths we can go down by having a PharmD.

Robert Chalkley

How you can go into research, the high-touch, and how you really interact with patients. So people who are interested in pre-health, they're automatically pushed towards, say, a doctor, because they think that's a very prestigious career. And we need to sell that pharmacy is equally prestigious.

Joel W. Gonzales

Thank you. Katherine.

Katherine Gee

Hi, I'm Katherine, I'm a current student at the School of Pharmacy. Also, a little perspective to my answers: I am from out of state. So I think something that really helped for me was, I did initially look at that U.S. [News & World] Report when I was looking at my list of schools just to think. But something else is that, as a student, I didn't really know what a pharmacist does beyond like CVS, Walgreens, everything that was said before, and a lack of pre-pharmacy society even at my school made it a lot harder. So maybe getting in touch with things like pre-health offices, giving them things where they can inform—here are all the different occupations, all the different ways, and if you're interested in this, this is what a school is known for, like, UCSF: birthplace of clinical pharmacy, really great place if you're interested in industry. Giving like a list of resources, so not only boosting for UCSF specifically, but just making sure that people know what a pharmacist is, what they do, and just how far they can take their career.

Joel W. Gonzales

Thank you. And then we're joined online by Tiffany.

Tiffany Pon

Hi, everyone. I'm Tiffany Pon. I sit on the executive admissions panel, I'm [an] associate professor in the Department of Clinical Pharmacy. Kind of echoing what Igor and Robert have already said, but in terms of ideas for what we could do, I am on service now in the hospital. I practice at UC Davis Medical Center, which is why I'm not there in person, so I apologize for that. But one of the programs that UC Davis had started, and unfortunately had sunsetted—this was the last year—was called Prep Medico. And what they did is they partnered with Kaiser to reach out to high school students or really, actually, undergrad students, and not just within UC Davis, but within schools kind of in the region in the Bay Area. And they targeted LatinX students and trying to get exposure to them to the health professions field, and they actually included pharmacy in this, and while most of the students were interested in the physician pathway, when they got coupled with us in the pharmacy department, they realized that they didn't know anything about pharmacy. [laughs]

Tiffany Pon

So I think outreach should definitely you know, start in that undergrad period, but also even earlier than that. So the high school students. And so that's something that we're trying to do with our residents here in terms of community outreach, is trying to get the word out about what pharmacy is and being involved in the community, and showing them what sorts of things we are able to do.

Tiffany Pon

Thank you. And so the next question, we'll start with you, Tiff. How can faculty, current students, and alums assist in our outreach efforts? Or even beyond that, what is the role of all of these stakeholders in being a part of the admissions and outreach process?

Tiffany Pon

Yeah, I think there—it's gonna be a multifaceted approach. I think, you know, as I had mentioned, the Prep Medico program at UC Davis, I think that's something that some faculty can look into funding for, with a pharmacy-specific focus, right? Reaching out to these different schools and partnering with these schools to gain exposure. And these students spent entire summer like rotating through different fields and being paired with different clinicians in different settings to really get a sense. And I had a student who was interested in nursing. And the reason why she was interested in nursing was because her parents told her that was a really good job, and it paid well. And then she told me she didn't, was afraid to touch patients. And I was like, "Well, let me tell you about pharmacy." [laughs]

Tiffany Pon

So I think utilizing that, and thinking about creative ways to get funding, perhaps to reach out to these groups. And then also leveraging, like you said, our alumni, and leveraging our perhaps our residency, teaching cohorts, when they have to do these teaching certificate programs, requiring them to do a little bit of community outreach to these younger populations, so that we can, you know, instill an idea of what pharmacy really is in high school students and even beyond that.

Joel W. Gonzales

Thank you. Katherine, what about you? How can current students and even young alums become more involved in these efforts to recruit students?

Katherine Gee

Yeah, I think a lot of the things are, as pharmacy students, our schedules are very busy. But I think if there's a way to set up a structured program, where there's regular sort of outreach events, or students are aware of it at least like a month out, so that they can kind of schedule out, I know, a lot of us are working. And in addition, like encouraging them, like, hey, maybe go out and speak to like your undergrad, like pre-pharm or reach out to the pre-health office, and, you know, kind of going out informing people that way. I know, there's also some outreach to like, I think, elementary—I'm not quite sure—high schools, where students kind of go there, and they do teaching for science. I think that could also be an excellent pipeline where they can let them know what it's like to be a pharmacy student, as they're in their different areas of their journey, where they might have a different perspective from people who are current faculty, or who are currently serving as like pharmacists as like presidents, or practicing in like hospital ambulatory care, whatever.

Joel W. Gonzales

Thank you.

Robert Chalkley

So as a representative of the basic science side of things, so...we're going to conferences and presenting, and we probably don't emphasize the fact that we're in a school of pharmacy, and, and so selling the fact that, you know, you can be doing research and be in a school of pharmacy, and, bridge that gap, I think, is a very important thing. Because obviously a lot of people go into these basic sciences are in schools of medicine, and so to sell that pharmacy is also pathway, that you can be linked—going into research. And so people who are thinking about a PhD, maybe they should be thinking about PharmD as an alternative? I think that's something that's an untapped area that we don't really, really push us as a basic scientist.

Joel W. Gonzales

And Igor, I'm going to ask you a different question, given sort of your role, and help us better understand. And Katherine alluded to sort of the limited bandwidth of students. So along those lines, given the limited bandwidth of faculty and students, how can these groups play a larger role in outreach and recruitment? And I know you've done a lot for us. I know Sharon, [and] the dean has certainly presented information with me at different groups. But how can we engage more faculty and students given everybody's really, really pressed for resources and time?

Igor Mitrovic

Learn how to sleep faster. [laughter] Just kidding. I don't know solution on time. So I can't speak to that. What I as an educator at heart can speak to is that this is something that is part of who I am. And I feel, you know, that all of us who care deeply about our school, and about education, pharmacy education, perhaps we can carve out a day or two a year to do some of the outreach in the local area. Part of the problem is actually, I suppose, is organization of that, and maybe that's where we can we can do a better job. So, I don't have a solution other than I do what I do. Organization, maybe? Jen, you are here. Do you mind? Do you have any idea?

Jen Cocohoba

Informal panel member Jen Cocohoba, Department of Clinical Pharmacy, you know, a couple of thoughts I have around time, as you know, we don't have—nobody has extra time to give. But, you know, we have this lovely thing called the internet, and you can live forever, in multiple universes, multiple times a day on the internet. And so that would be one question maybe the panel could address later. Maybe Joel, you know, what are our, what is our internet presence and presence on social media, and how does that intersect with our recruitment efforts?

Joel W. Gonzales

Thank you. And the next question I have and I—Robert alluded to this in the beginning, and Tiffany addressed a little bit of it, but—how can faculty and students help change the narrative of pharmacy practice, and what non-traditional career paths can be pursued with a PharmD degree? So again, you know, pre-pharmacy students are pretty limited in their scope of understanding of a PharmD, as Katherine mentioned, she didn't have a great idea of the career paths as well, so what can we do as a school community in all of our different roles to help change that narrative, given that it's a really big lift and something that we need to do as a profession? But what can we do locally to help begin that conversation? And we'll start with Robert.

Robert Chalkley

I'm not sure I have anything extra really to say on this. So yeah, I mean, [pause] I don't have any good answers. So there's obviously a lot of different pathways you can go through. And when we interview students, a large percentage of them say, "I want to go into research." And I'm not sure that's actually they want to go into research. It's because they have research experience. And so that's something they know. And so we've got to come up with some way to give them exposure to other pathways, so that they actually realize that this is a possibility. They all say research, then they start here and they realized, now I actually like interacting with patients, but because I didn't have experience with that before, that wasn't the way I was thinking. So it's all about giving them opportunities to know these different pathways and try them out.

Joel W. Gonzales

Tiffany, what insight can you share?

Tiffany Pon

I don't know if I...well, the thing that comes to my mind is that, you know, when I was at school, I didn't do my training at UCSF, I went to Purdue. But what I saw from Purdue that I think gets students or people excited is more of like the advocacy side. So like, learning what innovative practices or progressive practices pharmacists are doing, and involving students in that level. And I don't know if our faculty are as visible in things like legislation. And maybe that's an opportunity for growth within our faculty and our departments, is to get somebody who can spearhead some of those things leading, like Legislative Day. Because I do think that this current generation of students is interested in some of these more advocacy-related initiatives and social justice-related initiatives. And I think pharmacy has a role there. So getting somebody to be a voice maybe in that space within our faculty can be one way to motivate folks to see that pharmacists don't just dispense.

Joel W. Gonzales

Katherine, as someone who is currently in a PharmD program, what are your thoughts on how we can sort of change that narrative?

Katherine Gee

Yeah, I think maybe this circles back to what Dr. Cocohoba was talking about before with the Internet. But I think something that I've seen floating around in social media is a lot of schools or programs will sort of have many day-in-my-life, follow-me-throughout-my-process. So I think that could be something that could be really nice. You could have, I guess, on like Instagram or something like that, like to keep a record. So you can have stories where you have like a couple of students throughout the year share what a day in their life is like as a P1, P2, P3, as an intern, maybe for the ones working at UCSF, or faculty kind of sharing, "This is what my experience is during the day." I know it can be a little harder to balance that out with privacy with patients and all that. But you know, pointing [the camera] down during a little talk-through and just giving an insight to what it actually is like, because I think a lot of people do come into pharmacy and they don't know a lot about it. So maybe giving insight to, well this is what we're learning, these are opportunities we get for patient care.

Katherine Gee

And I think something else that's kind of nice as a student is that throughout the Synthesis Week, we've been getting some speakers from other areas of pharmacy who are more specialized areas. And that's something that's been really helpful. I don't know if there's a way to sort of organize maybe a local event where they book out like a giant auditorium and invite undergrads in the area, or who are interested high school students. Maybe give them insight, maybe like, part of integrating with like an info session.

Joel W. Gonzales

Thank you. And finally, Igor, what words of wisdom can you share with us regarding this topic?

Igor Mitrovic

There's a reason why Katherine is here with us. She understands her generation. And I'm really grateful to you, Katherine, I love the idea actually, of instead of...we can go out there, go to them, but it may be great if we can bring them to us. So that is a really attractive idea, and day in the life of a pharmacy student, day in the life of a pharmacy professional or pharmacy scientist. All of these things are fantastic.

Joel W. Gonzales

[calls on audience question]

Conan MacDougall

I will just say that, like, I think the single best like ambassador, based on my experience, is the folks who work in Poison Control. Because like, a lot of what we do is very abstract as pharmacists, and sort of, it's hard to describe, but like when I went to my kid's, like fifth-grade class and talked about what I do, they had no interest in me explaining like infectious diseases and germs. But when I told them that, like, I interned at the Poison Center, they were like, oh, my god, tell me about like, what's the weirdest thing somebody did. You know, I mean, it's something that I think is a nice entry, because it's very concrete that people understand. But then it also opens them up to the variety of practice areas. So I think like partnering with the Poison Center, which I mean, obviously, like, we run the Poison Center, but you know, increasing the outreach that they do, I think that again, and that's what actually got me into pharmacy school, because I had no interest in pharmacy until I went and did an internship at the Sacramento Poison Center. So I don't know, like finding those the right ambassadors, because it is sometimes hard to describe to early audiences like what we do.

Joel W. Gonzales

So at this point, we did want to open it up to questions for those who are here with us and those who are online as well.

Kathy Yang

I just had a comment: I love the discussion about college, but I feel like we need to go to high school. And we're not doing that very well. We have had high schools come here. And I've done I've done the Oakland thing, I've done the sort of the interprofessional day things but when you tell the story of what it is you do in a in a weird day, that's kind of what sparks their interest, right? They don't want to hear about the mundane, they want to hear about your weird, crazy day where you had a, you know, some weird [?] that you had to treat or something. And when you do that it sparks their interest. So I think we need to make a more concerted effort to maybe go to the high schools, do like their career days, have them you know, there is a one day, I think it's actually this month?, that where they come to UCSF and do that interprofessional thing, but we need to do that more and just get the weird stories out. And that will spark their interest.

Joel W. Gonzales

So question online before we go to Tram? Or…?

Joel W. Gonzales

Yeah, but go ahead, we'll go with it.

Tram Cat

I was just gonna piggyback on, as part of outreach, like I recently participated in a career read-out-loud at my kids school in kindergarten. So you know, finding a book about what pharmacists do, to make it relevant. I mean, there aren't a lot of good, interesting books out there. So I'm like, oh, this would be really great for us to tap into. But I think it's even, you know, again, those people are aware of what pharmacists do in the retail setting, because they're visible. Pharmacists in the hospital are not visible, even though I think we've done quite a bit, but depends on you know, where you are in practice. So it kind of brings back like the our alumni group. I mean, we have so many pharmacists or alum and different areas to talking about innovative practices. And I tell my students now like, I know rarely a lot of people who just stay in one area of pharmacy practice all their life. A few do that they move from clinical, from retail, clinical to academia, industry, as long as you have a strong clinical foundation, so that that's where like this is important. And this is what you can get at UCSF. So I think, you know, visibility and kind of reaching out to alum. And I'm sure they're already probably doing things like that in their community and maybe like, giving them things that they can hand out like, in marketing, from UCSF, like, "I graduated from UCSF, this is what I do, this is where I've been." And really, yeah, like elementary and high school, I think this is where you get the interest. The kids in STEM programs are really key.

Joel W. Gonzales

And we, we have high school outreach materials, too, that are provided by AACP. So we certainly have that ability to arm ourselves with literature and information that's targeted towards a high school population. It doesn't go lower than that at this point, but we do have some of those materials as a starting point. So there is a question online.

Suzan Revah

[inaudible as she repeats comments from online chat] They like the ideas of a day in the life and videos.

Suzan Revah

on how they make a difference, the sorry, [receives microphone]

Suzan Revah

Hi, this is Suzan, I'm your lead content writer in the School of Pharmacy, and I've been kind of sitting on my hands here, but I just thought I'd, it's not a question, making a pitch, you do have a communications team, you do have a storyteller, and I am very interested in hearing these stories. If you have even what I would describe as "the scent of information," just somebody you know, in the field, who's doing something interesting, I will take that ball and run with it. Please reach out to us.

Joel W. Gonzales

Thank you. So in the interest of time, we're gonna wrap up this presentation. But this is an ongoing conversation. It's not the beginning and it's not the end, but this is a conversation that we've been engaged in for many years. And it's nice to actually have more people in the fold, and more people are aware of our need to bring in more stakeholders.

Joel W. Gonzales

And as part of this, we are planning a half-a-day retreat. In the summer, perhaps in the fall, we're still working out the dates, that's going to allow us, some key people in the room, to really, really focus in on recruitment and matriculation of students. And so that will give us an opportunity to really dedicate some valuable time to this particular topic with lots of different people in the room. So stay tuned for information and announcements on that. Otherwise, thank you all for participating in this Town Hall. Again, thank the dean for giving us this opportunity to share this type of information with a larger group. And we wish everyone a great rest of the day.