It is a great honor and privilege to serve as the next president of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. As an active AACP member for more than 30 years, I have observed significant changes and challenges to both health care and to pharmacy education, and I consider my role as your next president to be an exceptional personal and professional opportunity.
I pledge to continue the outstanding work of President Joe DiPiro to implement our new strategic plan. And I look forward to working with the Board, AACP Staff, Councils, Sections, SIGs, and most of all, you – our members – to move the association and pharmacy education forward.
The #1 strength identified on my StrengthsFinder profile is “context.” That, coupled with my 39 years as a pharmacy educator, have led me to be reflective about what is important in my career and life.
In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, he provides numerous examples of individuals who – based on when they were born and where they spent their formative years – were able to be influenced by key mentors and to take advantage of major societal and technological changes.
As someone who considers himself first and foremost, a pharmacy educator, I was extremely fortunate to be at Purdue University in the 1970s and encouraged to pursue a career in academic pharmacy by three key mentors – Bob Chalmers, George Spratto, and Nick Popovich. These outstanding, visionary pharmacy educators left a big imprint on this association.
For those of you who are young or new to pharmacy education, the late Bob Chalmers’ name is on our Distinguished Pharmacy Educator Award. George Spratto was honored by AACP with the Distinguished Service Award. Nick Popovich is the first recipient of AACP’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
These great mentors not only enabled me to discover talents I did not know I possessed, they also instilled in me the value of family, faculty citizenship, active participation in AACP, and taking risks to improve one’s teaching and scholarship.
Most of all, they demonstrated to me, both as a student and as a young colleague, the importance of getting to know and valuing students personally to help them connect and grow as individuals, leaders, and professionals.
In his 1991 address to the House of Delegates, AACP president-elect, Dr. Popovich introduced the concept of educational care to parallel Hepler and Strand’s pharmaceutical care. Dr. Popovich defined educational care as the establishment of a commitment between faculty and the student to design, implement, and monitor an educational plan that will produce student-specific, performance-based outcomes.
The student was at the center with supporting players and environments in concentric circles.
During the past year while doing a Google search for videos about leadership, I became captivated by Simon Sinek and his “Golden Circle.” He makes a very strong point that as leaders and organizations, we spend most of our time and effort focusing on what we do and how we do it but little time on reflecting about why we do what we do.
He places the why in the center of his golden circle and stresses that once we answer the why, the what and how become much more focused and easier to deliver.
As pharmacy educators, both at our home institutions and even at this meeting, we tend to focus on the what and how, but we spend little time reflecting and discussing the why. My goal for this year is to challenge AACP, our standing committees, and each of you to focus on the why.
Dr. Popovich’s concept of educational care answers the why by placing the student at the center of the educational care golden circle.
My firm belief is once you put the student at the center, your experience as a pharmacy educator will become enriched more than you can imagine.
You will also likely realize that our students are a valuable and often an untapped asset to us personally and to our colleges and our profession.
As a nation, we are currently facing great challenges in attempting to right a health care system that continues to consume a greater percentage of our gross national product (GNP) without improving outcomes.
Political haggling seems to be the order of the day, rather than programs directed at real solutions.
As pharmacy educators, we are more challenged than ever to help our students manage and process an ever-growing breadth of knowledge, plus achieve the many ACPE-mandated outcomes.
In addition, today’s students – and tomorrow’s – come to us with very different learning styles and preferences than our own.
We also face challenges within our academy and AACP.
My reading in the areas of history and leadership have taught me that many lessons can be learned from the past. But few solutions for our health care and educational challenges lie in the past.
As we have grown from 72 colleges of pharmacy in the 1970s to 140 colleges at last count, our academy has become more diverse.
No longer are we primarily just public or private institutions with similar sets of missions and challenges, but within each category, we are now large vs. small, research-intensive vs. teaching-focused, new school vs. old school, or some combination of all of these.
Not only has the number and diversity resulted in us often focusing on our differences rather than our similarities, but it has also created great challenges for AACP in providing member services and programming.
Today, I ask each of you, no matter how you or someone else classifies your college, to join me and the standing committees during the next year to focus on the one thing – I hope – we all have in common.
That one thing is assuring the success and well-being of our students not only in the classroom or practice site but in their careers and personal lives as well.
The action I took approximately 20 years ago to reach out and actively engage with my students, much like what Bob [Chalmers], George [Spratto], and Nick [Popovich] did to me is what has made my career so rewarding today.
Each day I see as an opportunity to serve my students, and each year brings renewal and satisfaction.
Dr. Robert Smith described it best in his AACP presidential address in July 2000, when he said, “Until we open up to our students, become a little more vulnerable, become teachable ourselves, and gain their trust, our effectiveness as teachers will be less than we are capable of producing. Teaching well is mostly accomplished heart to heart rather than solely head to head.”
During the upcoming year, I am charging each of the standing committees to focus on the why, our students, and how they blend into our strategic initiatives.
Each committee will have a student member to help them keep grounded to contemporary student issues.
With the recognized mental health crisis on college campuses and in professional programs – plus the research connecting student well-being to effective learning strategies and professional development – the Student Affairs Committee, chaired by Monica Miller, will examine declining student resilience, identify practices addressing student well-being, and suggest how AACP might assist member institutions to increase awareness of key issues regarding the mental and physical health of our students.
This work will help us further strengthen the efforts in Priorities 1 and 2 of the Strategic Plan.
In her book, Mindset, Carol Dweck describes individuals as having either a fixed or a growth mindset. A fixed mindset leads to stagnation, whereas a growth mindset allows individuals to be open to new approaches to address key issues.
Although strides have been made by many faculty members to implement active learning strategies, I am concerned that many in our academy have a fixed mindset regarding teaching and learning, which is likely to be in direct conflict with the learning styles and preferences of generations Y and Z. These students have always known technology and prefer learning by doing with colleagues. They are not wired to listening to a classroom lecture. This conflict runs a risk of turning off young learners, not only to faculty and content, but also to pharmacy as a career option.
Our Academic Affairs Committee, chaired by Michael Fulford, will take a deep dive into Strategic Priority 3. They are charged to identify emerging and future models for teaching, provide recommendations for the resources needed to allow the academy to “pick up the pace,” create cultures of progressive teaching and learning, and support implementation and research of these models by groups of faculty and, hopefully, collaboration among colleges.
As all of health care is challenged by information overload, the committee will also attempt to identify educational methods and tools that can be used to advance the identification and acquisition of foundational knowledge by our learners, translate that knowledge to practice, and investigate the attributes of those who see themselves as lifelong learners.
If your college is like mine, we spend a great deal of time and effort evaluating teaching and learning in P-1 through P-3 years. To date, we have spent comparatively less time assuring the quality of learning that takes place for our students during the P-4 year.
Since more than 25% of the curriculum at our colleges and schools is now facilitated and delivered by our experiential faculty and preceptors, our colleges and especially our students will benefit from empowering our preceptors to be more effective educators. Our preceptors need help and guidance with teaching styles for our ever changing and diverse student population.
The Professional Affairs Committee, chaired by Susan Vos, is charged to develop a self-reflection/self-assessment tool for pharmacy faculty and preceptors to allow them to assess their capability and confidence to teach, evaluate, and provide feedback regarding CAPE, the Pharmacist Patient Care Process, and Entrustable Professional Activities for new pharmacy graduates.
The outcome of their work will be a plan for AACP to implement preceptor continuing education and training programs. This will help ensure that more of our students maximize their learning and skill development during their experiential portion of the curriculum and graduate practice ready.
Unlike the 1970s, when most individuals who completed graduate education pursued a career in academia, today’s graduate degree recipients typically search for other career opportunities. Our Research and Graduate Affairs Committee, chaired by Samuel Poloyac, will focus on Strategic Priority 4. They will continue their work from this past year to identify a common set of CAPE-like competencies for graduate programs to ensure that all graduate students will have, not only the knowledge and research skills, but also the communication, people and career-readiness skills to be successful in their chosen field, whether that is academia, industry, or one of the many other opportunities within health care or science.
The committee will also take on a new charge to identify potential strategies to address identified barriers to pursuing graduate education in pharmacy, especially among under-represented student populations.
During the past 13 years, I have had the opportunity to be one of the faculty facilitators for a leadership elective course for P-3 students.
Each year, the students are given a project addressing a problem or initiative the college is attempting to tackle. It has become very clear to me that our students often seek out more resources and experts, and develop more creative and quicker implementable solutions, than we do as faculty and administrators.
Instead of faculty working on a plan and then asking the students to weigh in, I have found it more effective to let the students take the first crack at the heavy lifting.
This is consistent with what leadership guru Liz Wiseman describes in her book, Rookie Smarts.
Allowing students to be engaged helps to assure a solution that will be applicable and acceptable to them and also saves faculty time.
I have personally found that there is so much I learn from my students on a daily basis, such as how to navigate a software program or an app or how to tie the perfect bow tie.
The Strategic Engagement Committee (formerly known as the Advocacy Committee), chaired by Gina Moore, will be asked to identify best practices of colleges of pharmacy utilizing the talents and abilities of their students to address the college’s activities and programs. These might include recruitment, alumni engagement, IPE, community engagement, or adoption of the PPCP into practice settings.
The committee will also examine best strategies and practices on campuses promoting lifelong community and professional engagement after graduation.
When I think about Strategic Priority 2 – creating a new portrait of pharmacy and pharmacy career – much progress has been made since I was a new graduate in the 1970s, especially in health systems and the pharmaceutical industry. Unfortunately, this progress has not been universal and is not realized by many of our graduates when they seek employment.
Perhaps more importantly, it is not recognized by the parents of most middle-school students advising their children on excellent career opportunities. The progress we have made in education is often slow to be adopted into practice. Barriers and opportunities still exist.
Using the recently published “Vital Directions for Health and Health Care” discussion paper from the National Academy of Medicine as a reference, the Argus Commission, composed of the five most recent presidential officers, will be asked to harness their collective insight and wisdom to examine the systemic issues remaining in the way of practice transformation, and identify strategic goals for AACP to collaborate with professional and regulatory organizations to accelerate practice transformation.
Since I have challenged this esteemed group of past presidents with such a daunting charge, I have secured the services of Master Yoda to help guide the commission through their deliberations.
Forty-plus years ago, I benefited from mentors like Bob [Chalmers], George [Spratto], and Nick [Popovich] who understood the why of their chosen career and reached out to me, the student, with a kind word, positive feedback, and a gentle push into academia.
I am asking the association and you, all of its members, to reflect on your own journey as pharmacy educators and ask yourself why you do what you do.
Recommit yourselves to the success and well-being of your students. Show them that you care.
In concluding my remarks, I want to share the words on a sign that hangs in my office. It reads as follows:
The student is the most important person on campus. Without students, there would be no need for institutions.
The student is not a cold enrollment statistic but a flesh and blood human being with feelings and emotions like your own.
The student is not someone to be tolerated so that we can do our thing. They are our thing.
Students are not dependent on us. Rather we are dependent on them.
Students are not an interruption of our work, but the purpose of it. We are doing them a favor by serving them. They are doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so.
There are many challenges ahead and much work to be done both in health care and pharmacy education. AACP staff and leadership cannot tackle these issues alone. We need all of our membership to align with the parts of the strategic plan that most resonate with your passions.
I ask each of you to rededicate yourself to your role as a pharmacy educator and focus on the educational, professional, and personal development of our students.
I am confident that your career will be enriched and our academy and the profession of pharmacy will be stronger with all of us placing our focus on our most important asset – our students.
I may be standing here alone on this stage but I feel it is very crowded at the moment.
I feel the hands of Bob [Chalmers], George [Spratto], and Nick [Popovich] on my shoulders, the support and encouragement of my many colleagues and friends from across the academy, plus the presence of the more than 5,000 students I have engaged with during my career as a pharmacy educator.
Thank you. And best wishes for a great Annual Meeting!