From a distance….UF educates pharmacy doctors on four campuses

Addressing statewide and nationwide shortages of pharmacists was the impetus behind the UF College of Pharmacy’s bold move six months ago to electronically transfer its entire Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) curriculum to satellite campuses in St. Petersburg, Orlando and Jacksonville.

“In this very short time, we already have enrolled more first-year doctoral students at the off-campus sites than we have in the first-year classes at our Gainesville campus,” said pharmacy Dean William Riffee, Ph.D. “Seeing new students taking classes at these new campuses is probably the highlight of my academic career.”

Riffee, who also serves as UF’s associate provost for distance, continuing and executive education, said 143 first-year students now are enrolled in the Pharm.D. program at the three distant sites, while 136 first-year doctoral students are enrolled at the Gainesville campus. The doctoral program is four years in length.

“The important thing is that the University of Florida has recognized the shortage of pharmacists that exists in about 47 of our 50 states,” Riffee said. “We committed ourselves to significantly attacking the problem, and we’re well under way toward a goal of doubling our pharmacy student enrollment by 2006.

“Some of our faculty expressed a vision two and a half years ago to provide extension education to pharmacists in these major metropolitan areas who were place-bound by family obligations or employment or other situations that prohibited them from enrolling for advanced pharmacy education in Gainesville,” Riffee said. “It took us only 15 months from the time we set out to do this to electronically deliver our entire curriculum to the three selected cities.

“Our off-site students can now view on their home computers all the lectures delivered by UF pharmacy faculty in Gainesville,” Riffee said. “In the evening, they meet with faculty and program directors at our designated campus sites to go over problems and case studies, and work on exercises designed to reinforce the material they’ve seen in the Internet content.

“We have had tremendous cooperation from corporate partners and from independent pharmacists across the state and the nation to help us get started,” he added. “We’ve been fortunate to have university administrators who believe in what we’re trying to do and to have state legislators who recognize the need to increase enrollment at our universities. Both have helped to fund the program.”

Riffee noted that students in financial need were especially grateful for the new laptop computers given to them by the Eckerd Corp. and the University Partnership Center at St. Petersburg College (home of the UF Pharm.D. program in that city).

“We are proud of the fact that the academic excellence — for example, grade point averages of our doctoral students and the quality of the curriculum — are equivalent at all four locations,” Riffee said.

“UF’s distance education program for training doctors of pharmacy is the largest in the nation, and the first to use digital streaming video as part of its instructional program,” said Sven Normann, Pharm.D., director of the Working Professional Pharm.D. program.

Normann, who also is associate dean for distance, continuing and executive education, added that UF’s off-site Doctor of Pharmacy training is the nation’s first to place faculty at the extension campuses to provide face-to-face interaction with the students.

One of the doctoral students now taking classes in St. Petersburg told the faculty he is interested in setting up his own pharmacy in a rural community and that “people are already waiting for me to graduate and I just started.” Another student said his main reason for seeking the Pharm.D. degree was to prepare for a career in clinical trials research like an enterprising pharmacist he met in the Tampa Bay area.