April 2023

Welcome to the next edition of the Buffalo Pharmacy Bulletin (BPB) where we will continue to explore and discuss social issues in health care and how we as academicians, practitioners and scientists can lead and support these issues. The BPB will also keep you updated on the latest school news, highlighting the outstanding work of our UB SPPS community.

“The best way to ensure we can support and mentor our future pharmacists and research scientists is to make sure we are reviewing and discussing what is currently happening in the dynamic and ever-changing world we live in.”

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been much discussion about education — what should the delivery of education ‘look like’ and ‘who’ has the authority to make decisions? After discussions across disciplines and between pundits, it seems to me, two significant areas of change have emerged: flexible curricular delivery and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to support student learning.

Virtually all programs pivoted to remote instruction, at least in part, early in the pandemic. What was remarkable about this rapid shift to largely remote instruction was how successful it was, at least in terms of effective content delivery. The efficiency and flexibility of remote instruction was so obvious that it has changed the landscape of higher education, and most programs will retain elements of both synchronous and asynchronous on-line instruction. However, responsible and successful programs will need to deal with the negative ramifications of distance education, particularly the sense of disconnectedness and social isolation reported by students and impediments to developing a professional identity observed by faculty.

Supporting the social and professional development of our students is an important underlying rationale for our new Learning and Engagement Communities, which will be launched this fall. As we continue to evaluate how our students learn with and from each other, as well as in partnership with our faculty, other student success strategies will also be identified and evaluated. These strategies will also be important focal points for our new Division of Education and Teaching Innovation, where our new PharmD curricular roadmap is being developed.

Circling back on AI, UB recently received significant funding in this area to assist students with speech and language disorders: It was interesting (to me, anyway) that an early reaction to the general availability of AI was along the lines of “How are we going to keep our students from using this to cheat?” and not how this technology could be of benefit as an educational tool, a way to ease teacher workload and mechanism to improve learner engagement and lessen teaching bias.  

This all, I believe, will quickly become a reality of everyday life. My optimism is in contrast to recent commentary regarding ChatGPT’s analysis of utilizing AI in higher education. While I will not recount my entire exchange with my chatbot (although I will stress that, unlike Microsoft’s Bing, it did not try to convince me that it was in love with me), I was taken by its potential drawbacks. It did not focus on student academic integrity, which it considered a minor issue. Instead, it expressed concerns about potentially perpetuating biases that already exist in society, about decreasing students’ critical and independent thinking, and about ethical issues such as instructors utilizing an AI system to monitor student behavior.

As with most things in life, perspective (even for an AI system) appears to be everything…

Recruiting tenure track faculty to seed the development of our new Drug Discovery, Development and Evaluation (DDDE) Hub. Core areas include:

• Drug Discovery and Design
• Drug Delivery
• Quantitative Systems Pharmacology
• Translational Therapeutics  

Recruiting tenure and non-tenure track faculty to implement and evaluate innovations in health care through cutting edge scientific discovery and education in the Departments of Pharmacy Practice and Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Anticipated start dates for these positions will be throughout 2023. We are especially interested in qualified candidates who can contribute the diversity and excellence of our academic community.  

UB Center for Integrated Global Biomedical Sciences (CIGBS) and partners receive $1.5M NIH grant for infectious disease training program
The five-year award is a continuation of funding for the Global Infectious Diseases Research Training Program, a research collaboration between UB CIGBS, the University of the West Indies (UWI), the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University and Jamaica Ministry of Health and Wellness.

Fiebelkorn named Fellow of the American Pharmacists Association
Karl Fiebelkorn, BS'78, MBA, senior associate dean for Student, Professional and Community Affairs, has been named a Fellow of the American Pharmacists Association (APhA).

Roberts Top Three in APhA-ASP National Patient Counseling Competition
Serena Roberts, PharmD'24, was awarded second runner-up in the American Pharmacists Association - Academy of Student Pharmacists (APhA-ASP) National Patient Counseling Competition at the 2023 APhA Annual Meeting.

PharmD student team wins third place at regional SNPhA Clinical Skills Competition
Elaine Marji, PharmD'24, and Livia Chase, PharmD'24 took third place in the Student National Pharmaceutical Association (SNPhA) Clinical Skills Competition (CSC) at the SNPhA Region 1 conference.

Featuring our new UB Compounding Pharmacy Continuing Education Activity, which meets the new three hour NYS pharmacy CE requirement.

View our upcoming SPPS events!

Join UB alumni experts from across the globe as they share professional insights and advice during Webinar Wednesdays. Engage in upcoming webinars along with past sessions.

'Networking and Conversations': April 22, NYC

View upcoming events on the UB Events Calendar!

'Making Illusions of Reality': April 26, Rochester, NY

Thank you for reading our April 2023 edition of the Buffalo Pharmacy Bulletin. Please stay in touch! Send us updates on your own personal and professional accomplishments by filling out our alumni update form. 

Regards,
Gary Pollack, PhD '84
Dean and Professor