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Chair Report for the Academic Affairs Committee 1
J. Lyle Bootman
College of Pharmacy, The University of Arizona, Tucson AZ 85721
According to the Bylaws of the AACP, the Academic Affairs
Committee shall consider any matter relating to the conduct of
pharmaceutical education to be within its purview, including but
not limited to curriculum, resources, faculty, and students. The
committee also considers matters extending beyond pharmaceutical
education to higher education, especially those elements concerned
with health professions education. It is the committee’s
responsibility to bring to the Association’s attention for information
or action those issues it identifies as timely and important.
In addressing its charges, the Academic Affairs Committee
focused on planning as the ideal major thrust for schools and the
provision of resources and assistance to schools by AACP to
facilitate the process.
PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTING THE PHARMD
PROGRAM
Based on the committee’s general awareness of current environmental
change and the status of degree programs at schools and
colleges of pharmacy, the following guidelines and recommendation
are offered to assist schools and colleges with initiating change.
Suggested Plan Components. A plan to effect change and
implement the PharmD as the sole professional degree at an
institution should be developed with a global view of what the
desired outcome for the school/college will be. Piecemeal change,
such as redirecting the next two new hires, is inadequate and not
the type of bold move necessary. The following guide, derived from
the process suggested by the AACP Commission to Implement
Change in Pharmaceutical Education, is offered to assist schools in
moving forward efficiently and effectively.
• Build a clear understanding of the need for change among the
school’s faculty.
• Establish a management structure to facilitate the planning and
implementation of curricular change. For example, it may be
necessary to appoint an assistant or associate dean for academic
affairs to coordinate all activities associated with the change
process and/or to establish a strong steering or executive committee.
• Establish a written timetable for planning.
• Develop a statement of mission and goals that clearly outline the
purposes of the school and its curriculum. Expectations must be
reasonable and feasible. The school must decide if it should/can
educate students for a variety of careers (e.g., practice, industry,
science). The planning process must include prioritization of
multiple missions to drive resource allocation.
• Establish a system for faculty skill development related to curriculum
and instructional design. Most schools lack expertise
regarding the process of curricular change (e.g., construction of
a mission statement, defining outcomes, teaching/learning strategies,
student assessment methods).
• Develop a comprehensive outcomes document that clearly describes
what graduates from the program will be able to do.
These outcomes should be derived from practice functions and
1 Committee members: J. Lyle Bootman (Arizona), Ronald Borchardt
(Kansas), Bruce L. Currie (Midwestern), George E. Francisco (Georgia,
Jean M. Nappi (MUSC). Liasion member: Robert H. Hunter (Merck
Human Health Division).
the mission of the school/college. Tools such as the CAPE
Educational Outcomes and the practice function delineation
from the Scope of Pharmacy Practice Project are available from
AACP to assist faculties with this activity.
• Design and plan a curriculum that will achieve the outcomes and
incorporate the teaching methods described in Background Paper
II. Part of the change plan should include identification of
how to implement multidisciplinary education throughout all
four years of the professional program (e.g., students from
various health professions are assigned to groups which function
together for the four years of the educational programs).
• Identify experiential learning rotations and other types of experiences
(e.g., laboratories) that will be required to assist students
in achieving the stated outcomes.
• Identify unique strengths of the program that may contribute to
pharmaceutical care.
• Identify the physical and financial resources needed for program
initiation through full implementation.
• Identify the faculty necessary to carry out the curriculum at
program initiation through full implementation.
• Develop plans to obtain the resources necessary to achieve
faculty approved goals.
• Identify desired student attributes, determine admissions criteria,
and select screening methods.
• Identify the barriers that are impeding or may impede movement
toward goals. Part of the school plan must include how to
organize, educate, and empower the faculty. One major barrier
to change is that faculty are oblivious to the changing health
care environment.
• Develop plans to resolve barriers.
• Seek support from pharmacists in the state.
• Seek support from the public (e.g., labor unions, consumer
groups). Change plans as needed to include details related to
marketing pharmacists/pharmaceutical care to the public.
• Secure university administration and state higher education approval
of the change in degree offered.
• Develop a timetable for implementing the plan.
• Develop procedures and criteria to monitor and evaluate progress.
• Revise plans as necessary.
RECOMMENDATION 1: AACP should assist each member
institution to develop a well-articulated, written plan for the implementation
of change as described by the Commission to Implement
Change in Pharmaceutical Education in its position paper,
“Entry-level Education in Pharmacy: A Commitment to Change.”
These plans should be developed no later than January 1996 so that
the 1996 Interim Meeting programs of the Council of Deans and
Council of Faculties may focus on the sharing among schools of
their detailed change implementation plans and continued skill
building necessary to implement necessary change.
BEYOND THE PHARMD
Over and above implementation of the PharmD as the sole professional
degree in pharmacy and implementation of curriculums that
prepare students to provide pharmaceutical care, there are other
issues at the local, state, and national levels which are impacting or
will impact pharmaceutical education. The Committee urges the
American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education Vol. 59, Winter Supplement 1995
11S

Association and individual schools and colleges of pharmacy to
begin to consider and study these environmental changes (e.g.,
consolidation of industries, rapid growth of managed care, focus on
total disease management, etc.) and their impacts on higher education,
pharmaceutical education, and the profession of pharmacy.
The committee offers the following recommendations to assist
the Association and colleges assess opportunities and threats in
the evolving environment and to move the academy to the next
level beyond implementation of the PharmD
RECOMMENDATION 2: AACP should establish a national
advisory board with representation from corporate employers,
insurers, politicians, practitioner organizations, etc. to provide an
ongoing environmental scan and participate in dialogue about the
health care and higher education environments. Input from this
group should be summarized by AACP staff and distributed to the
membership in the form of a two-page information summary,
including external opportunities and threats to pharmaceutical
education and schools and colleges of pharmacy.
RECOMMENDATION 3: AACP should alter the Implementing
Institutional Change program to be a deliberate effort to make the
membership more comfortable with change and help faculty understand
pharmaceutical care. An effort should be made to provide
all schools with presenters [i.e., teams of academics and nonacademics
(e.g., insurers, practitioners, industry representatives)]
to deliver the “state of the environment” message.
RECOMMENDATION 4: Recognizing that the lack of reliable
manpower data is limiting progress toward implementing change,
AACP, through its role as Secretariat for the Manpower Project,
Inc., should encourage the Project to provide a more sophisticated
analysis of workforce patterns under the new paradigm of health
and pharmaceutical care delivery.
RECOMMENDATION 5: The AACP Student Services Personnel
SIG should convene a task force to delineate desired attributes
of incoming pharmacy students, in light of future practice roles and
realities for pharmacists, for the purposes of designing screening
criteria and methods to use in the admissions process.
RECOMMENDATION 6: The AACP Council of eans should
convene a task force to identify approaches to funding professional
degree programs, including potential partnerships within academic
health centers and within the managed care environment.
The Committee felt that the background considerations and
activities described in Recommendations 2 through 6 were necessary
before President Knapp’s second charge could be adequately
addressed. Once a better understanding of the new economic and
practice environments is gained, a future Academic Affairs Committee
should consider environmental changes and challenges not
fully addressed by the adoption of the PharmD as the sole professional
degree and what specific changes must be initiated by
schools and colleges of pharmacy to address these challenges.
RECOMMENDATION 7: A future (1995/96 or 1996/97) AACP
Academic Affairs Committee should be charged to determine
what alterations in curriculum, school structure and organization,
financing, and external relationships will best prepare schools and
colleges of pharmacy to prepare, adapt, and prosper within the
evolving economic and practice environment.
Am. J. Pharm. Educ., 59, 11S-12S(1995); received 8/14/95.
References
(1) Commision to Implement Change in Pharmacy education, “Entrylevel
education in Pharmacy: A commitment to change,” Am. J.
Pharm. Educ., 56, 366-374(1993).
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12S American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education Vol. 59, Winter Supplement 1995