Students gather in new office

The new COP offices in the TGen Building hosted their first event on Nov. 13 when Jamie Joy, experiential education director in Phoenix, held a Residency Planning seminar.

The two-hour seminar and dinner attracted 15 fourth-year PharmD students who were interested in information and tools to help them plan for residencies. The seminar provided information about the importance of a residency program, CV and resume tips, timelines and important deadlines regarding applying for residency programs, preparing for the ASHP midyear meeting and interviewing tips.

There were five guest speakers: Mitch Buckley, St Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center; Hilary Davis, Carl T. Hayden Veterans Affairs Medical Center; Jon Glover, Pfizer; Jennifer Retterer, Carl T. Hayden Veterans Affairs Medical Center; and Karen Wright, Scottsdale Healthcare Shea Medical Center.

If you want to learn about future activities like this, contact Sue Johnston.

Pharmacy spots in Phoenix open

COP is looking for a few good people to develop and further programs in Phoenix. We are accepting applications for a director of administrative and professional affairs, a director of clinical and translational pharmacy research, and faculty in personalized medicine research.

The director of administrative and professional affairs will, among many duties, develop and administer education initiatives and participate in budgetary planning and management. Learn more by checking out Job 39627 on the UA Career Track web page.

The research director will develop and manage postgraduate education in clinical and translational research with partners in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area; for details see Job 39625.

Faculty are also needed to develop and manage postgraduate residency and fellowship programs in clinical and translational research specialties such as cardiovascular/diabetes, neurology, oncology and bioinformatics. Look for this posting on the UA job site in a few days.

Office in the making

Luann Musser and Sue Johnston give you a tour of the Phoenix office for the College of Pharmacy. The photos show a work station in assembly, the completed front desk and the tables and chairs in the meeting room.

It's an office! (Well, almost)

A bonafide work area in the College of Pharmacy office suite at 445 N. Fifth Street is just days away. Furnishings for the "semi-private" work stations and a meeting room were installed last week. New administrative support staff Luann Musser and Sue Johnston and Jamie Joy, Phoenix experiential education director, hope to move into their new environs in two to three weeks--they await completion of communications hook-ups and then will be ready to rock 'n' roll.

Pictured above: David Burks, project coordinator, at the door of one of the new office cubicles, and Luann at the partially assembled front reception desk. We'll post more photos tomorrow.

Courier carries packages to, from Phoenix

We're just a few days away from having staff on site in the new College of Pharmacy office suite in Phoenix. Can needing to exchange mail be far behind?

A courier service through the UA College of Medicine has agreed to transport mail packages to and from the Tucson and Phoenix campuses for the College of Pharmacy, too. Each sender is responsible for getting their mail packages to the drop-off locations and confirming delivery with recipients.

Here's the skinny on using the service:

Courier schedule
Monday, Wednesday and Thursday of UA payday weeks
Monday, Wednesday and Friday of non-payday weeks

Delivery times
The courier gets to Phoenix about 10:45 a.m. on delivery days and returns to Tucson at approximately 2:30 p.m. the same day. Get your package to the Tucson drop-off location by 5 p.m. of the day before you wish it to be delivered to Phoenix.

Drop-off locations
Tucson: College of Medicine Finance Office, AHSC 1120, on the first floor near Medical Book Store
Phoenix: Third floor of Building 1 of COM-Phoenix

Addressing the mail
Label packages to Phoenix with the name of the recipient, department name, College of Pharmacy and recipient's phone number if you have it.

Label packages for Tucson with the name of the recipient, department name, College of Pharmacy, PO Box number and the line:
Please call the College of Pharmacy Dean's Office at 626-1567 for pick-up.

And there's also U.S. Mail
If you need to send mail to the COP office by the U.S. Postal Service or arrange a delivery there, the street address of our Phoenix site is:
455 North 5th St.
Phoenix, AZ 85004-2241

October Student Outreach Event

Fourth-year PharmD students are hosting a mini health fair on Oct. 2 at Westminster Village in Scottsdale.

The students, who are working on clinical rotations in the greater Phoenix area, will conduct blood pressure screenings, diabetes screenings and medication reviews. The fair begins at 7:30 am and runs until noon.

This is the third outreach event the Phoenix fourth-years have hosted.

State board helps out

J. Lyle Bootman, dean, and others from the College of Pharmacy accepted $600,000 from the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy during a board meeting in Phoenix Sept. 11. The money will enable the college to embark on a number of critical initiatives that will yield benefits not only to the profession of pharmacy but to the citizens of Arizona, Bootman says.

The college will use the funds:

• to open and staff the new facility in downtown Phoenix at TGen
• to purchase state-of-the-art telecommunications equipment to develop a distance learning capability that will link the Tucson and Phoenix campuses
• to attract matching funds from foundations and other sources that will leverage the state’s investment in the UA College of Pharmacy.

“We are pleased that the Arizona state legislature agreed with the board that this was a good use of these funds,” says Hal Wand, executive director of the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy.

The college will receive the funds in quarterly installments.

Photo shows Tom Vanhassel, president of the Arizona State Board of Pharmacy, presenting Dean Bootman (right) with a symbolic check.

2 newbies to join COP in Phoenix

When the offices of the College of Pharmacy in Phoenix open next month, two new employees will be there to put things in order.

Accepting the positions of coordinator of administrative services for COP are Luann Musser and Sue Johnston. The pair will provide administrative support to Tucson-based college administrators and faculty involved in developing Phoenix programs, to Jamie Joy (experiential education director in Phoenix) and to future Phoenix-based administrators and faculty. They will report directly to Dean J. Lyle Bootman.

Johnston began her duties Sept. 17, working from a temporary desk until COP digs on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus are ready in mid October. Musser will join COP Oct. 1.

Johnston worked for UA in Tucson from 1978 through 1989, holding positions with the University Teacher Center, Department of Chemistry, Department of Psychology and Department of Political Science. She has since held several positions in Phoenix.

Musser comes to the college following nearly a decade of service with Arizona State University and 15 years with the University of Michigan. Most recently she held positions with ASU’s Campus Health Service, Facilities Management and the Department of Theatre.

"I'm excited to be part of the development of downtown Phoenix and a new enterprise for the College of Pharmacy," Johnston says. She visited the Tucson campus Sept. 18 and 19, meeting several of members of the COP staff.

ABC1 opens

In an unprecedented partnership, UA and ASU researchers are sharing the newest of buildings to open on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus. The four-story ABC1 building opened in July and will be dedicated Oct.15. (See earlier post, A New Vocabulary, if you don't know what ABC1 stands for)

It houses ASU bioinformatics faculty on the first two floors and UA medical researchers on the wet-lab space on the top two floors. Some COM-Phoenix faculty who had been situated in Building 3 on the campus moved offices into the ABC1 building as well.

On a brief tour of the shiny new building last month, visitors from the College of Pharmacy had a variety of responses to the colors and sleek furnishings they saw: the ‘70s retro look is either “cool,” “bold” or “ugly,” depending on whom you ask!

The Big One

The College of Pharmacy (in Tucson) welcomed 90 students into its PharmD program this year, making this the largest incoming class since the degree program was initiated in 1985. That's a lot of growth from the seven students who graduated from the program in 1985. Last year's incoming class numbered 89.

"As the only public college of pharmacy in the state, we take our role as provider of new pharmacists very seriously," says Dean J. Lyle Bootman. "We have been expanding our enrollment as much as possible to help meet the demand for new pharmacists in Arizona."

Over the past few years, Arizona repeatedly ranked among those states with the highest need for pharmacists, according to the Pharmacy Manpower Project, Inc. In August 2007, the Western U.S. had the highest demand in the country for pharmacists.

Here are a few interesting statistics about the students enrolled at COP as of August 17:

• 333 PharmD students (among all four years)
• 85 master's and doctoral students in five fields
• 61 percent of student pharmacists in the new class are women
• 38 percent of student pharmacists in the new class hail from underrepresented ethnic groups

The class of 2011 takes the Oath of Professionalism

Where is it, anyway?

If you ever need to travel to the Phoenix Biomedical Campus, here's a handy map (the link will take you to a nicer pdf version).

Travel directions are:

Take Interstate 10 from Tucson to central Phoenix. Exit at 7th Street, at the fork, go left (south) about a mile to the campus.

The parking lot shown in dark pink on the map recently became a permit lot that includes some paid visitor spaces (or will soon--UA Parking and Transportation customer service rep isn't sure all the equipment has been installed for collecting visitor fees yet). Go to the UA Parking and Transportation web site to see the different options for a permit for that lot.

Fees for visitors at the lot are $1 per hour to a $7 maximum. A UA service permit will also get you a parking space in the lot, Parking and Transportation says.

There are a few visitor parking spaces next to the TGen building where COP offices will be.

Students plan outreach events

The 30 fourth-year PharmD students completing clinical rotations in the Phoenix area have put together a schedule of free health screenings and educational programs for the year ahead. On Aug. 14, students talked with elementary-school children and parents at Burton Barr Central Library about nutrition.

Here's what's coming up next:

• Aug. 30-Blood Pressure Screening, 10 a.m.-noon, Senior Services East Senior Center, Phoenix
• Oct. 2-Mini Health Fair (blood pressure and diabetes screenings and medication reviews), 7:30 a.m.-noon, Westminster Village, Scottsdale
• Nov. 6-Mini Health Fair, 10 a.m.-2 p.m., Edwards Medical Plaza, Phoenix

For more information on any of these, contact Jamie Joy, experiential education director for Phoenix, joy@pharmacy.arizona.edu.

Room with a view

Those moving in to the new Pharmacy space this fall will have a nice view to the outside world from their first-floor offices. Across the way is the Arizona Center.

Thanks from the COP communications team to UA's Al Bravo, associate director of public affairs who is located on the biomedical campus, for the pictures of the College of Pharmacy space and its environs shown in this and the previous two posts.

Lovely on the outside

Here's the way the building where we will soon be doing business looks on the outside.

College of Pharmacy ‘digs’ in Phoenix close to ready

About 2,500 square feet of office space in downtown Phoenix is close to being ready for employees of the College of Pharmacy.

Located on the first floor of the same building at 5th Street near Fillmore that also is home to TGen, the space needs furniture (on order!), and then will be ready for files and people. Expectations are that “semi-private, office-like” work stations will be installed in September, with first staff arriving in October, says David Burks, project coordinator for laying the groundwork for COP operations on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus. (Burks began the project while he was senior director of development for the college; he retired from that position in July, but continues as a consultant on the college expansion to Phoenix.)

The office suite will boast state-of-art wireless technology, with occupants using laptop computers and cell phones to connect to the larger world. Tim Wunz, COP director of information technology, will manage the IT functions and internet connections with Tucson.

First to claim space

Among the first on the scene in the new offices will be Jamie Foster Joy, the COP director of experiential education programs for Phoenix. Joy has been working for the college since January from a home office; by early October she will be able to base her operations from the biomedical campus, in a spot just a two or three-minute walk from the three restored buildings that make up the UA College of Medicine-Phoenix.

The 30 fourth-year PharmD students who are currently completing their clinical rotations in the Phoenix area will probably be the first users of the medium-sized meeting room built into the office suite. Joy expects to convene the students at the site occasionally to review their rotation experiences and discuss community service projects.

More to come

COP is currently seeking a coordinator of administrative services to manage key administrative and academic support areas of the Phoenix operation. You can find out more by finding the posting for Job 38592 at the UA employment site.

Dean J. Lyle Bootman will have a work space at COP Phoenix, as will others based in Tucson who spend substantial time on site developing Phoenix programs, Burks says.

The COP office suite faces 5th Street and boasts large windows that showcase a pleasant view of landscaping and buildings of the Arizona Center. It will have a small refrigerator, sink and microwave for employee use and several cabinets for storage.

We promise more postings about the COP Phoenix offices as furniture arrives.

A New Vocabulary

You'll see a lot of new names and abbreviations when we talk about the Phoenix campus. Here are a few to get us started.

• PBC: Phoenix Biomedical Campus
• TGen: Translational Genomics Institute
• COM-Phoenix: The University of Arizona College of Medicine-Phoenix in partnership with Arizona State University
• Building 1, Building 2, Building 3: The historic Phoenix Union High School buildings facing Van Buren that were remodeled to house Phoenix-based medical education
• ABC1: Arizona Biomedical Collaborative Building 1, the new building on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus housing research laboratories for UA and ASU
• ABC2: Arizona Biomedical Collaborative Building 2, a research building to be built on the Phoenix Biomedical Campus that is still in the planning stages
• Health Sciences Education Building or Medical Education Building: Two terms for one building still in the planning stages that will provide educational facilities for medical, pharmacy and allied health students

No doubt many more terms will be added to the list as we go along.

Welcome!

Welcome to The University of Arizona College of Pharmacy's Phoenix expansion update center!

Your devoted communications team will use this medium to post new developments and updates about the Phoenix expansion. You can subscribe to an RSS feed to get automatic and immediate updates when we post something here, or you can just refer to the link on the COP Web site.

Please feel free to ask questions or leave comments. We will try hard to keep you well-informed. And show patience, please--some of us are new to this format and learning as we go.

Thanks and have a great day!