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!