Pharmacy school at UT opens doors

Wary of a projected national shortage of pharmacists and hopeful they can keep more graduates in the region, the University of Tennessee marked the opening of its College of Pharmacy campus on Tuesday in Knoxville.

“This will provide us — the citizens of East Tennessee — a great source of pharmacy students for years to come,” said Steve Ross, senior vice president of the University of Tennessee Medical Center.

UTMC operates independently of the university, but the new College of Pharmacy is on the hospital’s campus off Alcoa Highway.

The new 15,000-square-foot, $3 million building offers state-of-the-art distance education capabilities, according to Dick Gourley, dean of the College of Pharmacy at UT Health Sciences Center in Memphis.

The new building’s main auditorium and audio-visual capabilities make it possible for students to take part in lectures by faculty in Memphis.

Classes began Aug. 20, but Tuesday’s ribbon cutting officially opened the school for 125 second- and third-year students. Pharmacy students spend their first year in Memphis.

Sarah Eanes, a third-year student on the Knoxville campus, took part in an oncology therapeutics class recently at the new building and liked its distance education capabilities.

“Everybody — the students in Memphis and Knoxville — can hear your questions,” she said.

A native of Elizabethton, Eanes said that once she graduates she plans to stay in East Tennessee. UT officials estimated that 75 percent of its pharmacy graduates remain in the state after finishing their studies.

UT’s goal is to have 225 students at the College of Pharmacy’s Knoxville campus by 2009, with 25 full-time faculty.

The opening of the pharmacy campus also marks the return of the program to Knoxville. UT’s first College of Pharmacy campus was in Knoxville in 1898 and later moved to Memphis in 1909.

The progress of the college’s expansion “is marked both in growing numbers of students, and in today’s celebration,” said UT President John Petersen. “This progress is particularly important to the university, because it tangibly represents how we are fulfilling our commitment to statewide health care delivery.”

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