Classrooms in the new School of Pharmacy building in Jackson are tailored to the school's educational model of problem-based learning. The rooms fit small groups of students, who use flat-screen monitors to study patient cases. Photo by Jay Ferchaud.
JACKSON, Miss. – University of Mississippi pharmacy students look forward to being able to stay in closer touch with classmates when they relocate to Jackson, thanks to a new facility being dedicated this week at the UM Medical Center
The School of Pharmacy dedicates its new education and research building at 1:30 p.m. Thursday (Feb. 23). Instead of dividing their time between the Jackson Medical Mall Thad Cochran Center, the School of Medicine and other locations at UMMC, pharmacy students and faculty are all housed under the same roof in the new structure on the Medical Center campus.
After three years of pre-professional training and two years of professional training in Oxford, pharmacy students switch to the Medical Center for their third year of professional instruction, as do a large number of fourth-professional-year students – although many of those students are on clinical rotations around Mississippi and Tennessee for their final year.
Before, students tended to lose touch with one other when they relocated to Jackson, said Stephen Porter, a PY4 student.
“A lot of times you didn’t see your classmates because we were so spread out,” he said.
Leigh Ann Ross, associate dean for clinical affairs in the pharmacy school, said the building provides a much-needed home and sense of community for the school’s faculty and students in Jackson.
“The most important thing is it will bring us all together,” Ross said. “It will increase our face-to-face interaction, and that is going to increase morale, both for students and faculty. And I’ve already seen that in the two short weeks that we’ve been here.
“Our faculty members engage with each other, and students are interacting with faculty on a daily basis.”
The building’s cutting-edge amenities also promise to enhance learning and research, thanks to fully equipped research laboratories and classrooms outfitted with video-conferencing technology.
“This technology provides us the ability to be innovative in our educational offerings,” Ross said.
The new School of Pharmacy building in Jackson provides a much-needed home and sense of community for the school's faculty and students at the UM Medical Center. Photo by Jay Ferchaud
On the northeast side of campus, the two-story, 29,692-square-foot building includes 17 classrooms, three research laboratories and a 173-seat auditorium. With a modern design that complements the look of most other facilities on campus, the building features expansive windows overlooking the Norman C. Nelson Student Union and the Guyton Research Building.
Although workers are still completing the finishing touches, students and faculty have been settling in since the start of the semester.
“We decided it would be better to move in while the students weren’t here so that the faculty could get settled, even though we knew they were going to continue to work around us for a while,” Ross said.
The basic science laboratories on the second floor support a second mission, research.
“Specifically, the laboratories are designed to handle between four to eight researchers and they provide an environment to perform a broad spectrum of translational research,” said John Cleary, professor of pharmacy practice.
The laboratories will be geared toward investigating patient-care problems largely concerning pharmacotherapy and pharmacogenomics, he said. Cleary, who has conducted collaborative research with the Department of Infectious Diseases for 25 years, said he and his pharmacy colleagues work in partnership with many other departments.
The new labs provide space for researchers, both faculty and students, to expand their focus on medication therapy issues.
“It’s critical that our students be good problem-solvers so they can contribute to that scientific basis for recommendations regarding medication therapy,” Cleary said.
The building’s classrooms, meanwhile, are tailored to the school’s educational model of problem-based learning. The rooms fit small groups of students, who use flat-screen monitors to study patient cases and map out what Ross terms learning issues.
The number of classrooms, and the building’s advantages as a whole, will aid in the goal of boosting the school’s class size to 115, she said.
“The classrooms will help the overall experience, and that word will get out to students who are looking at pharmacy school,” she said.
Lauren Enstrom is the PY4 representative for the Department of Pharmacy Practice External Transition Committee, a group of students and faculty that works to identify ways to assist incoming PY3s’ transition to Jackson and adjust to student life at UMMC. Before pharmacy students had their own home base on campus, student life was very unpredictable, she said.
“Your schedule changed daily. You never knew which room you were going to be in or what building,” she said. But now that they have a central location, “I think it gives us a sense of belonging, not only in Jackson but the UMMC campus, because we were spread out.
Classmate LaDonna Franklin agreed.
“It’s also a place we can call our own,” she said. “It gives us a sense of pride and a sense of belonging, so it’s cool to have that.”
For more information, visit the School of Pharmacy.