Pandemic
Academics As Maryland moved into lockdown, leadership acted decisively to create a virtual School of Pharmacy BY CHRISTIANNA MCCAUSLAND
Stephanie Zalesak, a rising fourth-year PhD candidate in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences (PSC), completed her comprehensive exam in fall 2019. She was spending the spring semester working full time in the lab on research related to a protein for retinoid metabolism. On March 12, she was growing intestinal cells to test how the protein was impacted by different disease states. That day, faculty, staff, and students were notified that the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), including the School of Pharmacy, was shifting to remote learning and working and limiting access to campus buildings to certain essential employees. Henceforth, all education was to be conducted online due to the escalating coronavirus pandemic. Zalesak froze her cells and headed home to Baltimore County, where she lives with her fiancé, an essential employee who had to keep reporting to work. “It was close to being done,” she says of her research, “but obviously this put everything on pause because I can’t do experiments in my house.”
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