06 JUNE 2013
E-NEWSLETTER OF THE NATIONALLY RANKED UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO COLLEGE OF PHARMACY AND PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES
RxeFILL this issue 2013 Valedictorians P.2
The Class of 2013
Meet Dr. Julie Murphy P.3 The Spring Commencement Exercises for the College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences were held on Saturday, May 4, 2013 at the John F. Savage Arena. This event allowed the college to celebrate the graduation of a new class of pharmacists and pharmaceutical scientists. The college awarded 104 Doctor of Pharmacy degrees, 15 master’s degrees, and 164 baccalaureate degrees. Among the 164 baccalaureate degrees recipients, a majority graduated with honors. Seventeen graduated summa cum laude, 53 graduated magna cum laude, and 51 graduated cum laude.
Student research presentations P.4 Hasan Alhaddad, a second-year master’s student in the lab of pharmacology assistant professor Dr. Youssef Sari, was a semifinalist in the poster session at the 2013 Graduate Research Forum.
Dr. Early discusses health disparities P.4 Upcoming events P.4
Planning the 2013 Graduate Research Forum By Aparna Raghavan, a Medicinal Chemistry PhD candidate The Council of Biomedical Graduate Students (CBGS) organized the Graduate Research Forum for graduate students all around the university. Our college, a recently added member of this council, showed active participation at the event. As a representative of our college, I had a great time organizing an event of such magnitude. We began planning this event in October 2012 to ensure smooth progression. Requests for keynote speakers were sent out, and we had many a nail-biting moments before confirming our keynote speaker for this year, Dr. Robert Copeland. Dr. Copeland is the Executive Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at Epizyme, Inc., a company focused on personalized therapeutics for cancer and rare diseases. The GRF has always featured poster presentations by graduate students belonging to the biomedical sciences program. This year, we decided to incorporate oral presentations as well. Though this might seem a minor addition, handling both a job that required meticulous planning. We began by sending out surveys to determine whether students were interested in the new format, and were taken aback by the nearly unanimous positive response. However, since this was our first year handling both formats, we decided to limit the number of oral
presenters. What followed was a flurry of requests for registration and abstract submissions, which gave us an idea of the volume we could expect. Next, we needed judges for appraising the presentations. We sent out college-wide emails to faculty members and post-doctoral fellows requesting for them to team up as judges for the event. Here again, we couldn’t have asked for a better response. Slowly but steadily, the elements of the event fell into place. The day before the event was spent setting up poster boards and banners, printing judging sheets and, yes, taking care of food arrangements. By the end of the day, with all contingency plans in place, things were proceeding as predicted except for one surprise: the huge response from students and faculty members at 8 a.m. on first the morning of the conference. We were shocked at the nearly 100 attendees who were neither presenters nor judges. Of the 36 poster presenters, 8 were from the College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. Our debut with the oral sessions was well-received and appreciated by many faculty members. The second day of the event was even more exciting, with the final round of the poster Continued on page 3