Message From the School of Pharmacy Dean

Welcome to the Pacific University School of Pharmacy (PUSOP). My name is Marketa Marvanova and I have the honor and privilege to serve as the Dean of PUSOP. The School is located in the College of Health Professions on the Health Professions campus in Hillsboro, Oregon. This unique structure and location provide an outstanding environment to cultivate interprofessional education, collaboration and practice among health profession students, faculty and clinicians, such as physician assistants, audiologists, occupational and physical therapists, athletic trainers, dental hygienists, optometrists, and audiologists, among others.

The School offers high-quality education in our Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) and Master of Science (M.S.)  in Pharmaceutical Sciences programs, postgraduate pharmacy education residencies and fellowships, and the Pharm.D./M.S. in Pharmaceutical Sciences dual degree.  As an academic community, we are a collaborative group of highly dedicated and talented students, faculty, staff, administrators, alumni, and preceptors committed to excellence and innovation in teaching, research, scholarship and service and outreach.

The PUSOP Pharm.D. program is the only three-year or accelerated program in Oregon. It is a carefully designed, rigorous program that combines basic science education with extensive and diverse clinical and interprofessional experiences in and outside of the classroom, where all training and support is provided by highly accomplished and caring faculty, staff, administrators, and preceptors. Importantly, the School has a very strong and foundational partnership with members of our Alumni, School, and Preceptor Advisory Boards as well all our alumni and preceptors across the U.S. These leaders work in all sectors of the pharmacy profession, in a variety of practice settings, and provide advice and direction to help prepare our students to be career-ready for a dynamic and transforming pharmacy career. In addition to the traditional role of pharmacists as medication experts providing medications, counseling and drug information, pharmacists today provide clinical services that involve direct patient care and work as members of interprofessional healthcare teams in a variety of practice settings. Along with solid, high-quality education, our Pharm.D. program has unique features and exposures, equipping our graduates with skills to be competent, innovative, caring, and culturally-competent clinicians providing patient-centered care grounded in evidence, population health and outreach, and rural and underserved health:

• Learner-centered environment with emphasis on student well-being and success. As a Pharm.D. student and professional in our program, you are entering a partnership with faculty, staff, administrators and clinical affiliates and preceptors that are dedicated to your professional development

• Newly updated and highly integrated curriculum with innovations in courses and clinical experiences, delivery and instructional design.

• Emphasis on clinical and professional skills to cultivate a patient-centered model into our didactic and experiential curricula and co-curriculum.

• Unique experiences in experiential education providing access to a variety of practice sites in urban, suburban and rural areas in Oregon as well as flexibility for students to identify high-quality experiential sites in their own states.

• Emphasis on interprofessional education and team work competencies in and outside of the classroom promoting teams and clinical collaborations among different health professions with emphasis on improved patient outcomes and decreased cost of care. Pharmacy is not a stand-alone profession but is a part of integrated healthcare, an essential component of which is interprofessional education and practice. This has become a focus for all of the health professions, in acknowledgement of the fact that quality patient care requires a team approach where the pharmacist, as a medication expert, can play a vital team role for achieving the very best patient outcome(s). As part of the team, the pharmacist’s role is to provide clinical pharmacy services, such as medication therapy, disease-state management and drug information.

These are only a few, select highlights about our School. For more information about our School and people, the Pharm.D. program and graduate degrees, as well as pharmacy postgraduate programs and clinical and outreach services, I encourage you to take a closer look at our website and explore who we are and what we have to offer. We are here to assist you and ensure you are successful in your endeavor and that your needs are met. We are very proud of our programs that are genuinely student-centered and thoughtfully delivered by qualified and dedicated faculty, staff, administrators, and preceptors. We also ensure our programs are small enough so we can get to know you personally and provide you with exceptional training and experiences to launch your professional career so you can make a real, meaningful difference in this world.

We look forward to meeting you!

Marketa Marvanova, Pharm.D., Ph.D., BCGP, BCPP, FASCP

Dean and Professor