College Connections
An electronic newsletter from the College of Pharmacy
March 24, 2023
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Students, faculty, staff and friends,
Spring has arrived and April is almost upon us as we prepare for the final stretch of the semester and for the upcoming convocation and commencement. Our students continue to excel on major national exams. As you will read below, our class of 2022 preformed exceptionally on their NAPLEX exam. Just this past week we received the results of the Pharmacy Curriculum Outcomes Assessment (PCOA) exam and our students excelled once again. We finished in the top 10% nationally and over 25% of our students were in the 90th percentile of all test takers. March also was the resident match month and we will have a more detailed update in our next newsletter. A match celebration is being planned for April.
I have been busy traveling to numerous meetings since late January. In early March, the alumni association and foundation hosted events in Phoenix. The college hosted alumni for a dinner in Scottsdale with a great turnout for the event. The chance to connect with old friends and make new friends was extremely rewarding. A quick trip to New Jersey with Chancellor Gold and Foundation Director, Brian Hastings to personally thank Millie Williams for the Joseph D. Williams estate gift to the College. We are already receiving dividends from the endowment with increased scholarships and matching funds for strategic initiatives. New friends of the College gave $250,000 to support our new Center for Drug Design and Innovation.
We have so much more to share in this newsletter. I hope you enjoy reading about how the students, faculty, staff and alumni have made UNMC an elite college of pharmacy.
All my best.
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Ashley Meacham (P3) and Dr. Kristen Cook |
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On February 16, the UNMC Interprofessional Experiential Center for Enduring Learning program honored its third annual iEXCEL Innovation Award recipients. The awards recognize med center colleagues who have elevated their medical simulation work.
This year, the College of Pharmacy was recognized with two awards. The Student Award was presented to the College’s APhA-ASP chapter for their recurring simulations on Naloxone and student skills. These simulations included; presentations from UNMC faculty and Nebraska Medicine staff, hands on experience with simulation mannequins, and conversations about the pharmacist’s role in naloxone prescribing and administration.
The second award, the iExcel Impact Award for Innovative Adoption of Human Simulation Honorable Mention was presented to Dr. Kristen Cook. The simulation design involved P3 students working in an ER and encountering a patient with opioid abuse disorder. The patient challenged the student to get the provider to prescribe more opioids. Through communication skills, the student was tasked to deescalate conflict and find common ground with the patient to keep them safe. The debrief sessions involved the standardized patient actors, faculty, and peers who observed the encounter to help students build on strengths and receive constructive feedback on their approach.
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Linda Sobeski, PharmD awarded Silver U |
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Linda Sobeski, PharmD, was awarded the January Silver U award for the College of Pharmacy. The award, which is presented to a faculty or staff member twice a year, was given to Dr. Sobeski for her efforts as chair of the College's Scholarship Committee.
As chair, Dr. Sobeski has worked hard to make the award selection as transparent as possible introducing new rubrics and point systems.
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Save the date- UNMC Giving Day |
UNMC Giving Day- For the Greater Good is a virtual day of giving and engagement in support of UNMC students, researchers and clinical partners.
In honor of UNMC's founding year, the event will last for 1,869 minutes beginning at 10 am on March 30 and concluding at 5 pm on March 31. However, you can start supporting Pharmacy programs today!
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Class of 2022 NAPLEX Results |
The NAPLEX pass rates are in for the Class of 2022. Once again, UNMC graduates have surpassed the national first time pass rate average.
The class finished with a first-time pass rate of 92.3% compared to the national average of 79.6%. This ranks UNMC in the top 8% of 142 pharmacy programs nationally.
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Kapa Psi Special Olympics Fundraiser |
The Kappa Psi fraternity took part in the Special Olympics Nebraska Polar Plunge at Lake Zorinsky in Omaha on February 11.
The 10-member team took the icy plunge and raised close to $700. The annual event is one of largest revenue generators for the Special Olympics Nebraska.
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Jered Garrison, PhD, was one of seven scientists honored as a UNMC Distinguished Scientist during an award ceremony held on March 9, 2023. Dr. Garrison’s research is focused on diagnostic and therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals.
The award recognizes faculty at UNMC who hold the title of Associate Professor or above, have worked for the University for at least two years and have a portfolio of extramurally funded research, collaborators, and impactful publications.
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UNMC researchers recognized as top in their fields |
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More than 60 UNMC researchers, including nine current and two former College of Pharmacy faculty members, have been honored for their work by a Stanford University study that looks at the impact of researchers worldwide. The ongoing study has identified 65 current and former UNMC faculty who ranked in a recently released study among the top 2% of all researchers in the world in their fields in 2021.
The Stanford research, published annually, creates a database of the 100,000 top-cited scientists across 22 scientific fields and 174 subfields. This results in rankings for more than 195,000 top scientists. To get the rankings, authors of the Stanford study analyze the work of more than 6 million scientists worldwide and rank them based on their career-long or single-year output (as of 2021) within their field of study. The data includes standardized information on the number of publications and various citation metrics that measure the impact of a researcher’s work.
The College of Pharmacy representatives include: Yazen Alnouti, PhD, Paul Dobesh, PharmD, Corey Hopkins, PhD, Yuri Lyubchenko, PhD, DSc, Ram Mahato, PhD, DAvid Oupicky, PhD, Paul Trippier, PhD, Jonathan Vennerstrom, PhD, and Dong Wang, PhD.
Former faculty include: Tatiana Bronich, PhD and Serguei Vinogradov, PhD.
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College of Pharmacy Spotlight |
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Highlighting college alumni, students, and/or faculty members! |
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Maggie Menke, PharmD candidate
Class of 2023
Where were you born and where did you go to high school?
I was born in Alliance, NE, and attended Alliance High School.
Where did you complete your undergraduate requirements for pharmacy school?
The University of Nebraska at Kearney
What is your favorite memory of pharmacy school?
My favorite part of pharmacy school was meeting my classmates, who quickly became friends.
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I am so thankful to have met such wonderful people during my four years of pharmacy school.
These are the people who understand the commitment and sacrifices, as well as the joys and triumphs that we experience through school. It has been a pleasure to share all these moments with my friends in pharmacy school.
Have you decided where you might like to practice when you graduate?
After graduation, I hope to find a job in the Omaha area to stay close to my husband while he finishes professional school. We hope to eventually settle down in a rural community like the communities where we both grew up.
If you could send a brief message to all of the people who donate to the UNMC College of Pharmacy, what would you say?
I would like to thank all our donors for continuing to believe in our students, faculty, and staff. Through your donations, we are able to expand our knowledge, research, and resources in and out of the classroom. We are so thankful for your support.
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Drew Prescott, PharmD, BCACP
Where did you get your degree?
Creighton University
How many years have you served as a preceptor for UNMC?
5 years.
Describe your path to becoming a preceptor for the College of Pharmacy.
Outside of being faculty at UNMC, serving as a preceptor is something I’ve always considered an important part of my career. I was more formally trained in precepting during my residency at The Ohio State University and have tried to *steal* things I like from other rotation sites/preceptors along the way.
I also have a wise co-preceptor in my colleague Kristen Cook at Midtown, who provides another perspective and works collaboratively on certain precepting initiatives we develop for our rotation.
Describe your practice site, including the location. What special things do the students get to learn from you?
Midtown Health Center is a resident-run primary care clinic that operates under the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) model. The clinic is located in the Blackstone District in Omaha, NE.
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There are over 60 medical residents who see patients at the clinic and our pharmacy team works collaboratively with them to optimize patient care. The clinic serves a diverse patient population from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds.
More specifically, our team assists with chronic disease state management for diabetes, hypertension, anticoagulation, smoking cessation, and PrEP therapy among others. We see patients face-to-face in clinic and provide longitudinal telehealth/telephonic follow-up to support patients over time.
Our most recent efforts are focused in continuous glucose monitor access/utilization, population health initiatives, and smoking cessation documentation/outcomes.
Students on rotation are involved in all the above endeavors while working within the robust interprofessional team in clinic.
What is the most rewarding part of being a preceptor for the College of Pharmacy?
Seeing a student grow in their confidence to provide clinical services over the course of their rotation is the most rewarding part of being a preceptor. It’s exciting to see them use their experiences at Midtown in further rotations and in preparation for their first career step.
Precepting is a great way to get to know students as individuals outside of the classroom. I find myself learning from our students, because each one brings a unique set of experiences into the rotation- whether from a previous rotation, work experience, or life circumstance.
If you could give one message to our current students, what would you say?
Give space between who you are and what you do. If you fail at something, it doesn’t mean you are a failure. The most “successful” people in our profession, in my opinion, do 3 things: Take action, listen well, and consider others before themselves.
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Recent Faculty Publications |
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Examination of Charge Modifications of an Endolysosomal Trapping Inhibitor in an Antagonistic NTSR1-Targeted Construct for Colon Cancer
Fan W., Zhang W., Allen S., Alshehri S., Muilenburg K.M., Zheng C., Garrison J.C.
Bioconjugate Chem. 2022 33:7 (1363-1376)
Preclinical Evaluation of a Humanized, Near-Infrared Fluorescent Antibody for Fluorescence-Guided Surgery of MUC16-Expressing Pancreatic Cancer
Olson M.T., Aguilar E.N., Brooks C.L., Isder C.C., Muilenburg K.M., Talmon G.A., Ly Q.P., Carlson M.A., Hollingsworth M.A., Mohs A.M.
Mol. Pharm. 2022 19:10 (3586-3599)
Pyrophosphorylated-Cholesterol-Modified Bone-Targeting Liposome Formulation Procedure
Liu Y., Jia Z., Ma L., Wang D.
Methods Mol Biol 2023 2622: (207-220)
Effect of double-dose levonorgestrel subdermal implant in women taking efavirenz-based antiretroviral therapy: The DoubLNG pharmacokinetic study
Cirrincione L.R., Nakalema S., Chappell C.A., Byakika-Kibwika P., Kyohairwe I., Winchester L., Mackline H., Pham M.M., Cohn S.E., Siccardi M., Owen A., Fletcher C.V., Lamorde M., Scarsi K.K.
[Article in Press] Contraception 2023 : (109975)
Anti-miR-96 and Hh pathway inhibitor MDB5 synergistically ameliorate alcohol-associated liver injury in mice
Kumar V., Sethi B., Staller D.W., Xin X., Ma J., Dong Y., Talmon G.A., Mahato R.I.
[In Process] Biomaterials 2023 295:
Beyond Sequence: Internucleosomal Interactions Dominate Array Assembly
Wang Y., Stormberg T., Hashemi M., Kolomeisky A.B., Lyubchenko Y.L.
J Phys Chem B 2022 126:51 (10813-10821)
The volume changes of unfolding of dsDNA
Makhatadze G.I., Chen C.R., Khutsishvili I., Marky L.A.
Biophys J 2022 121:24 (4892-4899)
Comparative Pharmacokinetics of Tixagevimab/Cilgavimab (AZD7442) Administered Intravenously Versus Intramuscularly in Symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection
Bender Ignacio R.A., Wohl D.A., Arends R., Pilla Reddy V., Mu Y., Javan A.C., Hughes M.D., Eron J.J., Currier J.S., Smith D., Chew K.W., Gibbs M., Fletcher C.V.
Clin. Pharmacol. Ther. 2022 112:6 (1207-1213)
Advances in Lipid-Based Codelivery Systems for Cancer and Inflammatory Diseases
Jogdeo C.M., Panja S., Kanvinde S., Kapoor E., Siddhanta K., Oupický D.
[Article in Press] Adv. Healthc. Mater. 2022 :
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Interested in becoming a Preceptor? Contact the OEP office for more information!
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