On Saturday, May 16th, 2020 students, faculty, alumni, and friends of the college virtually gathered for the 7th annual OSU College of Pharmacy Professional Day. This event provides OSU pharmacy students (P1 & P2) a chance to explore various professional pathways to learn about requirements for residency and job preparedness. The students enjoy expanding their network with pharmacy professionals from diverse practice settings and learning about the numerous career paths available within the pharmacy profession.
The day began with a welcome from Dean Kuo and a Pharmacy Professionals Discussion Panel moderated virtually by Paige Clark, Alumni Director. This activity provides students with an opportunity to learn from a group of diverse pharmacy professionals, each with a wide range of backgrounds including managed care, ambulatory care, inpatient pharmacy, oncology, compounding, long term care, and retail pharmacy.
The guest pharmacy professionals included Lincoln Alexander (’15), Wassim Ayoub (’01), Amber Barni, Amy Burns (’11), Kristi Butler (’89), Carl Heisel (’75), Kate James (’01), Ben Kong (’12), Zack McCall (’06), Abby Miske (’13), Jared Okerson (’13), Penny Reher (’82), Kevin Russell (’93), Joe Schnabel (’87), Long Trinh (’14), and Amy Valdez (’99).
After the 16 professionals presented as a panel, students were virtually transported into 16 different Zoom breakout rooms where they participated in a structured professional development conversation event. These “Quick Conversations” gave students the opportunity to ask specific questions of each professional about their individual career path and interact in a smaller, personalized setting.
This year IPPE Experiential Director, Dr. Shanon Starwalt teamed with Paige’s office to expand this event into an IPPE opportunity. Per Dr. Starwalt, students followed the event with extensive reflections of their experience learning about various pharmacy career trajectories.
The College thanks Paige Clark and her office, especially Lauren Gerstner, who advised and guided the Entrepreneurial Academy in the transformation of this annual event. Student leaders, Kelli Hoang (’22), Chano Dominguez (’22), and Henry Nguyen (’22), assisted in designing and executing this virtual event in the time of COVID-19. For the 7th annual Professional Day, we are thankful for our alumni guests making time to mentor our students and for our amazing IT Consultant, Gary Miller.