Southeastern's first class hits marketplace

Drug Store News, June 18, 1990 by Susan Ball

Southeastern's first class hits marketplace

Miami area hungry for talents of 24 undergrads, six graduates

MIAMI -- Southeastern College of Pharmacy, which opened its doors three years ago, is graduating its first class this month, sending new troops into a pharmacist-hungry marketplace.

The 24 bachelors of science and six post-graduate Pharm.D.s in the Class of 1990 should not want for job opportunities. South Florida, where most plan to stay, is suffering an acute shortage of pharmacists, with as many as 75 pharmacy jobs unfilled in the tri-county (Dade-Broward-Palm Beach) metropolitan area, estimated Allen Nichol, director of professional affairs at the pharmacy school.

Southeastern College of Pharmacy, which has a current enrollment of nearly 300 students, offers three degrees, including bachelor of science, post-graduate Pharm.D. and entry-level Pharm.D.

Of the 24 students graduating this June with a B.S. degree, half are Hispanic and 15 are women. Three of the six students receiving doctorates in pharmacy also are Hispanic, and five are women. All Florida residents, the B.S. graduates range in age from 23 to 44, and many were attracted to Southeastern because they would be able to live at home while attending classes and, in some cases, holding jobs.

Four members of the Class of 1990 talked to Drug Store News about themselves and their plans.

Bob Green, who just completed the post-graduate Pharm.D. program, is 57 years old and entered Southeastern three years ago, 32 years after he graduated from Long Island University's Brooklyn College of Pharmacy (now Arnold and Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy) in New York. During that three-decade lapse, Green moved to Florida; married and had three daughters, all grown now; and owned three drug stores.

Going back to school was "something I always wanted to do--I felt the profession has changed so much since my undergraduate days," he said. "For example, I didn't even know then there was such a word as `pharmacokinetics'; now I'm finishing up a rotation in it." He's also noticed that the new breed of pharmacy students has more opportunity to study therapeutics and the pathophysiology of drugs. "In the past, we did more compounding and mixing of ingredients," he added. "Students now may not know what ingredients are in Milk of Magnesia, but they know how it works in the body."

He has also found greater emphasis now on hospital pharmacy: "Many pharmacists today, like me, prefer clinical jobs to dispensing prescriptions."

He switched to hospital pharmacy about nine years ago, attracted by what he considers a "more professional environment," and will continue to work at Coral Reef Hospital after graduation. He plans to help start a nutritional support program for patients at the hospital, teamed with a dietitian and nurse, and also hopes to develop a kinetics program there.

With the responsibilities of a family and a daytime job, working toward his doctorate was "very difficult," and Green is grateful for the pharmacy school's and Coral Reef Hospital's support and flexibility. Besides being able to attend classes at night, the school "even scheduled courses so that if your work schedule changed, they would offer the course on another day, too." The hospital reimbursed his tuition and also helped with scheduling.

Green said he hopes the Pharm.D. degree will remain optional rather than mandatory. "There's still a place for pharmacists with B.S. degrees," he maintains. "Retail pharmacists get more than enough training with a bachelor of science. The quality of undergraduates is quite good."

For Maria Soler, 26, who graduates this month with a B.S. in pharmacy, one particular pharmacy in Miami has been like a second home since her high school days. That's because her mother, Elsa Soler, is the pharmacist-owner of Elsa Pharmacy, located in Miami's Hialeah section, and Maria and her sisters used to help their parents in the store after school and often did their homework there.

The Solers, who had owned a pharmacy in Cuba, came to the United States in 1968, first settling in Union City, N.J. They moved to Florida in 1971 and, about 11 years ago, bought the small but thriving pharmacy in Hialeah, near a hospital and medical offices.

"We all worked together," Elsa Soler recalled one day to a visitor in her pharmacy. "And now, Maria will be a pharmacist. I'm so glad. For me, it has been wonderful, and it will be a good career for her. If she wants, when I retire, she might come here."

Maria Soler said that as a high school student she didn't really consider becoming a pharmacist, and in fact was studying at Florida International University, well on her way to becoming a medical technician, when Southeastern opened in 1986. At her mother's urging, she transferred to the new pharmacy school and "started all over again."

"I'm glad I did," said Maria. "I really enjoy pharmacy, especially the patient contact.

"People have respect for pharmacists," she continued. "I've seen the relationship patients have with my mother. People confide in her and sometimes go to her before they would go to a doctor."