Southeastern's first class hits marketplace

Drug Store News, June 18, 1990 by Susan Ball

Maria, who will be working for Walgreens in the Miami area, plans to get married in January. Her fiance, who plans to be a clinical pharmacist, is in Southeastern's Pharm.D. program and will graduate next May.

As for succeeding her mother at Elsa Pharmacy, Maria said "maybe, it the far future. Right now, I don't see myself running a business."

Lourdes Moenck, 24, has a B.S. degree in chemistry in addition to the B.S. in pharmacy she will receive this month. She plans to get married in July and start working for Walgreens here in August.

Born in Puerto Rico, Moenck is bilingual, which she expects will be a plus as a pharmacist in Miami. Her mother practiced pharmacy in Cuba (her father is a retired banker), and Moenck grew up hearing pharmacy discussions, but she worked in a hospital pharmacy before entering Southeastern, "to make sure I liked [pharmacy]."

Like many Southeastern students, Moenck was happy when the school opened, because it meant not having to leave home to study pharmacy. "I'm more of a home girl. I wanted to live at home," she explained.

Being in the first graduating class was "great," she said. "We were the `babies,' and they treated us very nicely. In pharmacy, you're always learning, but I feel I'm ready to go out."

She chose retail pharmacy primarily because it afforded more contact with patients. "I like helping them, answering their questions." In addition, she believes pharmacy is a good field for women. Plus, "it pays well."

Mark Youngross, 30, holds a degree in health administration as well as his newly earned B.S. degree in pharmacy. He worked as a pharmacy technician and had "always liked pharmacy," but might not have gone to back to school to become a pharmacist, because of the expense, had it not been for his wife's strong encouragement, he said.

Youngross, who also will be working for Walgreens after graduation, explained that the third year of the B.S. program at Southeastern is devoted to working at rotation sites. For two eight-week periods, he did hospital and community (retail pharmacy) externships, and then worked in four month-long blocks in geriatrics, ambulatory care, internal medicine and drug information rotations. "They were all very helpful," he said. "The rotations exposed us to many aspects of pharmacy."

He continued, "Pharmacy is a good profession. Part of the appeal is interacting with people.

"Pharmacy keeps changing dramatically, and a lot of people say the pharmacist's role is going to be increasingly clinical. But people will still be looking to their neighborhood pharmacist," he believes, because "people need to have a person they can talk to."

PHOTO : Like mother, like daughter: Maria Soler, 26, one of Southeastern College of Pharmacy's

PHOTO : first graduating class, will be a pharmacist like her mother, Elsa Soler (inset), who owns

PHOTO : Elsa Pharmacy in Miami's Hialeah community.

PHOTO : Lourdes Moenck, 24, also Class of 1990, plans to work for Walgreens in Miami.

PHOTO : Robert Green, 57, completed Southeastern's post-graduate Pharm.D. program this spring, 30