Report of the executive vice president. Maintaining the momentum

American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, Winter 1998 by Penna, Richard P

New Investigators Program The New Investigators Program (NIP) is co-funded by AFPE and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. Awards are now $12,500. Eighteen awards will be made to U.S. new faculty and three awards will be made to Canadian faculty. The program has been highly successful in providing opportunities for new investigators to generate preliminary data in order to prepare successful NIH grant proposals. Data generated by AACP staff indicate that the NIH success rate of NIP recipients is higher that the average NIH success rate. In 1998, AACP and AFPE staff collaborated on preparing a refunding proposal to forward to the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

Faculty/Leadership Development

Academic Management Symposium. With the support of Zeneca Pharmaceuticals, AACP produced the 1998 Academic Management Symposium which focused on schools' and colleges' efforts to develop productive partnerships in pharmacy practice. Several case studies outlining successful partnerships that provided opportunities for faculty to establish practices, conduct research, train practice residents, and educate students in clerkship rotations were presented.

Academic Leadership Institute. At one time, the Academic Leadership Institute was conducted for new pharmacy school deans. Several years ago, the Institute was expanded to include new nursing deans. In 1998, the program included new deans from pharmacy, public health, nursing, dentistry, osteopathic medicine, optometry, and allied health. Evaluations from participants have been extremely positive. Clearly, this AACP-led initiative is exerting a major influence to promote interdisciplinary cooperation among health professions to improve academic leadership.

Student Affairs

Career Information Clearinghouse. For a number of years, AACP has been the secretariat of the Career Information Clearinghouse, a consortium of practitioner organizations which coordinates recruitment efforts and career information. Inquiries about pharmacy as a career that any consortium member receives are referred to AACP. Standard packets of career information are then sent to the inquirer. AACP's home page is arranged for the convenience of those seeking information about pharmacy. Links to our member schools' web sites provide opportunities for interested students to visit those schools' and colleges' pages in which they are interested.

With application numbers declining, the importance of a united intraprofessional mechanism to increase interest in pharmacy becomes paramount. The Career Information Clearinghouse is in the process of developing two videos on pharmacy. The first will be a 30-minute documentary on pharmaceutical care; the second will be a 12-minute video for use by anyone within the profession to recruit students. The documentary will be broadcast nationally on four major satellite systems: Public TV (342 stations nationwide), the Classroom Channel (12,000 schools and 165,000 teachers in 47 states), Knowledge TV (26,000,000 households), and the Community College Satellite Network (1,000 Colleges).