Report of the executive vice president. Maintaining the momentum

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

PharmLoan Program. The PharmLoan program is up and running. It is offering preferred loan rates to students at every school and college of pharmacy in the U.S. The loan rates are based on the university's overall default rate, but the pharmacy school receives a preferred rate that is at least one tier above the rate offered to other students on that campus. Pharmacy students are applying for and receiving loans through the program, and interest in it continues to grow among students and their financial advisors.

Institutional Research

Institutional research is the mechanism through which AACP gathers, analyzes, and reports data on the pharmaceutical education enterprise. It helps us to understand who we are and how we are changing. The Association continues to maintain and improve the efficiency of its data collection, analysis, and reporting. The Office of Institutional Research continues to acquire improved software in order to increase the quality and quantity of its output. The following publications result from AACP's institutional research activities:

Pharmacy School Admission Requirements;

Profile of Pharmacy Students;

Profile of Pharmacy Faculty;

Roster of Faculty and Professional Staff;

a summary of financial data for all schools and school-specific peer analyses; and

a database of descriptive data of graduate programs (sent on disk to participating schools for local analysis).

Member schools continue to request special analyses of data. A significant majority of these analyses are peer comparisons of salaries for self-study reports, salary negotiations, and budgetrelated discussions with university administrations.

AACP Meetings

AACP meetings (annual meetings, interim meetings, Academic Management Symposia, Institutes) have grown to become a major source of benefits for our members. The 1997 annual meeting in Indianapolis was a huge success, as were the 1998 interim meetings and the AACP Academic Management Symposium. Significantly, 1999 begins AACP's celebration of the centennial of its founding. The observation begins with the 1999 annual meeting in Boston, July 3 - 7,1999. Noted historian and author Doris Kearns Goodwin has agreed to keynote this historic and very special AACP meeting.

CONCLUSION

The past year was filled with old problems, some successes and new challenges. Significantly, however, on a broad front, the Association continued to maintain its momentum of progress. AACP staff worked diligently to assure that membership services were provided promptly and courteously. Staff requested and received from the membership timely critical reviews of its activities, and input related to proposed new programs.

Am. J. Pharm. Educ., 62, lS-4S(1998); received 9/28/98.

Richard P. Penna

American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, 1426 Prince Street, Alexandria VA 22314-2841