UNC-CH chancellor visits ECSU

Thorp gets first look at ECSU pharmacy program, students

By Toby Tate
The Daily Advance

Friday, October 03, 2008

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s new chancellor had his first meeting Friday with students who will be graduating from his campus’s pharmacy program in May.

Normally that wouldn’t be remarkable. But this visit with students was unusual because Chancellor Holden Thorp was in Elizabeth City, not Chapel Hill.

Thorp, who became UNC-CH chancellor on July 1, visited Elizabeth City State University on Friday to get his first look at the school’s pharmacy program and interactive videoconferencing classrooms. ECSU and UNC-CH have operated a joint pharmacy school program, called the UNC-Chapel Hill/ECSU Doctor of Pharmacy Partnership Program, or PharmD, since it was launched in 2005.

Thorp, along with the dean of the pharmacy program at UNC-Chapel Hill, Robert Blouin, and Matt Kupec, vice chancellor for advancement at UNC-Chapel Hill, took a tour of the classrooms at ECSU and spoke to several students in a pharmaceuticals class.

“I can’t think of a program that does a better job of showing how schools work together,” Thorp said. “It’s good to see so many people in the pharmacy program.”

Thirteen students from ECSU will graduate from the PharmD program at UNC-Chapel Hill in May, the first group to do so.

Ali Khan, interim provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at ECSU, said the goal of the PharmD program is to increase the number of pharmacists working in under-served areas, particularly this region of the state.

“The focus is to keep them in northeastern North Carolina,” he said.

One of the main instructional tools in the pharmacy program is videoconferencing, which allows professors at UNC-Chapel Hill to teach classes at ECSU and UNC simultaneously. Students can interact with professors by simply pressing a button. When the button is pushed, a camera in the room zooms in on the student so that the professor in Chapel Hill can see them.

“Both environments are designed around the pedagogy of learning,” Blouin said. “That was our promise to the faculty, that technology would conform to their style of teaching, instead of them having to conform to the technology.”

Blouin said the goal of videoconferencing is to move away from lectures and toward teaching methods that encourage critical thinking.

“The partnership with ECSU has helped us move ahead with this vision,” he said. “The technology was designed with the student in mind. We want people to feel like they’re all in one place.”

During his visit in the classroom, Thorp was also able to use an interactive touch-screen computer to play a game of tic-tac-toe with a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. He also interacted with the professor through Powerpoint slides using Adobe Connect.

Blouin said computer and videoconferencing technology can be used to great advantage in the medical field.

“Eventually, we would like to have pharmacies interacting with patients via videoconferencing,” he said.

Susan Peck, director of technology at ECSU, said videoconferencing is part of a hybrid teaching method at the university.

“The use of the distance learning-videoconferencing hybrid really helps the staff and faculty, as well as the students’ creativity,” she said.

Most of the pharmacy school students said they are enjoying the experience of taking classes at ECSU that are being taught in Chapel Hill.

“I think it’s a really good experience. I like it,” said Savanna Steel, a third-year student.

Sarah Smith, also a third-year student, said she really likes the small class sizes in the ECSU program.

“I like the ratio of students to advisers here,” she said. “(Advisers) are here for you even if (the issue is) not school-related.”

Blouin said he has a lot of optimism for the future of the pharmacy partnership program.

“I look forward to a really great academic year for all of us,” he said.