College of Pharmacy

Students in the Pharm.D. program at Union University have the opportunity to participate alongside faculty in a variety of research endeavors. We have designed a curriculum that allows students, not only the opportunity but also the time to participate in lab-based or pedagogical/educational research. Although, a relatively small liberal arts university, Union University has invested significantly in the acquisition of state-of-the-art research equipment including a Waters UPLC-MS system and a 400 MHz Bruker NMR, both equipped with autosampler technology.

Students in the Pharm.D. program at Union University have the opportunity to learn from faculty in the classroom and laboratories as well as in a variety of practice specialty settings on clinical rotations. Students also have the opportunity to complete clinical research alongside faculty during their time at Union University.

The Center for Pharmacometrics and Molecular Discovery (PharMD) aims to develop and foster relationships with industry and academic partners to provide and expand unique research opportunities for students and faculty within the College of Pharmacy. We believe that research is best conducted through collaborative means. These partnerships provide our students opportunities to work closely with faculty on critical issues related to healthcare and disease-state management.

The Center for Population Health and Rural Medicine (PHaRM) serves as a research and service center of excellence that advances research, teaching, and service in the areas of population health, interprofessional collaboration, interpersonal communication, health literacy, health promotion, disease prevention, medication use, health outcomes, lifestyle modification and management.

The Center assists multiple institutions and their post graduate year one pharmacy residents with research projects each year. Center partners representing pharmacy, social work, optometry, dietitians, nursing, athletic training, business and others professionals are currently preparing publications for submission to top peer reviewed pharmacy and medical journals. We prepare multiple grants each year for submission to well-known funding agencies and are in the process of completing grants that were funded externally and internally from various agencies and programs. Center partners present posters and provide presentations at various national, regional and local conferences each year and participate in numerous award programs.

In 2018-2019, more than 20 pharmacy students assisted in various Center sponsored community health events, research projects, presentations and community service projects. The number of students assisting with these activities increases significantly when other disciplines are considered.

Currently, the Center for PHaRM is in the process of partnering with the Jackson-Madison County Regional Health Department and Lane College in a research/service endeavor aimed at better educating individuals about issues affecting heart health and diabetes. Students will be provided opportunities to assist with this collaboration in multiple ways including, survey data collection; the delivery of educational programming; providing blood pressure, lipid panel, A1C, body mass index, and health literacy assessments; data analyses; and dissemination of findings through poster presentation, podium presentation, and peer-review publication.

The dates and times of all research/service opportunities will be posted in advance. All students interested in participating should contact Dr. Sean King at sking@uu.edu.

The Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the College of pharmacy has established a one-year fellowship in pharmacometrics. This fellowship is appropriate for a Pharm.D., Masters, or Ph.D. student or graduate with some training in pharmacokinetics. The student will work with Pharmaceutical Sciences faculty for training in pharmacometric data analysis. Training will be individualized to the student’s needs and interests, but will focus on skill sets useful for pharmacometric applications in drug development. Students will learn to model data with NONMEM and other related software. The fellowship will include a research project suitable for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. Successful completion of the fellowship and granting of the title “Fellow in Pharmacometrics, Union University College of Pharmacy”, will require the successful completion of a submission-ready manuscript for publication. Additionally the student will be required to demonstrate basic competency in data management and pharmacometric analysis. Competency will be demonstrated through the independent work performed during the research project.

For more information regarding this Fellowship, please contact: