Pharmacy school coming to Roosevelt U., Schaumburg

Roosevelt University's Schaumburg campus at 1400 N. Roosevelt Blvd., will be the home base for its new College of Pharmacy, which will be accredited. The following is information about the new program excerpted from the university's Web site, roosevelt.edu/pharmacy.

• Following proper approvals, the College of Pharmacy intends to admit its inaugural class in the summer-fall of 2011, which will graduate in 2014. ... The first class will have approximately 65 to 70 students. Total enrollment of approximately 200 students is anticipated after three years. The school will be accredited.

• The new College of Pharmacy will be one of few academic pharmacy programs in the nation to offer the PharmD in an accelerated fashion. While most PharmD programs take four calendar years to complete, the College of Pharmacy at Roosevelt will have students engaged in the educational process year-round interspersed with vacation and break periods for three calendar years. (The) curriculum ... will be just as rigorous as the more common PharmD four-year programs.

• The university has appointed George MacKinnon III as founding dean and professor of the College of Pharmacy. He will oversee the accreditation process, curriculum development, hiring of faculty and staff and fundraising activities. He previously played a leadership role in the establishment and accreditation of two new schools of pharmacy in the metropolitan areas of Chicago and Phoenix in the 1990s and has conducted feasibility studies for other universities considering the establishment of pharmacy programs.

• As part of Roosevelt's mission to educate "socially conscious citizens for active and dedicated lives," a major emphasis of the PharmD program will be the recruitment of minorities and students from rural areas. They will help address the shortage of pharmacists serving underrepresented populations.

• Students will be able to tailor their course work with emphases in business administration, educational leadership, information systems/health care informatics and health services management.

• University officials say there's a strong need for a college of pharmacy in Northern Illinois. There are only four academic pharmacy programs for the entire state, and Illinois is one of seven states with the highest demand for pharmacists, according to Pharmacy Today. The aging population, increased use of prescription and nonprescription medications, expansion of retail pharmacies and the growth of pharmacy services are among the reasons for a shortage of pharmacists.

• Officials say tuition will be comparable to similar programs at other schools in the region.

• The college is recruiting full-time and part-time faculty in the administrative, biomedical, clinical and social sciences, in addition to administrative staff members from the surrounding metropolitan area. The college will engage in partnerships with local pharmacists to serve as clinical preceptors for the students in various practice settings.