Dr. Julie Masterson (Class of 2012) recently completed a PGY-1 residency at Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center in Knoxville and has accepted a clinical pharmacist position at LeConte Medical Center in Sevierville, Tennessee.

Dr. Masterson will serve as the first clinical pharmacist at LeConte and will develop clinical programs to aid patients in the East Tennessee area.  She will work as a member of an interdisciplinary team to make pharmacy related interventions where appropriate.  She will focus on completing consults and making interventions via Computer Physician Order Entry (CPOE) based on generated reports.

Dr. Masterson states that she will be implementing policies and protocols with pharmacists from other local hospitals to help standardize pharmacy care among the different treatment centers of which LeConte is a member.

Belmont pharmacy students recently attended the 126th annual Tennessee Pharmacist’s Association meeting in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  Kelly Maguigan (’14), Mandy Newman (’14), Alexander Tu (’16) and Kyle Robinson (’14) (pictured at right) represented Belmont’s College of Pharmacy in the Self Care competition.  Dr. Traci Poole, advisor of Belmont’s chapter of the Tennessee Society of Student Pharmacists, stated, “It was wonderful to see our student pharmacists engaged with their state association in a variety of ways, ranging from discussion of policy in our House of Delegates to the Self-Care Competition.”

Several Belmont pharmacy faculty participated in the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy annual meeting from July 13 through 17 in Chicago, Ill.  The meeting is the primary source of innovations in teaching in colleges and schools of pharmacy, offers a large selection of faculty development opportunities and provides a merging of academia and accreditation issues.

Belmont faculty learned new techniques in the areas of student recruitment, student remediation, the scholarship of teaching and practice innovations as well as learned new standards of accreditation, new CAPE competencies and software products.

Marilyn E. Thompson Odom presented at a round table session on Assessment of Student Learning and Level of Empathy Through Use of Creative Expression. Elisa Greene, Ashton Beggs, Mark Chirico, Alisa Spinelli, Condit Steil, Kristina Wood and Phil Johnston–presented Integration, Innovation and Collaboration at Belmont University College of Pharmacy at the poster session. Leigh Ann Bynum, Hope Campbell and Lindsay Hahn presented Making Cross-Linkages Work Between Clinical and Management Classes in the College of Pharmacy at the refereed poster session. Andrew Webster and Angela Hagan served as administrative representative and faculty representative, respectively, in the House of Delegates.  Phil  Johnston served on the Council of Deans.

Dr. William Gibson ’12, has accepted a position as a Clinical Pharmacist for Central Washington Hospital following completion of his PGY-1 residency.  Central Washington Hospital is a 206 bed Regional Level III Trauma and Heart Center and is the major medical facility and referral center for patients in the North Central Washington area.  Dr. Gibson will provide pharmacy services for a spectrum of clinical disciplines including general medicine, oncology, cardiology, pediatrics, intensive care, obstetrics, surgery, and emergency medicine.  He states that his residency gave him the opportunity to better determine his specific practice interests and that Central Washington Hospital is a great place to begin his career.

Class of 2016 pharmacy student Amy Schnees has received a Mary Molina Education Scholarship. This $2,500 award is given to doctoral students who excel academically.  Applicants must either work for or be a dependent of an employee within Molina Healthcare. Schnees worked closely with Belmont Pharmacy Assistant Professor Dr. Edgar Diaz-Cruz to prepare her application.   This summer Amy has been working with Dr. Amy Ham and colleagues at Vanderbilt University to study resistance of targeted drug therapies for colon cancer.

Class of 2012 Belmont College of Pharmacy Alumni, Dr. Rebecca Lucas Chapman and Dr. John Pustulka, are currently co-coordinating the summer internship program for Walgreens in the north and south Nashville areas.  Dr. Chapman states that the majority of students in the program are currently enrolled in pharmacy school at either Belmont or Lipscomb.  The main focus of the program is to develop strong future pharmacists who prefer to practice in a community setting.  The program provides not only real-life experiences to the interns but the tools and resources that the current community pharmacist utilizes on a daily basis.

In addition, Dr. Chapman has recently accepted the position of pharmacy manager for Walgreens in Hermitage, Tennessee. Dr. Chapman will be implementing quality assurance protocols to increase drug safety, providing medication therapy management services as well as overseeing drug inventory. Dr. Chapman’s store is located near Tulip Grove in Hermitage.

Dr. Zachary Renfro (Class of 2012) has accepted a position as a Community Pharmacy Account Specialist with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) in east Tennessee. He will assist in implementing community pharmacy-based initiatives that are aligned to shared GSK and retail chain headquarter objectives. The Community Pharmacy Team with GSK will focus 100% of its efforts on community pharmacy and will serve as the GSK point of contact for community pharmacists.

Dr. Renfro will work with Community Pharmacists in both independent and retail settings to encourage and support patient interventions/outcomes that result in better patient care in diseases such as asthma/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, benign prostatic hyperplasia, and hypertriglyceridemia. The primary function will be to work with community pharmacists at the store level to encourage/support patient interventions that result in better patient care (i.e. medication adherence), specifically on GSK products such as Advair, Serevent, Flovent, Avodart, Jalyn, and Lovaza. This is a relatively new position within the pharmaceutical industry, with GSK being the first company to create it approximately 3 years ago.

Dr. Renfro has worked as a resident the past year with the Tennessee Pharmacist’s Association.

Dr. Kelley Kiningham, assistant dean of student affairs and associate professor in the Pharmaceutical, Social and Administrative Sciences Department, coauthored an article accepted for publication in Cancer Research. The article, “KEAP1 is a Redox Sensitive Target That Arbitrates the Opposing Radiosensitive Effects of Parthenolide in Normal and Cancer Cells” identifies a mechanism by which differences in cellular redox status can be targeted to kill tumor cells, while protective of normal tissue when radiation is used as a therapeutic. Kiningham states that finding pharmacological approaches to protect normal tissue during treatment of patients with cancer is important to reduce side effects and improve compliance.