The State University of New York Board of Trustees approved the creation of a Doctor of Pharmacy degree at Stony Brook University on March 11, opening the path for Stony Brook to open a new School of Pharmacy and
Pharmaceutical Sciences.
The school will be the first school of pharmacy on Long Island. However, the Doctor of Pharmacy degree still needs the approval of the New York State Board of Regents.
“The Pharm.D. program at Stony Brook Medicine will provide a unique training experience for aspiring leaders in pharmacy,” said Dr. Kenneth Kaushansky, the senior vice president of health sciences at Stony Brook, at the board’s Academic Affairs Committee on March 10.
Kaushansky said that the school’s mission will be “to train high achieving students with diverse backgrounds, both in the basic science and practice of pharmacy, and by example and innovative coursework, stimulate our students to specialize, so as to operate at the ‘top of the license’ in rewarding careers in academic and hospital specialty pharmacy, population medication management and in the pharmaceutical sciences and industry.”
The School of Pharmacy will join the other health science schools under the Stony Brook Medicine banner: the School of Medicine, the School of Dental Medicine, the School of Health Technology and Management, the School of Nursing and the School of Social Welfare.
Stony Brook University Hospital, a 603-bed teaching hospital, will provide an academic clinical training site for the school. The hospital has 72 pharmacists, 15 of whom will serve as clinical faculty for the school.
“With the Stony Brook focus on population health and our Schools of Medicine, Health Technology and a program in public health, it is perfectly logical for us to focus on training pharmacists to play an important role in care management,” Kaushansky said.
Edmund Hayes, the assistant director of the Stony Brook University Hospital Pharmacy and the director of the Pharmacy Residency Program, has been appointed the School of Pharmacy’s interim dean, according to a university press release.
The School of Pharmacy will be very selective, enrolling a class of only 75 students per year, Kaushansky said.
Students will be able to pursue dual degrees, such as Pharm.D./MBA, Pharm.D./MPH, Pharm.D./M.D. and Pharm.D./Ph.D.
The School of Pharmacy will meet the educational requirements from Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education and state licensure requirements.
The school will also offer electives in basic drug development, drug delivery, oncology, diabetes management and more, Kaushansky said.
The Board of Trustees also approved a new Doctor of Pharmacy degree for Binghamton University at the March 11 meeting.
Trustee Ronald Ehrenberg, the chairman of the board’s Academic Affairs Committee, said the proposals for the new degrees “received positive recommendations for the [SUNY] provost office, noting that one, they met local needs; two, they align with the campus mission; and three, they were the result of careful and strategic planning.”
