Pharmacy in jobs, news, schools

When asked about UNCG’s hopes to establish a new pharmacy school by 2011, UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Holden Thorp, a smart and impressive man, gingerly tip-toed through an answer.

“It’s not my decision,” Thorp said in a meeting with News & Record editorial writers last March.

Thorp said he would be happy to help UNCG gather information toward its goal.

“The question whether UNCG is the right place for a second school of pharmacy and whether the state needs one — those are things that need to be decided by President Bowles and Chancellor Brady,” he said later, referring to UNCG leader Linda Brady and UNC system President Erskine Bowles.

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What that precisely meant was unclear. But it did not appear to be a ringing endorsement.

When pressed about opinions on his campus, Thorp was equally nimble, if uninformative. “Well, you know universities are places where there are lots of opinions,” he said. “There is certainly some skepticism about it but there are some other people who think it makes sense.”

In any event, he said, it wasn’t their decision to make, either.

(He was a lot more forthcoming about Tar Heel basketball.)

But being opposed to a new pharmacy school “isn’t part of the UNC culture,” Thorp said, reassuringly.

That was then.

That was before UNC-CH began pursuing its own plans for a satellite pharmacy school at UNC-Asheville. This would not be a full-fledged school like the one envisioned for Greensboro, where as many as 100 students would enroll. But it would involve up to 40 students and would compete for funding at a time when state money is hard to come by.

As of now, there are three schools of pharmacy in North Carolina: the lone public one in Chapel Hill and private ones at Campbell and Wingate universities.

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A major premise in its long-range plans to establish a school, say UNCG officials, is the acute shortage of pharmacists in the state. Their proposal cites a 2008 report by the Pharmacy Manpower Project that ranked North Carolina and Wisconsin as the two states with the most serious shortages of pharmacists.

Some UNC-CH officials counter that the shortage isn’t as great now as it was thought to be before because of the recession.

Why then, the need for another program in Asheville?

And recessions do eventually end. The pharmacy school is a much longer-term proposition.

UNC-CH’s timing also is, well, suspicious. UNCG’s plan has been on the table for months. The Chapel Hill plan was either a well-kept secret or a late development.

Brady said Thursday that she learned of the Chapel Hill proposal at the end of September. “My sense is it had not been in the works very long,” she said.

There may be no calling dibs in these matters, but shouldn’t Chapel Hill at least have touched bases with UNCG as a professional courtesy?

“People have different approaches,” Brady said.

Even so, she added, “I personally don’t view the Chapel Hill concept as a competitor. It’s very different from what we’re proposing here.”

UNCG would offer the professional-level and graduate degrees, including doctorates, and include a significant research component.

She said UNCG’s provost, David Perrin, interim UNC-CH vice chancellor and provost Bruce Carney and the UNC system’s vice president for academic affairs, Alan Mabe, will meet within the next two weeks to discuss the two proposals.

“I don’t think it’s helpful for us to be competitors,” she said. “Sometimes that’s the case, but it would be good for the two institutions to sit down and talk about the two plans and the state’s needs.”

No offense to Asheville, but the arguments for a school here are compelling: the economic impact; backing from the Moses Cone Health System and influential local foundations; the impact on downtown, if it should be built there; synergy in research with the N.C. A&T/UNCG Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering.

“Our argument is not only an educational argument,” Brady said. “It’s an economic development argument.”

The Asheville initiative definitely would cost considerably less up front. But UNCG expects a return of as much as $28 for every dollar invested, including between $5 million and $6 million a year in sponsored research and $6.5 million in annual tuition revenue.

For her part, UNCG’s Brady was clearly expecting statesmanship to trump turf concerns.

“The first chancellor to call me following my appointment here was Holden Thorp,” she said.

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