Binghamton University Forum tours new pharmacy building

With several high-school seniors from the Broome-Tioga BOCES New Visions Health Careers Academy in attendance, the Binghamton University Forum held its October program at the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Wednesday, Oct. 24.

Following tours of the building, the students and Forum members filled the building’s atrium to listen to President Harvey Stenger provide a University update and Founding Dean Gloria Meredith talk about the new school and building.

“Welcome to our new house,” Stenger said. “The house that Gloria built.”

Stenger reviewed highlights of recent months, focusing on the Town Gown Advisory Board collaboration between the city of Binghamton and the University that is developing initiatives to help everyone coexist in a beneficial way, “so we understand priorities and how to work together.”

Initiatives that are moving forward include a project to put community members and students together in a room to share their stories, one to educate students and landlords on building codes and the leasing process, and another to look at transportation issues for students living on the north side of Binghamton.

Stenger also addressed the University’s economic impact, which is growing each year. “One way to grow is to invest in infrastructure and this building is a perfect example,” he said, as he recounted getting a call from the late Sen. Thomas Libous telling him the governor wanted to know what the Southern Tier needed. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, “Stenger said, “And I told him I really wanted a school of pharmacy built. He said okay, but we would have to put it in Johnson City. He asked how much and I said $60 million and he said he would do his best.

“And he and Donna Lupardo did it and put it in the state budget and allowed us to have this building debt-free,” Stenger said, as he explained how the Health Sciences Campus will continue to grow. “It makes you believe we can do just about anything in Johnson City.”

“What you’ve seen in your tours today means we now have the best pharmacy school in the nation at this point in time,” Meredith said. “We’ve done everything to make sure all our education and research facilities are truly state-of-the-art.”

Meredith also thanked donors including the Dr. Clifford G. and Florence B. Decker Foundation, and Innovation, as well as Libous, Lupardo, Sen. Fred Akshar and Johnson City Mayor Greg Deemie for their support and contributions.

“We are now educating two classes of students,” she said, noting that she hoped the New Visions students in attendance were now “convinced that pharmacy is the best profession for them to go into.

“We are reinventing pharmacy education for the next generation,” Meredith said. “That’s essentially our tag line, but it’s true. We’re educating students who are knowledgeable of the latest advancements, and understand research and what it takes to be a top pharmacist in the nation.”

Meredith told the audience that all approvals have been granted from New York state and other accrediting bodies, and that, most important, the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) has granted the school Candidate status, “which is fully equal to accreditation so our students can take the national exam and be fully licensed pharmacists.”

The school expects to achieve full accreditation from ACPE when its inaugural class graduates in 2021.

The school is seeing growth in enrollment, Meredith said, with 67 students in the inaugural class and 80 in the second year of enrollments. “We are moving quickly toward our goal of 90 students a year and our quality of students is very high, with students from all over the state as well as New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts.”

“We’ve already started a program so Binghamton University students can move smoothly and seamlessly into our program,” she added. “Pharmacy students do not need an undergraduate degree, but it is a doctoral program. Students can come to us after two or three years or get their bachelor’s degree and move smoothly and seamlessly into our school.”

Meredith said most of the faculty are board certified and all of them have finished residencies. “We are a research-intensive school and fortunate to have a number of very strong researchers in the areas of cancer, muscular dystrophy, Lyme disease and opioid research,” she added. “They are top researchers and they’ve put together a program that includes our clinical pharmacists and has the capability of discovering drugs and taking them to trial.”

Researchers in the new school have already garnered about $4 million in federal funding and continue to seek more.

The school already has a Binghamton University recognized Lyme disease research center in collaboration with the Department of Anthropology and an opioid already in collaboration with SUNY Upstate, the New York State Poison Center and others that has received SUNY funding, Meredith said. “We have others working in cancer and one has already spun off his own company in the incubator. We’re talking with potential donors because we are doing research right at the cutting edge where we might discover a new therapy or drug and want to take it to cancer trials. We’re already well funded in in muscular dystrophy research and we will be able to run clinical trials out of here.”

The School of Pharmacy has strong collaborations with the Decker School of Nursing and the University’s Department of Social Work, where students are learning how to work in healthcare teams through simulations, case studies and drills, Meredith said. This interprofessional education model also includes medical students from SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. “It’s really key to the way students will work in healthcare when they graduate.”

The other story is our ability to collaborate with our community partners, Meredith added. “We are increasing our health sciences research base with UHS Wilson Medical Center, Lourdes Hospital and Guthrie in Sayre. We have partnerships with them and others from the standpoint of clinical training of our students, but also from the research end where we also have a strong partnership with Upstate.”

Meredith’s vision for the future, she said, is to “achieve impact across New York and the nation and identify emergent priorities to capitalize on our strengths. We want to be ranked among the top pharmacy schools in the nation, continue to expand and have good funding for research and scholarships and build our PhD program to be ready around 2020,” she said. “We have strong relationships in the local community and with private clinics and hospital systems and nursing homes, and we’re starting to establish relationships in the [New York] city.

A research and development building is about halfway designed that will be build adjacent to the School of Pharmacy on the Health Sciences Campus. “It will be about 30,000 square feet and three stories, with a bridge connecting it to the current building,” Meredith said. “It will have shell space on the second floor for companies and startups. Thank you to Fred Akshar and Donna Lupardo for their support of the project.”

“We’re looking for company partners who might say, ‘This is what we want to work in,’ and we have the flexibility,” said Stenger.

Gerry Putman, executive director of the Decker Foundation, praised Stenger and Meredith. “Look what you folks have done,” he said. “It’s tremendous and I compliment you and the school for what you have accomplished here in Johnson City.”