The pharmacy school at Hampton University recently won a six-month-long battle to retain its accreditation when the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) voted to release the school from probation and continue accreditation until June 2011.
“Whatever they asked us to do, we did it,” said Dr. Hugh McLean, dean of Hampton University’s School of Pharmacy, of the agency’s suggestions to strengthen the school’s pharmacy program.
McLean received accreditation notification from Dr. Jeffrey W. Wadelin, ACPE’s associate executive director and director of professional degree program accreditation, on June 29, two days after McLean, Hampton president Dr. William Harvey, and Provost Joyce Jarrett made a final presentation at ACPE’s June 2009 board of directors meeting.
As a result of the decision, the university’s pending federal lawsuit against ACPE was dismissed without prejudice, said university spokeswoman Yuri Rodgers Milligan.
The lawsuit was filed in March 2009 after ACPE in January placed the school on probation, noting concerns about the school’s dwindling faculty numbers and its financial resources. ACPE’s board of directors said then that it would continue the school’s accreditation until June 2009.
The school ultimately increased its budget this year by $230,000 so that it could hire nine additional faculty members, McLean said. The faculty includes four African-Americans and professors originating from India, Russia, Iran, and Egypt.
The new positions include an assistant dean of assessment, a chair in the department of pharmacy practice, and additional faculty in the pharmaceutical sciences department, he added.
According to the AACP (American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy) Institutional Research Report Series estimates, between 1988 and 2002, the enrollment of underrepresented minority students in first professional degree programs continued to increase from 10.6 percent to 14 percent in 2002. However, underrepresented minority enrollment fell from 14 percent in 2002 to 11.1 percent in 2006.
Hampton’s school of pharmacy received accreditation in 2002, the same year it graduated its first class. The school is expecting an enrollment of 250 students in the fall, and the school receives about 300 to 400 applications annually for its six-year professional Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) degree program, McLean said.
Sharon L. Hudson, ACPE assistant executive director, told Diverse in an e-mail that more information about the association’s recent decision would be made available over the next several weeks.
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