The University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy is the graduate

pharmacy Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medication, medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it ...

school of the

University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a public state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the univers ...

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

, United States. Founded in 1878, it offers

Doctor of Pharmacy A Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD; New Latin: ''Pharmaciae Doctor'') is a professional doctorate in pharmacy. In some countries, it is a doctoral degree to practice the profession of pharmacy or to become a clinical pharmacist. In many countries t ...

(PharmD) and

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

(PhD) degrees, as well as a

residency Residency may refer to: * Domicile (law), the act of establishing or maintaining a residence in a given place ** Permanent residency, indefinite residence within a country despite not having citizenship * Residency (medicine), a stage of postgrad ...

training program. The school is one of the university's six schools of the health sciences and is ranked in the top 10 of pharmacy schools according to '' U.S. News & World Report''.

History

The University of Pittsburgh's School of Pharmacy was chartered on September 23, 1878, and is the oldest of the University of Pittsburgh's schools of the health sciences. Originally an independent college named the Pittsburgh College of Pharmacy, on April 16, 1896, the college became affiliated with, and a department of, the Western University of Pennsylvania, the name of the University of Pittsburgh until 1908. In 1908, The Pittsburgh College of Pharmacy purchased and merged the

Scio College Scio College ( ) was an institution of higher education in Ohio in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Parts of it merged into Mount Union College, while its pharmacy school merged with what would become the University of Pittsburgh School of ...

of Pharmacy, formerly located in

Scio, Ohio Scio is a village in Harrison County, Ohio, United States. The population was 763 at the 2010 census. History Scio was originally called New Market, and under the latter name was platted in 1852. Geography According to the United States Census ...

, and adopted its alumni. Over the years The Pittsburgh College of Pharmacy grew increasingly closer to the university, and on January 26, 1948, the two formally merged, transforming the pharmacy college into the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. Today the School of Pharmacy is located on the

Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay ...

campus of the University of Pittsburgh and is primarily situated in

Salk Hall Jonas Salk Hall at the University of Pittsburgh is a Pennsylvania state and Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation Historic Landmark. The Art Deco building is named after Jonas Salk, who conducted his research on the first polio vaccine in ...

, which is same building where

Jonas Salk Jonas Edward Salk (; born Jonas Salk; October 28, 1914June 23, 1995) was an American virologist and medical researcher who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines. He was born in New York City and attended the City College of New ...

developed the first vaccine against polio.

Academics and research

The primary educational tracks at the School of Pharmacy are its four-year PharmD program and its graduate programs. Central aspects of Pitt's School of Pharmacy include its emphasis on the integration of science and practice throughout the course of study, emphasis on team building through collaborative learning, a service learning program, and its innovative methods of instruction delivery. The School of Pharmacy also provides a relatively unique Clinical Pharmaceutical Scientist Program that educates scientists to conduct translational and patient-oriented research and the GEAR-UP program to educate students about pharmaceutical research. The School of Pharmacy also offers a residency program for pharmacy and specialized in conjunction with the

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) is a $23billion integrated global nonprofit health enterprise that has 92,000 employees, 40 hospitals with more than 8,000 licensed beds, 800 clinical locations including outpatient sites and d ...

(UPMC), the UPMC Health Plan,

CVS Caremark CVS Caremark (formerly Caremark Rx) (stylized as , previously CVS/caremark) is the prescription benefit management subsidiary of CVS Health, headquartered in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Company history Caremark was founded as a physician and p ...

, and

Rite Aid Rite Aid Corporation is an American drugstore chain based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1962 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, by Alex Grass under the name Thrift D Discount Center. The company ranked No. 148 in the Fortune 500 l ...

. The School of Pharmacy research endeavors range from

molecular genetics Molecular genetics is a sub-field of biology that addresses how differences in the structures or expression of DNA molecules manifests as variation among organisms. Molecular genetics often applies an "investigative approach" to determine the ...

to human clinical research and patient-care outcomes. The school is a major center for pharmaceutical research as evidenced by its consist ranking among the top schools of pharmacy in research funding received from the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the lat ...

(NIH). Research centers within the School of Pharmacy include the Center for Pharmacogenetics, the Center for Education and Drug Abuse Research (CEDAR), and the Center for Pharmacoinformatics and Outcomes Research. The School also houses the Cell Imaging Core of the Center for Reproductive Science, a Neuroendocrinology Research Consortium, as well as considerable chemistry expertise in the Drug Discovery Institute of the University. Through its collaboration with UPMC, School of Pharmacy faculty members also lead the combined Pittsburgh Poison and Drug Information Center.

Organization and facilities

The School of Pharmacy is composed of three units: the Office of the Dean, the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, and the Department of Pharmacy and Therapeutics. Instruction for the professional and graduate courses in the School of Pharmacy occurs mainly in

, in shared classrooms and in a dedicated teaching laboratory. Research laboratories are located on the fifth through eighth floors and the tenth floor of Salk Hall. The ninth and eleventh floors house faculty and administrative offices exclusively. Faculty members also have laboratory facilities in the Biomedical Science Tower 3 as part of the Drug Discovery Institute. Some faculty members have offices in Scaife Hall, Lothrop Hall, and Falk Clinic as well as in UPMC hospitals, the

UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh (CHP), popularly known simply as Children's, is part of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the only hospital in Greater Pittsburgh dedicated solely to the care of infants, children, teens and ...

, and VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System hospitals, in proximity to their patient care practices. Off-site faculty and staff offices are also located in the Birmingham Towers on the South Side. Along with the five other schools of the health sciences, the School of Pharmacy is adjacent to and affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, which provides care through the Pennsylvania's largest network of tertiary, specialty, and community hospitals. Collectively, these facilities provide a comprehensive center for teaching, patient care, and research in the health sciences.

Museum

The School also operates the Elmer H. Grimm Sr. Pharmacy Museum, which opened in the fall of 1996. Located on the fourth floor of

, the museum holds pharmacy memorabilia such as drug products, equipment, and sundry products dating back to the early 20th century. Among the museums possessions are two hand-carved

finials A finial (from '' la, finis'', end) or hip-knob is an element marking the top or end of some object, often formed to be a decorative feature. In architecture, it is a small decorative device, employed to emphasize the apex of a dome, spire, towe ...

, which were often found over the door or partitions that separated the main art of the pharmacy from the back room where pharmacists did most of their work, an old-fashioned powder mill, and a konseal machine.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pittsburgh Pharmacy, University Of

Pharmacy Pharmacy is the science and practice of discovering, producing, preparing, dispensing, reviewing and monitoring medications, aiming to ensure the safe, effective, and affordable use of medication, medicines. It is a miscellaneous science as it ...