One of the true strengths of the College of Pharmacy can be found by looking at the quality and character of our students. As we noted when doing the environmental scan for our strategic plan, we have a 5:1 applicant to enrolled student ratio in our PharmD program. We are attracting some of the brightest and most promising students to study at Ohio State. 

To continue attracting and retaining high ability, engaged students, we have been focusing on improving our Doctor of Pharmacy admissions process. Specifically, we are implementing new ideas to help us attract well-prepared, diverse and enthusiastic students who are committed to providing excellent patient care and being leaders in the pharmacy profession in years to come.

As we recruited students for the Class of 2019, we implemented several changes to our admissions process and offered a new event— Welcome Day— to communicate to incoming students that we’re excited about them joining the college and choosing to pursue their professional education at The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy.

This week, I have asked the Office of Student Services to share an update about the admissions process this year and the success of our first annual Welcome Day.

The College of Pharmacy is excited to welcome our Doctor of Pharmacy Class of 2019 to campus. Currently, we are on track to meet our target class size of 125. The class of 2019 includes 12 Early Admission Pathway (EAP) students. Plans are underway for orientation, which will begin the week of August 17.

This season’s interview process benefitted from contributions of many dedicated faculty, students, staff, alumni and supporters, who gave generously of their time and talent. The college hosted seven Saturday interview events between January and April. We implemented several changes to the interview process this year, including a change of venue, moving interviews to conference rooms in the Biomedical Research Tower, located next door to Parks Hall. This change allowed us to offer a convenient, centralized interview day while allowing us to increase the number of prospective students invited to each day.

Another exciting update to the process was the addition of a web page specifically designed for our incoming PharmD students. This resource uses informative video blogs and interviews to help students find answers to their questions about the college.  You can check out the new website here: http://pharmacy.osu.edu/future-students/pharmd-class-2019-admitted-students

The Student Services office hosted our first Welcome Day for admitted students on June 13. We opened our doors to the PharmD Class of 2019 for a full day of events.  Seventy students participated and had the opportunity to sit in on an introductory lecture, ask questions, connect with classmates, and tour the campus and The James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute. Lunch was served on the top floor of Thompson Library, while recent alumni spoke about their careers as pharmacists. 

Welcome Day was a great success and we look forward to hosting it again next year. Photos from the event can be found on our student blog: https://u.osu.edu/pharmdambassadors/.

While we help the Class of 2019 get ready for fall, we are starting to plan for next year’s admissions cycle. Tentative dates are scheduled for interviews and updates to the process are under review.

This season, we plan to start interviews early by participating in the Early Decision option provided by PharmCAS. The Early Decision option offers students who have decided that Ohio State is their number one choice the opportunity to submit their application materials for early review.  In exchange for a binding commitment to attend if admitted, students are reviewed and given an admissions decision very early in the process. This potentially saves students the time, money, and effort of applying to multiple programs. Candidates who are interested in participating in the Early Decision option are required to submit all of their application materials to PharmCAS by September 8, 2015.

We’re looking forward to seeing the Class of 2019 begin its journey through the PharmD program, and are excited to start talking to potential members of the Class of 2020.  Thanks again to all of the alumni, faculty, staff and students who help to support the PharmD admissions process.

If you have any questions about admission to Ohio State’s PharmD program, please visit http://www.pharmacy.ohio-state.edu/future-students/doctor-pharmacy-admissions or contact us at admissions@pharmacy.ohio-state.edu.

Thank you to Jessica, Joe, Julie, Kelly and all of the members of the Office of Student Affairs and the College of Pharmacy Admissions Committee for their hard work this year. We’re looking forward to seeing the Class of 2019 in Parks Hall to begin their studies in August, and to meeting future members of the Class of 2020 when they arrive for interviews a few months from now.

Best regards, 

Katherine Kelley

As a leading research institution, the Ohio State University encourages and facilitates the investigation of countless ideas and lines of inquiry as part of the university’s core goal to encourage research and innovation. Research is also a central part of the College of Pharmacy’s mission, vision and values, and occupies a key position in our strategic planning efforts. Research and innovation are central to the work that we do in the college each day.

As you can imagine, undertaking ground-breaking research involves not only our very talented faculty, research staff, and trainees, but also a great deal of support from our staff and administrative areas. In this week’s blog, I would like to take a few moments to introduce you to one of the administrative areas in the college that helps to support our research agenda: our central business office.  

I’ve asked Joy Scott, our Business Service Center manager and certified research administrator, to share a few words about the work that she and her colleague, business manager Tesia Forbes, do to support principal investigators and our research mission:

One of our main tasks as business managers for our college is to facilitate the research that is taking place. We manage more than $20 million in research grant awards, and we are continually striving to promote the highest quality research and research administration. As part of the Central Business Office team, Tesia and I provide a centralized resource for grant submissions and administration within the college. We work in close collaboration with the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP), and provide both pre- and post-award grant administration support.

Pre-award, we help principal investigators by identifying and publicizing funding opportunities. We review funding opportunity announcements and sponsor guidelines to identify specific sponsor requirements. We schedule and attend research proposal team meetings as needed, and assist with developing project budgets and seeking budget justifications. We complete authorizations to seek off-campus funding and coordinate questions about award and expenditure credit, indirect cost rates and cost sharing. 

We identify and help obtain supporting documents for research proposals, including bio-sketches, letters of support, and sub-award documents. We assist with formatting proposals (abstracts, images, tables and appendices), to ensure compliance with sponsor requirements. Additionally, we serve as liaisons between OSP’s sponsored program officer and our faculty in award negotiations, revising budgets and responding to funding cuts that are sometimes requested by the sponsor. We can also request preliminary project numbers (accounts) for investigators when needed.

After researchers receive grant awards, we continue to support their efforts by assisting with administrative details such as completing signature authorization forms and ensuring appropriate faculty and staff appointments to a project. We work with faculty, research staff and division coordinators to procure supplies and materials, and complete personnel expenditure transfers to ensure that faculty and staff effort are properly charged to projects. We advise researchers on allowable costs and budget latitude, help faculty complete progress and final reports, and serve as liaisons between researchers and OSP on budget revisions, requests for project period extensions and project close-outs. We monitor project financials, and arrange for consultant and sub-award agreements. We also facilitate compliance activities like effort certification.

These are just some of the services that we provide to support researchers in the College of Pharmacy. We welcome questions about any of the research administration services that we provide in the Central Business Office. Please contact us by calling (614) 247-4697 or emailing scott.325@osu.edu or forbes.120@osu.edu.

Thank you Joy and Tesia, for the expertise you share with our faculty on a daily basis. We sincerely appreciate your support for research and innovation in the College of Pharmacy.

Best regards,
Katherine Kelley