Diversity scholarship for Lipscomb student pharmacists announced Thursday
Janel Shoun |
Don’t let people put you inside a box, Stedman Graham told the crowd of 400 Metro Nashville public school students who gathered in Collins Alumni Auditorium on Thursday to hear the man who has a lot of experience being boxed in by perceptions.
At a luncheon following the speech, Lipscomb University College of Pharmacy and CVS Caremark officials announced the creation of the Pathways to Pharmacy Scholarship, which will provide several $1,000 scholarships to minority and underrepresented student pharmacists at Lipscomb. The first scholarship was awarded at the luncheon to Aya Fukuda, a native of Japan who came to Lipscomb from Johnson City, Tenn.
| (l-r) Paptya Tankut, CVS Caremark vice president, Aya Fukuda, scholarship recipient, Paige Akers, Lipscomb COP associate dean of student affairs, and Roger Davis, Lipscomb COP dean. |
| Fukuda gets an autograph from Stedman Graham, a national corporate educator and motivational speaker, who knows how it feels to break out of the box of perceptions. |
| Graham poses with Tankut, whose company donated $25,000 to endow a diversity scholarship, and pharmacy dean Davis, who will provide the $1,000 scholarships to future student pharamcists. |
The Appalachian region of Tennessee is one of the most underserved medical areas in the U.S., and Fukuda developed a profound appreciation for the struggles that many East Tennesseans faced in accessing health care. Fukuda has already earned a bachelor’s in psychology from East Tennessee State University, and is now a member of Lipscomb’s inaugural pharmacy class, which began classes in August.
The scholarship is funded by a $50,000 endowment, made up of $25,000 from CVS Caremark and an approximate total of $25,000 from HCA, Comprehensive Pharmacy Services, Healthways, First Tennessee Bank, Nashville Healthcare Council and Eli Lilly.
‘Your generosity provides fulfillment of a goal for students who wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity to enter into a pharmacy career,” College of Pharmacy Dean Roger Davis told the crowd of donors at the luncheon. “You have allowed us to initiate minority scholarships for our students much earlier than we expected.”
The College of Pharmacy is still fund-raising for the Pathways to Pharmacy Scholarship. If you are interested in contributing, contact the College of Pharmacy at 615.966.7160 or the Director of Development Jeff McCormack at 615.966.7167.
In March 2007, CVS Caremark pledged to introduce one million inner-city and rural youths to careers in pharmacy through Pathways to Pharmacy, a national program designed to bring youth to pharmacy job opportunities, generating up to $4 million in wages by 2010. The program is expanding to several new cities this year, and Stedman Graham’s teen summit Thursday served as an announcement to the local community that the Pathways to Pharmacy program is coming to Nashville in the near future.
Local high school students apply to join the program and take advantage of 6- to 8-week summer internships in CVS pharmacies, the possibility of part-time employment, mentoring activities, college-level internships, forgivable loans and a potential job with CVS upon graduating.
“It’s a privilege to help Lipscomb’s College of Pharmacy reach out to the community by emphasizing the role of education while highlighting a new career path that may never have been considered before,” said V. Michael Ferdinandi, Senior Vice President, Human Resources, Corporate Communications and Community Relations, CVS Caremark. “It is with great pride that we are helping fund the annual Pathways to Pharmacy Scholarship to aid the growth of diversity in the field of pharmacy at Lipscomb and throughout Tennessee.”
Students interested in applying for the Pathways to Pharmacy program once it is fully launched in Nashville can go online to www.cvscaremark.com or let their local CVS pharmacist know of their interest in the program.
About the College of Pharmacy
In response to the growing need for highly qualified pharmacists throughout the nation, Lipscomb University announced in September 2006 that it would create the third pharmacy college in the state, the first in Middle Tennessee. The Lipscomb University College of Pharmacy emphasizes commitment to a Christian life of service and ideals as it prepares students to enter a service profession built on compassion and commitment to those who have healthcare needs. The college was granted precandidate status by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education, the highest designation granted a new college of pharmacy, on June 24, 2008.
CVS Caremark is the largest provider of prescriptions and related health care services in the nation. The Company fills or manages more than 1 billion prescriptions annually. Through its unmatched breadth of service offerings, CVS Caremark is transforming the delivery of health care services in the U.S. The Company is uniquely positioned to effectively manage costs and improve health care outcomes through its 6,300 CVS/pharmacy stores; its pharmacy benefit management, mail order and specialty pharmacy division, Caremark Pharmacy Services; its retail-based health clinic subsidiary, MinuteClinic; and its online pharmacy, CVS.com. General information about CVS Caremark is available through the Investor Relations portion of the Company's website, at http://investor.cvs.com, as well as through the pressroom portion of the Company's website, at www.cvs.com/pressroom.