Lipscomb's inaugural pharmacy class heads to campus for orientation

Janel Shoun | 

Sixty-two of the 75 students destined to launch on the College of Pharmacy’s “first-class” voyage in August were on campus Thursday and Friday for their orientation.
The Bison got a lab coat, scrubs and a mortar and pestle from the Class of 2012. That's one happy pharmacist Bison!
No pharmacist is complete without their own lab coat.

One-third of the group is from outside of Tennessee and most already have a bachelor’s degree or even a couple of years of employment behind them, but they were still excited to experience the Lipscomb campus and become the first students to begin studying pharmacy in Middle Tennessee.

In between the serious sessions on academics, professionalism and technology, the students got to enjoy learning about Nashville, touring the pharmacy facilities, in the newly renovated Burton Building, and taking part in an age-old Lipscomb tradition – painting the Bison statue just off Bison Square.

The students also got some logistical requirements out of the way, such as getting fitted for their own lab coats and scrubs, getting their student IDs, registering their cars and submitting health information to the college.

“I’m excited to be in a new area and meet new students,” said Kristen Kirsch, a Nova Southeastern University graduate originally from Buffalo, N.Y. “I’m excited we have a space of our own. It really welcomes the students and shows that the university is making room for them.”

During their interviews this past spring, many of the students got to tour the Burton Health Sciences Center, a 1940s building that recently underwent a $10.1 million renovation to prepare it for exclusive use by the pharmacy, nursing and music departments. But it was heavily under construction back then. Now the building is nearly finished, with carpet on floors, the walls finished and some lab equipment and cabinets moved in.

“You’ll be spending a lot of in this lab during the first year,” College of Pharmacy Dean Roger Davis told a group of the new students as he showed them around the biomedical sciences laboratory. This is the lab where students will build upon their biochemistry and general chemistry knowledge to make it more pharmaceutical related, faculty told the group.

The biomedical lab will be these students' second home.
“I’m proud because this is my alma mater. I have a lot of faith in this process,” said Latina Brock, of Nashville, a Lipscomb biology graduate who graduated in May 2007 but waited to apply to pharmacy college until Lipscomb’s program was off the ground. “Even though it’s just a baby, I believe it will be an awesome place to call mine. I know Lipscomb always comes through.”

Lipscomb was the first college in Middle Tennessee to announce its intent to create a College of Pharmacy in 2006, only the third in the state at that time. The 75 students who have been admitted to Lipscomb will be among the first group of pharmacists to be trained in Nashville. Their studies will begin this fall, and should conclude in 2012.