By Trevor Juth and Geremi Boom
Over the past six weeks we had the opportunity to participate in a unique elective rotation focusing on leadership and education in the Office of Student Services. Before embarking on this journey our perceptions of what happens in an academic setting were virtually non existent. This rotation changed our minds.
Throughout our journey in the didactic pharmacy curriculum everything is already structured and has been handed to us as a neat package. Learning the immense efforts that go into creating a course curriculum and the high levels of planning and thoughtfulness to create something of value to students was the first project that really struck home with us. We had the opportunity to help transform a traditional lecture style didactic course taken in the P2 Spring into an online course for the distance degree program. The largest challenge we both immediately realized was how to transform the thoughtfully constructed class flow and group work into something that could be seamlessly delivered online while still adhering to ability-based outcomes. We are very excited to see how our ideas will be tangibly brought to fruition in a real classroom setting!
Another project we enjoyed working on was the promotion of the pharmacy profession to undergraduate and high school students. There were several approaches we took to promote this project that were new and exciting to us as pharmacy students. We helped to make several videos geared toward high school students on aspects of pharmacy such as aseptic technique, non-sterile compounding, and student advocacy for patients. We picked up several skills like videography, scripting and editing. Even though I don't think Steven Spielberg has any worries about us competing in his realm, we did learn something new and different. We also participated in the first annual Bugs and Drugs camp for high school students. We helped the pharmacy student ambassadors promote the profession with hands on learning and presentations on infectious disease. We also promoted various pharmacy practice settings to future health care professionals at the CU Denver campus. We found each of these activities to be rewarding and were able to work on qualities such as public speaking, leadership, and problem solving throughout our time here.
We have been so impressed with the mentorship and guidance provided to us, the behind the scenes involvement of keeping a pharmacy school running, and recruitment and motivation of potential new students. Thanks CU pharmacy for a great past six weeks!
