The University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy is a college of pharmacy located in Lexington, Kentucky

Lexington, Kentucky

Lexington is the second-largest city in Kentucky and the 63rd largest in the US. Known as the "Thoroughbred City" and the "Horse Capital of the World", it is located in the heart of Kentucky's Bluegrass region...

. It is part of the Albert B. Chandler Hospital

Albert B. Chandler Hospital

Opened in 1962, the Albert B. Chandler Hospital along Rose Street at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, Kentucky is a component of the University of Kentucky Hospital , encompassed within the Chandler Medical Center. It is named for twice-former Governor of Kentucky A. B. "Happy" Chandler...

 of the University of Kentucky

University of Kentucky

The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...

, which is providing health care services and education.

History

The University at Kentucky College of Pharmacy has its root in the Louisville College of Pharmacy. The Louisville College of Pharmacy was established in 1870 in Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville, Kentucky

Louisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...

. Like other pharmacy schools of that time, it was a free standing institution. In 1947, it merged with the University of Kentucky

University of Kentucky

The University of Kentucky, also known as UK, is a public co-educational university and is one of the state's two land-grant universities, located in Lexington, Kentucky...

 (abbreviated as "UK" below). However, the school was moved from Louisville to Lexington in 1957.

UK College of Pharmacy Deans

• Earl P. Slone, 1946–1967
• Joseph V. Swintosky, 1967–1987
• Jordan L. Cohen, 1988–2000
• Kenneth B. Roberts, 2000–2009
• Timothy S. Tracy, 2010–present

Academic programs

The main program offered by the UK College of Pharmacy today is the 4-year professional Pharm.D. program, which consists of 3 years of didactic courses and 1 year of clinical rotations. The school also provides first and second year residency programs. The College's Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences also offers Ph.D. programs.

UK broke ground on a new state of the art College of Pharmacy in 2007. This new facility, which was dedicated on January 25, 2010, was the largest pharmacy education building in the world at the time it opened.

Research

The University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy has a history of research in the pharmaceutical sciences. The faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and staff of the College of Pharmacy conduct front-line research in areas of pharmaceutics that range from identifying fundamental mechanisms of disease, to designing and developing new drugs, to understanding the impact of policies on health care. The research interests of faculty members can be organized broadly into 4 major areas: Drug Discovery, Drug Development, Therapeutics, and Pharmaceutical Policy, with each area containing multiple more specific and descriptive sub-categories. The vitality of these research programs is evidenced by the many projects, often in multiple categories, that have been awarded nationally competitive funding and that are underway here in the College of Pharmacy.

Significance

• The UK College of Pharmacy was the first pharmacy school east of the Mississippi River to offer the Pharm.D. program.
• The College established the first drug information center in the USA, but which was discontinued in 2006.
• UK student pharmacists rank 1st in the nation in first-time pass rates on the national licensing exam for pharmacists.
• Currently the College ranks 5th among college of pharmacies based on the U.S. News & World Report poll of pharmacy deans and faculty.
• The College has received as high as a no. 3 ranking in the same U.S. News & World Report polls of colleges of pharmacy.
• Pharmacy research faculty rank 4th out of 354 institutions in scholarly activity.
• The UK Pharmacy Residency Program was recognized as the Nation's Most Outstanding in 2007 by the residency accrediting body, the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists (ASHP).