Opportunities for Pharmacy Students

Many students arrive at the College of Pharmacy knowing that they want to pursue a degree in Pharmacy but are unsure or unaware of the scope of future careers available to them. Many students also have a solid background in the sciences and an interest in maintaining a connection to the undergraduate work they pursued while entering the clinical environment.   

The DCCTR is structured to provide these students a stepwise movement through a series of stages related to a research project.  Each stage provides short discussion times, training, and support for progression to the next stage of the research.  The students may work individually, as a group, or in pairs.  

The first stage involves the formulation and testing of hypotheses, directed readings, introductory discussions and instruction in the use of critical modeling software.  This provides the foundation needed to move into the second stage of the research project where students use actual clinical and scientific patient and pharmaceutical data, along with modeling software and statistical analysis, to make predictions concerning various drug therapy outcomes. Students are introduced to scientific writing during this stage, as well. 

Finally, the student may progress to the production of publishable scientific data that is directly translatable to the clinical environment.  They are able to write and submit a scientific paper or review article.  Students at stages II and III are eligible to apply for summer fellowships and all students who contribute to abstracts are eligible to apply for grants to attend the conferences and seminars to which their abstracts are accepted for poster or oral presentation.