Passing it On: Investing in My Pharmily

Thirteen years is a long time to spend at one institution, particularly when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median tenure is a little below 4 years. So, for my first LinkedIn article, I thought I’d share about why I’ve stayed so long at Cedarville University School of Pharmacy . But… I need to go back a little bit further to explain the why.

It all started when I was a pharmacy student and how I saw faculty invest in their students. Let me share some examples to illustrate my point.

• Professor #1: One of the most brilliant professors I ever had… in the realm of multi-million dollar grants and publications in top-tier journals. Yet, that's not what I remember about him. I remember how much he cared that I learned. He cared about investing and mentoring others to grow in their careers (which he continues to do to this day!).
• Professor #2: Another professor that really knew it all in his content area. I can still remember him jumping on top of a table to demonstrate a key point about antibodies. Yet, he lived every day as a professor as if it were HIS fault if a student didn't understand. He just needed to work a little harder or find a different way to explain because HE wanted us to learn. He saw in me someone who had potential, even at times where maybe I wasn't sure I had any potential. (Don't we all feel that way after some exams?) The lives of these faculty spoke volumes that their published works could never achieve. Their investment in people has had an incredible impact on the profession today.

So, how does this story relate? I love my job at Cedarville because we believe in investing in people much like my professors did when I was a student. We are “pharmily” here! Our students are like family, and we are excited to challenge and support them during their four years before they graduate. We miss them when they leave, and we love it when they let us know how they are doing and how we can pray for them. I work with incredible faculty and staff who go above and beyond to support our students and each other. I take the lessons learned from professors over the years and get excited in the classroom, tell my “groan-worthy” statistics jokes, work harder and harder to help students understand p-values and confidence intervals until we get it together, practice their names until I get them just right, learn their stories and their goals, and challenge them to go beyond their expectations. In my thirteen years, I have been a part of every Cedarville pharmacy student’s journey, and it is an incredible blessing to have invested in the hundreds of alumni in my pharmily… even if my statistics jokes still need a significant amount of work.?