Dean's Letter - May 2023

Dear alumni, faculty, students, staff, and friends, 

Happy Spring! Within the next few months, I will be rounding out my first year as dean and I wanted to share with you in this special eintractions all that we have accomplished, none of which would have been possible without your continued support.  

First and foremost we graduated and celebrated three different and amazing classes of students; our BSPS, PharmD, and PhD graduates. In August we will be celebrating our just as amazing Masters students. You can see where our BSPS and PhD graduates are headed here and our PharmD graduates here. We are so proud of all of our outstanding new alumni and we cannot wait to see what the future holds for the class of 2023. This year at our PharmD commencement we welcomed Dean Wanda T. Maldonado, BSPharm, PharmD from the University of Puerto Rico and honored Dr. Ilisa Bernstein PharmD’87, JD, FAPhA with the Distinguished Alumni Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Brown Family with the Alumni Service Award in Pharmacy.  

Perhaps our biggest news is that we now have “a big ol’ hole in the ground.”  At least that was what I told President Ono when he asked me if I was having a good year. This “big ol’ hole” is going to quickly turn into our new building. The planning and design of the College of Pharmacy's new building has been in progress for several years, with extensive efforts undertaken behind the scenes. We have now arrived at a significant milestone where the construction site located at the intersection of Huron and Glen is transforming into a tangible reality. I invite you to view the live webcam of the site here. If you are in town please walk by the site because you will see our construction fencing highlighting many of Pharmacy’s accomplishments. We felt this construction site was probably the best type of publicity we could ask for as we spread the news about something you already know: just how outstanding Michigan Pharmacy is and the impact we are making in Michigan, nationally, and across the world.  

At the end of March, we held our biannual Safe Medication Disposal Event, which has become an essential resource for our campus community. Student, faculty, and alumni volunteers collected over 1,000 lbs of medication and sharps to be disposed of in an environmentally conscious manner. This brings their total to over 8,000 lbs of medication kept out of landfills, our water, and the wrong hands. I am so proud of their dedication to keeping our campus safe, so way to go team!. 

And this month, we are thrilled to welcome twelve alumni members to the College’s Alumni Society Board of Governors. To see which fellow classmates will be joining the board or to learn more about how you could join the board, visit the College’s webpage. I'm so looking forward to working with them, as we start our strategic planning process, one that will direct us over the next four years and see us through as we move into our new building in fall 2025. 

Looking forward to fall event planning, our advancement team is excited to announce our Homecoming Weekend events will take place September 22-24, 2023. More details will be shared in the months ahead. 

Thank you and Go Blue! 

Vicki L. Ellingrod, PharmD, FCCP, FACNP (She/Her)
Dean and John Gideon Searle Professor of Clinical and Translational Pharmacy, College of Pharmacy
Professor of Psychiatry and Adjunct Professor of Psychology
Associate Director, Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research (MICHR) and Director of the Education and Mentoring Group