College of Pharmacy claims third national student championship in the last year
In the latest national win for University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy students, four doctor of pharmacy candidates placed first nationally in the 2026 Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy Foundation’s National Student Pharmacist Pharmacy & Therapeutics Competition.
Willy Njeru, Vanessa Oseghale, Matthew Pari, and Ramez Rizk—all students in their third professional year in the college’s 0-6 Pharm.D. program—finished ahead of 67 other colleges of pharmacy around the country. This is the first time URI reached the finals of the competition, after finishing in the semi-finals last year.
The P&T Competition is an annual team competition designed to give student pharmacists hands-on experience in formulary review and management. Teams prepare and present as though they are reporting to a mock pharmacy and therapeutics committee. The competition emphasizes evidence-based evaluation of medications, including review of clinical evidence, value, and formulary decision-making, according to Professor Stephen Kogut, who served as the team’s faculty mentor.
“That makes the win a strong indicator of students’ readiness for managed care and health-system decision roles,” Kogut said. “The team worked extremely hard on this, starting in summer 2025. Their preparation was incredible, leading to a well-deserved win.”
For the 2026 competition, the case topic was COBENFY™ (xanomeline and trospium chloride), a first-in-class treatment for schizophrenia. The students worked as a team to design a medication plan for a hypothetical patient, ultimately creating a 40-page monograph. During the finals, they presented the plan to a panel of judges made up of industry experts, who vigorously challenged their recommendations during a 15-minute question-and-answer period.
“This was a marathon effort for us. We held our first meeting for this project back in the summer and worked on it throughout the entire school year,” Pari said. “In the weeks leading up to nationals, we were meeting for several hours every week to rehearse our presentation and anticipate the judges’ questions. Our success was built on a series of little wins in the hours we spent after school challenging each other and perfecting every detail. Hearing the experts say we amazed them was the ultimate validation of all that work, but getting to represent URI with this specific group is the part I am most proud of.”
While creating their monograph and preparing their presentation, the students gained experience in clinical research, economic modeling, and the ins and outs of therapeutic formulary decisions, Oseghale said.
“I’d say the true pressure kicked in as we prepared for the Q&A portion of the presentation. We had to be ready for every possible question,” Oseghale said. “Our team dedicated hours every week studying our own monograph, coming up with questions for ourselves and each other, until we knew everything there was to know about COBENFY and its place in our hypothetical health plan. The announcement that we won the whole thing was so rewarding in that moment. To know that every moment we spent agonizing, and studying, and even coordinating outfits—it was all worth it.”
Several URI alumni were in attendance cheering on the URI team during the final round on April 14 at AMCP annual meeting at the Music City Center in Nashville, TN, including College of Pharmacy Advisory Board member Beth Hebert-Silva. “It was so exciting to watch them in action,” Hebert-Silva said. “Each member of the team was so well prepared and professional! Proud day to be a Rhody alum!”
AMCP is a professional association of pharmacists, physicians, nurses, biopharmaceutical professionals, and other stakeholders aiming to help patients get medications affordably. Members advocate at the national and state level for developing and applying evidence-based medication use strategies that improve access to medication, enhance patient and population health outcomes, and safeguard the wise use of health care dollars.