![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/releases\/html\/images\/pharmresch.jpg\")
Undergraduate degree to prepare students for research, industry careers<\/h3>\nUndergraduate degree to prepare students for research, industry careers<\/h3>\nKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 July 8, 2009 \u2013 A high school student wants to pursue a career as a researcher in the pharmaceutical industry, but she doesn\u2019t want to become a pharmacist. Another student is thinking about working in pharmaceutical sales or in the management side of the industry. Like the potential researcher, he doesn\u2019t want to pursue the now standard six-year doctor of pharmacy degree. Undergraduate degree to prepare students for research, industry careers KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 July 8, 2009 \u2013 A high school student wants to pursue a career as a researcher in the pharmaceutical industry, but she doesn\u2019t want to become a pharmacist. Another student is thinking about working in pharmaceutical sales or in the management side of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":639,"featured_media":5529,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[188,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-people-chichester","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/639"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe University of Rhode Island now has the answer for those students with its four-year, bachelor of science in pharmaceutical science. The program in URI\u2019s College of Pharmacy is accepting students for fall.
\n\u201cThe new BSPS degree will offer students an opportunity to enter the global pharmaceutical industry with a great degree of upward mobility,\u201d said Ron Jordan, dean of URI\u2019s College of Pharmacy. \u201cThe pharmaceutical industry needs employees who have strong backgrounds in the drug development, regulatory and health delivery systems. Our College of Pharmacy excels at these areas of teaching and research. Our faculties are internationally renowned and our history in pharmaceutics as a concentration is long and significant. Some of our most respected and successful graduates earned degrees from the college that prepared them for the industry, government and teaching in these areas. We expect this program to be very successful.\u201d
\nPharmacy Professor Clinton Chichester<\/a>, chair of the College\u2019s Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences<\/a>, said the program is designed to prepare students for careers in the pharmaceutical, consumer product and health care industries. Graduates will be qualified to seek a diverse range of career options, including research and development, manufacturing, product marketing, sales, testing and administrative positions within the pharmaceutical industry. The degree could also lead to research and regulatory oversight careers within government agencies, and research and teaching positions in higher education.
\nAt URI\u2019s College of Pharmacy, the education of new pharmacists includes heavy amounts of clinical training in hospitals and other health care agencies during the six-year doctor of pharmacy program, leaving little time for biomedical research, according to Chichester.
\n\u201cAs the College and others around the country have become more focused on clinical education for pharmacists, we\u2019ve drifted from the biomedical research focus,\u201d Chichester said. \u201cOur pharmacy students are educated much like physicians, with a focus on patient care, disease management and pain management. This new program will give students the opportunity to focus on drug discovery and related areas of drug manufacturing and drug delivery. This is the discipline of pharmaceutics \u2013 discovering compounds that work, developing the pill and the formulations.
\n\u201cThe opportunities for this kind of work are plentiful and varied, including careers in large pharmaceutical companies to biomedical start-up companies that could fuel a spurt of economic development in our state and around the region.\u201d
\nChichester said the students will have the chance to be engaged with researchers at the College who are known worldwide for their work on AIDS, cancer, drugs from the sea and from plants and berries, Alzheimer\u2019s disease, and the efficacy and safety of drugs for transplant patients.
\n\u201cThey will be working on advanced science that has the potential to be published in professional and academic journals,\u201d Chichester said.
\n\u201cWe also want to maximize our researchers\u2019 time in the classroom,\u201d Chichester said. \u201cStudents are attracted to these faculty and now they will have great opportunities to work with them in the lab.\u201d
\nThe first two years of the 120-credit program include rigorous basic science requirements and a broad exposure to the humanities, arts, and social sciences. Courses offered in the third and fourth years will be drawn from the existing curriculum and taught by Department of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences Faculty. Students may also elect to obtain course credits for laboratory research performed under the guidance of a faculty mentor. They will also be able to tailor their academic program for specific career paths with a program advisor.
\nMedia Contact: Dave Lavallee<\/a>, 401-874-5862<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"