Drake professor wins pharmacy excellence award
Charles Phillips, associate professor of pharmacy administration and assistant dean of assessment at Drake University, was recognized with an Award for Excellence in Assessment from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP).
The award recognizes Phillips for his work in developing and employing a comprehensive assessment tool to promote excellence in Drake’s Doctor of Pharmacy curriculum. Phillips, along with two more national recipients, will present an overview of the winning project at the AACP annual meeting in Seattle in July.
For his winning project, Phillips outlines Drake’s process for establishing performance goals for the PharmD program, documenting successful outcomes and using the resulting data to suggest program improvements.
Drake’s College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences now uses a single, common system to evaluate courses and instructors, set goals for teaching effectiveness, review teaching methods and create key curriculum objectives. These results are scored, analyzed and summarized to allow for faculty benchmarking, and information is funneled into a national database of educators. Drake then uses aggregate results to identify areas for faculty development and curriculum enhancement.
To date, more than two years’ worth of data, representing more than 200 course offerings, has been collected.
“The award was a nice recognition for our college,” Phillips said. “The faculty have really been open to new assessments and have always embraced evidence-based improvements to our program.
“The assessments we highlighted for the award were just a small piece of what the faculty have initiated over the last five years.”
A respected teacher and scholar, Phillips joined Drake in 1993. In 2009 the University recognized him with the Hartig Distinguished Professor Award for his teaching, scholarship and service in the field of pharmacy.
Since 2007 Phillips has been chair of the college’s Self Study Committee. The group works to ensure that the college meets standards set by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE). That same year, he received an ACPE Board Commendation for his service on the Institutional Research Advisory Committee.
Phillips has been a licensed pharmacist since 1988. He received his PharmD from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and his Ph.D. in pharmacy administration from the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.