TTUHSC School of Pharmacy
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About Our School

When the Texas Legislature established Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Pharmacy (TTUHSC-SOP) in 1993, it created the first publicly supported pharmacy program in the United States in nearly five decades. State legislators also mandated that the SOP be located in Amarillo, making it the only school in the Texas Tech System whose main campus is located outside Lubbock. The first classes began in August 2006 and the school’s steady growth since that time has helped the state of Texas address its pharmacist shortage: more than 90 percent of students who have graduated from TTUHSC-SOP have remained in the Lone Star state.

TTUHSC – SOP Regional Campus Development

Students who enroll in TTUHSC’s pharmacy program have the option of attending their first two years of classes at the main campus in Amarillo or at the SOP’s Abilene regional campus. Students at the main campus can remain in Amarillo for their third and fourth years or they can transfer to either the Lubbock or Dallas/Fort Worth regional campus sites. Abilene students remain at that campus for all four years.

Lubbock

The TTUHSC – SOP Lubbock regional campus opened in January of 1998 under the direction of regional dean Dr. Charles Seifert. The campus is located in the main TTUHSC building in Lubbock and Dr. Seifert still oversees the program today.

SOP faculty in Lubbock have many clinical interests, including adult internal medicine, primary care, geriatrics, pediatrics, community pharmacy and infectious disease research. Their clinical practice sites include University Medical Center, TTUHSC Clinics and the Garrison Geriatric Education and Care Center.

Lubbock faculty and residents also operate the TTUHSC Pharmacy, which provides medications and biologicals to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Montford Unit Regional Medical Facility; the TTUHSC International Pain Institute; the Garrison Geriatric Education and Care Center; and TTUHSC clinics in Lubbock, Odessa and El Paso. The TTUHSC Pharmacy also provides telepharmacy services to the rural communities of Turkey and Earth, Texas. In fact, the first telepharmacy prescription dispensed in Texas occurred September 18, 2002 between the TTUHSC Pharmacy and the Turkey Medical Clinic.

Dallas/Fort Worth

Roughly one-third of the TTUHSC - SOP student population has historically come from within a 100-mile radius of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, an area of the state where the shortage of pharmacists has often been described as critical.

To help ease the shortage, the school started developing its Dallas/Fort Worth regional program in 1997 with clinical placements for a few fourth-year students. In 1999 TTUHSC-SOP officially opened its D/FW regional campus using facilities leased from Baylor University Medical Center.

In 2002 Dr. Richard Leff was named regional dean for the D/FW campus. Later that year the campus was relocated to the grounds of the North Texas Veterans Affairs Hospital in Dallas, where a 4,800 square-foot building was renovated and dedicated to the School of Pharmacy. Additional construction during 2003 expanded the campus to approximately 8,000 square feet.

In August 2008, TTUHSC expanded its D/FW program to a second location inside the Southwest Professional Building. The new 9,300 square-foot facility includes a 62-seat state-of-the-art classroom, research labs and administrative support areas. It also affords faculty and students better access to the Dallas Medical Center and several of the school’s important partners, such as Children’s Medical Center, Parkland Hospital and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School clinics and hospitals.

Abilene

The concept for expanding the TTUHSC – SOP program into Abilene first came about in 2004 when a group of community and private organizations approached the school.

The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board approved the expansion in January 2006 and the school began making plans for extending its Pharm.D. and Post-Graduate Pharmacy Education programs into the Texas Big Country. Since that time, a 40,000 square-foot campus has been constructed and classes began in August 2007.

The Abilene regional campus will support all four years of the SOP’s Pharm.D. program. It will enroll 40 new students each academic year and increase the SOP’s total class sizes from 90 to 130. By the start of the 2010-2011 academic year Abilene will be home to 160 pharmacy students. Approximately 75 percent of course work for the SOP’s Abilene students is delivered by pharmacy faculty in Abilene; the remainder is delivered via multi-cast, web-based streaming video from instructors located on all four SOP campus cities.

Affiliated Teaching Hospitals

School of Pharmacy faculty and students provide patient care in the following hospitals: