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SCCP campuses visited for full accreditation
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by Roby Hill
SCCP Director of Communications
For the third time in four years, members of the Accreditation Council
for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) met with faculty, staff, students, and
officials of the South Carolina College of Pharmacy (SCCP) at MUSC this
month to assess its progress.
SCCP, which represents an integration of the pharmacy programs at the
University of South Carolina (USC) and MUSC, has candidate status as it
seeks full accreditation of the joint program that is seen as a unique
model of intrastate academic collaboration. The ACPE last visited the
campuses in May 2007.
 The
pharmacy accreditation site visit team conducted interviews Thursday in
QF106 of the College of Pharmacy. Dr. John Raymond, right, MUSC
provost, met with William A. Gouveia, vice president of the board of
directors of the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE),
and Dr. Jeffrey Wadelin, associate executive director of ACPE; while
USC interim provost Dr. William T. Moore and USC associate provost for
Health Sciences Dr. Russell Pate participated via videoconference from
Columbia.
“Each site visit has been very helpful for both us and them,” said
Joseph T. DiPiro, PharmD, SCCP executive dean. “We’ve been able to
explain in more detail what our vision is and how it is executed, which
was helpful for them. They have given us insightful comments that have
helped shape how we continue to progress.”
Since SCCP was formed in 2004, the existing colleges of pharmacy at
each university have maintained individual accreditation status, which
will be phased out after the final student from the entering class of
2004 is graduated. The accreditation process for the SCCP is a
three-step process that concludes after the first class graduates in
2010.
“The first step in the process is being granted pre-candidate status,
which we achieved in 2005,” said Arnold Karig, Ph.D., MUSC campus dean for
SCCP. “Then we went through a sequence of visits, recommendations and
reports and were granted candidate status in 2006. Before this visit,
we had been found to fully meet all but two of the 30 standards and we
partially met those. We’ll find out what additional progress we’ve made
when they make their report. The last step in the process is
accreditation which should follow a 2010 ACPE visit and graduation of
the first SCCP class.”
The standards that are in the process of being met address the need for
more modern facilities on the MUSC campus, which will be addressed by the
planned new pharmacy building to be located next to the upcoming Drug
Discovery Building; and further development of the college’s
organizational and governance structure.
The ACPE two-member visit team included William Gouveia and Jeffrey
Wadelin, Ph.D., who arrived on SCCP’s USC campus Feb. 10 and conducted
interviews with faculty and administrators. They then visited MUSC Feb.
11, where the men spent two days interviewing faculty and students.
They concluded their site visit Feb. 12 with a videoconference meeting
with John Raymond, M.D., MUSC vice president for academic affairs and
provost, and USC’s William T. Moore, Ph.D., executive vice president
for academic affairs and interim provost, and Russell Pate, Ph.D., associate
provost for health sciences.
“The essential purpose of the accreditation process is to provide a
professional judgment of the quality of a college or school of
pharmacy’s professional program(s) and to encourage continued
improvement thereof,” according to the ACPE Web site. “Accreditation
concerns itself with both quality assurance and quality enhancement.”
Friday, Feb. 27, 2009
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