Our department instills the solid fundamentals, critical thinking and clinical basis for dispensing drugs that will provide a solid foundation for our graduates to enhance the lives of people in Oregon and beyond. The College of Pharmacy is a cooperative effort between Oregon State University (OSU), located in Corvallis, and the Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) in Portland. Our students spend their first two years of the curriculum in Corvallis obtaining a solid background in pharmaceutical sciences and pharmacy practice; the third year is spent in Portland, where the primary focus of the curriculum is pathophysiologic, pharmacoeconomic and evidence-based in its approach to drug therapy. The final year of the curriculum is devoted to experiential clerkship training in various health care facilities throughout Oregon, elsewhere in the United States or internationally. Our faculty and staff are on both the OSU and OHSU campuses, and they are committed to excellence in education.
In the fall of 2006, the Portland-based faculty and staff moved into our new home in the OHSU Center for Health & Healing (CHH), located on the South Waterfront campus. The CHH is a state-of-the-art building that uses solar panels, eco-roof gardens and the latest sustainable technologies. More importantly, the CHH brings together the vital elements of cutting-edge health care. These include unmatched patient care, a unique wellness center, educational programs and research space for some of the world’s best researchers. These attributes provide new opportunities for our students and faculty, allowing them to blend teaching and discovery into unequaled patient-centered care.
Basic, translational, and clinical and practice research is the other key academic mission of the department. The focus of our research is the improvement of pharmacotherapy and its delivery to patients in the areas of infectious diseases, cardiology, endocrinology, nephrology, oncology, neurology and psychopharmacology. Many of our faculty members are nationally recognized for their contributions and expertise in these areas.
It is truly an exciting time for the Department of Pharmacy Practice and for Oregon. Our department is growing and developing, and the Oregon quality of life continues to be one of the most desirable in this hemisphere. I invite you to explore our Web site to discover what is exciting and new in our department, and I hope it will inspire you to consider a visit here in the near future.
Matthew K. Ito, Pharm.D., BCPS, FCCP
Professor and department chair
College of Pharmacy
