Skaggs School of Pharmacy graduation May 31; School of Medicine June 1
Trained to be leaders in patient care, drug development and delivery in the 21st-century, a new generation of physicians and pharmacists will graduate from the University of California, San Diego’s schools of medicine and pharmacy May 31 and June 1.
On Saturday, May 31, 32 students will graduate from the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at UC San Diego, the School’s largest graduating class to date. The third graduating class of 21 women and 11 men will receive their Doctor of Pharmacy degrees at a 10 a.m. ceremony at the Price Center on the UC San Diego campus. Keynote speaker will be Lucinda L. Maine, P.h.D., Executive Vice President and CEO of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP).
The UCSD School of Medicine will graduate 126 physicians, 72 men and 54 women, at commencement ceremonies on Sunday, June 1. Keynote speaker will be Tadataka (Tachi) Yamada, M.D., President of the Global Health Program, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The ceremony begins at 10 a.m. on the East Lawn of the UCSD School of Medicine in La Jolla off of Gilman Drive.
More on the Skaggs School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences Commencement:
Eighteen of the 2008 Pharm.D. graduates will be going on to post-graduate clinical practice residences and two are doing fellowship training – the highest percentage of graduates of any Pharm.D. program in the nation. The remaining twelve are entering professional practice. Members of the graduating class volunteered hundreds of community hours during their fours years of training, including work at Qualcomm Stadium during last year’s wildfires, as well as community outreach programs including the San Diego free clinics.
Keynote speaker Lucinda Maine is president of the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, the leading advocate for high quality pharmacy education. Maine previously served as Senior Vice President for Policy, Planning and Communications with the American Pharmacists Association (APhA). She also served on the faculty at the University of Minnesota where she practiced in the field of geriatrics and was an associate dean at the Samford University School of Pharmacy.
Maine will be joined by UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox; David Brenner, M.D., UCSD Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences and Dean of the School of Medicine; and Palmer W. Taylor, Ph.D., founding dean of the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, in addressing the graduates.
More on the UCSD School of Medicine Commencement:
The School of Medicine Class of 2008 includes one former attorney, five students who delayed graduation by one year to complete an M.D. and Masters of Advance Science degree, as well as ten “double threats,” graduating with joint M.D./Ph.D. degrees. Three-fourths of this year’s class will remain in California; with nearly a third of these remaining at UC San Diego Medical Center. Along with California, this year’s graduates will go on to medical residencies in Iowa, New York, Tennessee, Arkansas, Connecticut, Idaho, Nevada, Washington, Florida, North Carolina, Hawaii, Louisiana, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Texas and Oregon.
As President of the Global Health Program, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Tadataka Yamada leads the foundation’s efforts to help develop and deliver low-cost, life-saving health tools for the developing world. Before joining the foundation, Yamada served as Chairman of Research and Development and was a member of the Board of Directors at GlaxoSmithKline. Prior to that, he was chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School and Physician-in-Chief at the University of Michigan Medical Center. Also addressing the new physicians will be David Brenner, M.D., Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences and Dean of the School of Medicine, UC San Diego.
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Media Contacts: Debra Kain, ddkain@ucsd.edu, Kimberly Edwards, kedwards@ucsd.edu, 619-543-6163