TTUHSC to Bring All Four Years of Pharmacy Program to DFW

• By Mark Hendricks
• February 9, 2018

Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) area students interested in earning their pharmacy education locally from one of the country’s top pharmacy schools will have an opportunity to do so when the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) School of Pharmacy revamps its DFW program to include all four years of its doctor of pharmacy (Pharm.D.) curriculum.

The initial class of up to 40 first-year students (P1s) will be admitted in August 2018. Additional faculty will be recruited to help teach the program through a combination of direct one-on-one and group exercises and through didactic classroom teaching in person and via a video linkage system currently used for the school’s Pharm.D. program in Amarillo, Abilene and Lubbock.

“The opening of a full four-year campus in Dallas will bring forth an increase in campus resources and infrastructure that will bring all Metroplex components of TTUHSC together at a focused site,” School of Pharmacy Dean Quentin Smith, Ph.D., said.

TTUHSC President Tedd L. Mitchell, M.D., said the combined graduates of all Texas schools of pharmacy presently comprise less than 40 percent of all new registered pharmacist licenses in the state. By offering all four years of its Pharm.D. program in the Metroplex, Mitchell said TTUHSC is positioning itself to better meet the pharmacy demands within the state of Texas, particularly those of the western and northern areas of the state.

“Roughly half of our School of Pharmacy enrollment has historically come from Dallas/Fort Worth and the surrounding areas of North Texas, and we have many other well-qualified applicants who simply aren’t able to relocate to Amarillo or Abilene for their first two years,” Mitchell added. “So bringing all four years of our program to the Metroplex will also allow some of those students to get their pharmacy degree from TTUHSC while remaining closer to home.”

The TTUHSC School of Pharmacy consistently ranks amongst the top third of the country’s 140-plus accredited pharmacy programs and is recognized nationally for the quality of its clinical training program. Its students receive more clinical training hours than do students at any other pharmacy school in Texas and almost every other pharmacy school in the country.

In 1999, the TTUHSC School of Pharmacy initiated its current two-year DFW pharmacy program to accommodate the clinical pharmacy education objectives that are central to the third and fourth (P3 and P4) years of its Pharm.D. program. In 2002, the school established its first permanent DFW home on the VA North Texas Health Care System grounds, and six years later, expanded its DFW program facilities to the Southwest Professional Building, located on Forest Park Road across from UT Southwestern. 

The TTUHSC School of Pharmacy currently partners with more than 240 DFW hospitals, clinics and community pharmacies to deliver clinical training to its P3 and P4 students. The DFW regional campus boasts the highest percentage of advanced experiential clerkships within the school’s overall program, which includes its home campus in Amarillo and additional regional campuses in Abilene and Lubbock.

For additional enrollment information visit the TTUHSC School of Pharmacy website and its DFW campus page.