The first weekend in August was one of achievement for student organizations representing the TTUHSC Jerry H. Hodge School of Pharmacy.

At the Texas Pharmacy Association (TPA) meeting in Irving, Texas, a student from each of the state’s pharmacy schools received a $1,000 general scholarship from TPA’s Texas Pharmacy Foundation (TPF). Irvin Alvarez, a third-year pharmacy student, was the 2019 TTUHSC recipient.

TTUHSC students also took home three other annual TPF scholarships: fourth-year pharmacy student Kelsie Basso won the Robert Clayton Scholarship; second-year pharmacy student Laith Ghonim won the Ladies Auxiliary Scholarship; and Susie Park, a fourth-year student, won the Luther and Mary Ann Parker Scholarship.

In addition, fourth-year pharmacy student Jarrad Fischer won the TPA student counseling competition, and the team of Basso, Alvarez, fourth-year student Viktoria Guttenberg and third-year student Ashutosh Kulkarni placed third in the Self-Care Competition.  Finally, fourth-year student Lucas Cannon was installed as chair of the TPA Academy of Student Pharmacists and Alvarez was voted chair-elect. 

The same weekend at the Phi Delta Chi (PDC) Grand Council meeting in Anaheim, California, the School of Pharmacy’s Gamma Eta Chapter from Abilene finished in third place nationally in PDC’s Emory W. Thurston Grand President’s Award rankings, also known as the Thurston Cup. The Thurston Cup rankings use the results from five reports to calculate each chapter’s standing based upon their work throughout the year. The reports include the Ralph L. Saroyan Brotherhood Report, the John D. Grabenstein Leadership Report, the Annual Chapter Publication, the Nancy A. Alvarez Professional and Service Projects Report and the Prescott Scholarship Report.

For the individual report sections, Gamma Eta placed second in the Prescott Scholarship report and the Beta Rho chapter in Amarillo placed fourth in the Nancy A. Alvarez Professional and Service Projects report.