Joint pharmacy school abandoned

Beth Slovic

Tuesday, June 22, 2004 | 9:46 a.m.

A health task force of the university Board of Regents abandoned a plan Monday to create a public school of pharmacy jointly operated by the University of Nevada, Reno and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Instead, the state's two leading universities will now pursue separate plans, possibly to create two new public pharmacy schools.

Members of the task force said the state needs more pharmacists, though a private pharmacy school, the University of Southern Nevada, has graduated 115 pharmacists since opening almost four years ago.

At least one public pharmacy school will help fill the current gap, members said.

However, many of the private school's students are from California and only a small portion of those graduates remain in Nevada, Harry Rosenberg, the school's president, said.

At the current rate of population growth, Nevada creates nearly 60 new pharmacist jobs each year, said Keith MacDonald, the director of the Nevada State Board of Pharmacy, the licensing group that governs pharmacists.

Both Nevada public universities' plans face further scrutiny by various committees of the University and Community College System of Nevada regents. And both plans would have to be approved by the board before could be submitted to the state Legislature for funding.

Monday's split was, in part, the result of a disagreement over how to fund a public school of pharmacy in the face of a severely limited state budget.

In 2000 the regents approved plans for a joint pharmacy school, but the Legislature failed to fund the proposed program. Faculty and administrators from UNR revived the proposal this year, said David Westfall, a professor of pharmacology at UNR.

On Monday many of the members of the task force who live outside the Las Vegas Valley favored the pharmacy school plan supported by UNR, which called for significant state funding, while many of the members who lived in Southern Nevada favored a plan, outlined for the first time Monday, that relied on a partnership with private Touro University.

"We have a very solid plan in place; it has all the elements of the previous proposal-- except it lacks joint control," Westfall, who helped draft the original plan for the proposed pharmacy school, said.

"It was a program that was entirely endorsed by the Board of Regents just a couple of years ago. I have no fear that the board-- will accept it again. The fear is: how much money do we have to support the programs," Westfall said.

Mark Alden, a regent and member of the task force, said he thought there was very little state money to support UNR's proposal.

The UNLV program with Touro University, however, would rely on state-provided tuition subsidies.

"You can't go down a track that requires state money. There is no state money," Alden said.

The University of Southern Nevada Rosenberg's didn't see a need for a public pharmacy school, though his school turned away neary 1,000 applicants this year.

"I think we can provide what the state needs here, but we're willing to compete," Rosenberg said.

The members of the task force also voted to advance two separate proposals for public health schools at UNR and UNLV."