Episode 146: Happy Birthday School of Pharmacy!

It’s a special year for the UConn School of Pharmacy in 2025-26 as it celebrates its centennial year. Dean Phil Hritcko joins us on the UConn 360 podcast to tell us about all the festivities that are planned, including the Centennial Celebration on Oct. 18. Dean Hritcko also gives us an update on what is new in the School of Pharmacy and explains the academic programs the school offers. There are a lot of different career options for pharmacy graduates than the traditional retail outlets and working behind a counter. Research has become a big part of the pharmacy field. He also talks about what is new in the global field of pharmacy, including how tariffs are affecting the production of medications.

Listen to Episode 146 on Podbeam

Mike: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the UConn 360 Podcast. It’s Mike Enright from University Communications and Jacie Severance from University Communications. Izzy is on assignment, as we say. So, Jacie, thanks for joining us today.

Jacie: Thank you for having me back yet again, Mike, yet again.

Mike: Well, you’re a superstar in our podcasting world here. But we have, as always, a very special guest, somebody that’s celebrating a unique birthday, and we’ll explain that in a second. But Phil Hritcko is the dean of our UConn School of Pharmacy here at UConn. He’s been the dean since 2019 and has been a member of the UConn community for over 21 years.

In a number of roles, the School of Pharmacy has seen tremendous growth in both its research and opportunities to change pharmacy practice within Connecticut. Under Phil’s leadership, he’s proud of the new curriculum in the School of Pharmacy professional program, which is in its early stages of implementation.

Phil earned his undergraduate and Doctor of Pharmacy from the Albany College of Pharmacy. He’s a familiar face at events all over campus, and like we said, it’s an exciting academic year coming up here in the School of Pharmacy as it will celebrate its centennial year. We’ve got several special events and we’ll talk about those, but a hundred years of pharmacy at UConn, which is hard to believe.

So, Phil, welcome and happy hundredth birthday to the School of Pharmacy.

Philip: Wow. Well, thank you. It’s an exciting time for us. Obviously, a milestone for our school, for our faculty, staff, and for our alumni. So, we’re looking forward to it.

Mike: So first of all, you have a big celebration event coming up in October and we’ll put the link to that. I know there’s a website for it. We’ll put the link up on the description of the podcast. But tell us a little bit about the event, and who’s going to be there and what’s going to happen.

Philip: Yeah. Our milestone event for this year is on October 18. It’s a Saturday. It’s at Foxwoods and it’s at the Lake of Isles. And Lake of Isles, if you’re not familiar with it, is owned by Foxwoods. It’s part of their golf facilities. And they have a beautiful reception room that they use for a number of events, weddings and things of that nature. And we felt that that would be a great venue for this celebration, given the fact that a lot of our alumni don’t live in the area.

And so, they’re going to be traveling in, having to stay. And it gives them the option to not only attend the event but also have entertainment options available to them for the weekend. And so, they can spend a whole weekend with that. But we have a variety of activities that are scheduled that particular weekend.

We have a brunch in the morning for celebration of reunion for some significant reunions, the 50th, 25th, 10th, and some of the other alumni who are attending the reunion. That’ll start off that day. And then that evening starting at 6:00 PM is when we kick off the celebration at Lake of Isles and we have a number of leadership and alumni coming to the event. We just posted it the past couple of weeks for registration, so it is open. So, anybody listening to this, if they would like to attend, I welcome them to register to attend the event. We anticipate we’re going to max out. And so don’t delay if you do want to attend, but it’s going to be a lot of fun, and we want to make it a fun event.

Jacie: That sounds great. You know, Phil, I’m sure that the profession has changed a lot over the last hundred years. If you were a pharmacy student back in 1925, what was the training like at UConn and what was it like to be a pharmacist a hundred years ago?

Philip: Yeah, well, a hundred years ago there was no pharmacy program at UConn. And it was totally different. It was basically a two-year program and most of it was apprenticeship. So when the Connecticut College of Pharmacy, which started in 1925 and the first class entered that fall, I think it was October 20, 1925, it was significant from the standpoint of the Connecticut Pharmacists Association in conjunction with the state legislature knowing the need to have an educational system set up in our state to educate pharmacists, and it was transitioning from basically an apprenticeship into more didactic components. But it was only a two-year program at that time when it first started.

So, the evolution of how pharmacists were trained and educated, when you really go back further, physicians were pharmacists as well. So, it was sort of one in the same back in the day. And then that was the split when pharmacists started to break off from the physician component because there were just too many things for them to be able to navigate and specialize in. And that’s when the profession started to develop in its training. But it was more of an apprenticeship in that regard.

But now, when we had the Connecticut College of Pharmacy, that was significant for our state because that allowed the educational levels to be elevated for pharmacists, and it continued to evolve. The college was accredited in 1940. And it became a part of UConn in 1941. That’s when it was brought in. And President Albert Jorgensen, we have the Jorgensen Theater, was the one who was significant in the sense that he wanted to bring the pharmacy program to UConn. So that’s a milestone right there.

And then as we continue to evolve, it went from a two-year program to a four-year bachelor’s degree program. And we actually had our first master’s degree here at UConn in 1951. The first classes that came up here from New Haven actually didn’t have a building per se. And so, they were mixed amongst the different buildings that we had on campus. And then in 1952, the building that’s actually where the McHugh building is now, that’s the footprint where the pharmacy building was originally, the first building here on campus. And we stayed there until 2005 when we were in our present facility now, which is a beautiful facility. We still call it the new pharmacy building, although it’s probably not as new as you would like to think.

Jacie: Maybe not so much anymore.

Philip: But it’s still beautiful and we’re very thankful for it. So, we’ve had two buildings since we’ve been here on campus. And then the evolution of the educational requirements, as I indicated before, started with two years, then four years. Then in 1964 it went to five years, and then now we’re at six years of the program.

Mike: I was going to say, explain to our listeners a little bit who are probably used to a traditional four-year undergraduate program and then somebody might get a master’s. What are the different degrees available in the School of Pharmacy and how long do they take?

Philip: Yeah. A lot of people don’t really understand all the differences; we have a variety of students within our program and within the professional program. And I’ll start off with the six years, students who enter from high school to UConn get admitted through undergrad admissions and they designate that they’re a pre-professional pharmacy major for Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy Studies. So, they come in as freshmen and they do all their prerequisites. That’s all the hardcore STEM science, math type courses. So, your chemistries, your biology, calculus, organic chemistry, those types of courses. So, they have to do those, those first two years.

Then in their sophomore year, they apply into our professional program of our school and once accepted into our school from into our professional school. Then they have four more years within our program. And the final year of those four years, they’re out on what they call advanced pharmacy practice experiences, where they’re not even on campus. They’re out in the field on nine specific rotations. And most of them are in either clinical settings, hospitals, or they could be in pharmaceutical industry, insurance, a lot of variety of different types of experiences that they have. But there are certain requirements that our accrediting body also requires.

In addition to that, we have a robust graduate program as well, and a lot of people don’t think of it from that standpoint, but our school’s divided into two departments. We have Pharmacy Practice, which is the faculty members who have practice sites at healthcare facilities throughout the state of Connecticut, and they take students on rotation. Plus, they teach a lot of the didactic components of the professional program. Then we have the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, which is the PhD component of our program. And in our Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, we have three major areas of focus within that. Medicinal chemistry is one, medicinal toxicology is the other, and then pharmaceutics is the other area.

And as a result of that, with our PhD program, we have graduate students, and we have anywhere between 50 and 60 graduate students working on their PhDs with this group of faculty members. So, you can see the complexity of our school from the standpoint of we have basically three buckets of students within our program, the pre-professional first year and sophomores, second year, and then in the four years of the professional program. So that’s six years total. And then we have the graduate PhD students. Some of the graduate students, if they don’t go on to finish their PhD, can get master’s as well, master’s degrees in some of those areas. So those are some of the options that the students have within our program.

Mike: So I think one, probably one of the differences in a hundred years is the original graduates probably they all went to go work at pharmacies, the traditional mom and pop pharmacy, sort of fountain Sunday morning, newspaper places, and now pharmacy majors seem to have a wide array of options.

Philip: Yeah, I mean the beauty of the job market for our students, especially in our professional program, but also in our PhD program as well, is there’s a lot of job opportunities out there. And traditionally, most people think of, well, you’re going to work for a community pharmacy, whether it be an independent or a chain pharmacy, such as Walgreens, CVS, or Rite Aid, things of that nature. But beyond that, a lot of our students go on for residencies. So, a lot of people don’t realize that there’s residency options for our students beyond once they get their degree, their Pharm.D. degree, and we call them PGY-1 and PGY-2. PGY-1 is the first-year residency, it’s a more generalized residency. They’re generally in health systems like Hartford HealthCare, Yale Health, things of that nature. And then if they want to specialize in oncology, pediatrics, critical care, they go on for a PGY-2, so it’s specific in that particular area.

The other area that a lot of our students are going into now is the pharmaceutical industry. They can go on for fellowships within industry where they get a variety of experiences within industry and end up working there. Or they can go directly with a Pharm.D. into industry as well. As a result, certain components of the job market are hurting because there are so many options that our students have. I know what they call the retail or community pharmacy that traditionally they’re having problems with getting enough pharmacists to work in those areas.

And myself, I’m a pharmacist and when I graduated originally, I worked for a small little chain called CVS at the time. And literally they were in their fledgling years, they were actually owned by Melville Corporation, which owned Thom McAn and leather goods and things of that nature. CVS was just a component of that. They’re based out of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, and they were just starting in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. I got involved with them because I’m originally from New York State, central New York State, upstate New York, and they had purchased a small little chain up there in the Binghamton, New York area called Hamlin Drug. And as a result, I ended up working for them both as a student when I was working in pharmacy and during the summer months. And that’s sort of how I started my career with CVS at that time.

And then it evolved to the point where I worked with them as a pharmacist and I went into management for a while with them as well. And this is the beauty, I guess, of describing even my career path. Students have so many options, even once they graduate. You evolve as an individual and your interests, and that’s normal, it’s part of the growth process that we all go through. But I went back to school, I was a non-traditional student. I went back to school after about 15 years of practicing as a pharmacist, and I got my Doctor of Pharmacy degree at that point. I had to do all my rotations, and I did them all here in Connecticut.

And I ended up getting hired by VA Connecticut in West Haven, Connecticut. And I was a clinical pharmacist specializing in anticoagulation management. And I had UConn students from UConn School of Pharmacy rotating through my clinic, and that’s how I started to get more involved with the school in a more direct manner. In fact, I was involved with them even when I was in a community setting, but even more so at that point. And then funny things happened, opportunities arose. I never had any plans of going into academia. In fact, I enjoyed the more clinical aspect of working with patients. And it was a true honor working with our veterans in the VA system.

But the opportunity came for an Assistant Clinical Professor here at UConn and Director of Experiential Education. And I took the jump, gave it a try. And 22 years later, here I am. So, you never know which direction your career is going to go. There’s no straight pathway. They zig, they zag in so many different ways, but when opportunities arise, you take advantage of them. And I’ll be honest with you, the past 22 years have been phenomenal. Best job I guess you can say that I’ve ever had, and I really do enjoy it.

Jacie: That’s an awesome trajectory. And you know, I think that a lot of people, when you go and you pick up your blood pressure medication or your statin at the pharmacy, you’re not thinking about just the level of robust education that went into the people who are dispensing those medications for you. Can you talk a little bit about the impact that the School of Pharmacy has in the state of Connecticut and in the private sector?

Philip: Yeah. I mean from the standpoint of our school, given the fact that we’re a state institution, our state legislature and members of different departments do rely on us a lot for our expertise. And so, we work closely with the Department of Consumer Protection, Drug Control, and also the Department of Public Health. And just to give you an example, back when the pandemic was occurring, we worked closely with the Department of Public Health. Because of the fact that pharmacists, and this is the evolution of pharmacists and what they’re doing now, being able to immunize was a key factor, especially with COVID. And so, we needed more immunizers, and we needed more people out there to be able to make it available.

And consequently, we already had a training program within our School of Pharmacy for pharmacists within the state to be trained and to be able to be certified immunizers. But what we also did was, because of the pandemic and we needed even more immunizers, we were authorized by the Department of Public Health to be able to train other healthcare professionals, EMTs, dentists, and you can go through a list like that. And we were training those individuals as well as providing immunizations, training our own students to make sure that they went out there and they were also a critical component of that service. So that’s one relationship we had.

Recently, we’ve been very involved with, and I know many people are aware of, drug shortages that are out there, the prices of prescription items, and we’ve been on special committees within the state legislature providing our expertise. A number of our faculty have expertise in specific areas. In conjunction with the Connecticut Pharmacists Association, because we have a close relationship with them, a number of our faculty members serve in leadership roles there. I’m a past president of Connecticut Pharmacists Association.

So, we feel, because of the fact that we’re a land-grant university and one of our main focuses as a land-grant university is to give back to our communities, that we as a school need to do that as well. And we train and teach our students the same thing. And we want our faculty and staff to also be members of that same giving back to the community. And that’s one way that we do that, by providing our expertise in specific areas where it’s needed. And our close relationship in that regard, or on a number of committees in that regard, helps us tremendously.

Mike: So, you talked a little bit about the cost of medications and drugs, and we know a lot of them are manufactured overseas and now could be or are subject to tariffs. How at UConn is technology being used to address the tariff issue?

Philip: That’s a great question, Mike. As I mentioned before, our Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Pharmaceutics group, has actually been on the forefront of a lot of development of new manufacturing techniques. And because of the fact that, what you just indicated, 80 to 85 percent of our pharmaceuticals are made overseas, predominantly in India and China. And given the current situation with tariffs, the prices of drugs are going to go up extravagantly, and consequently, with pressure from the federal government a lot of our manufacturers are going to be bringing back manufacturing into the United States.

Most of the manufacturing, the reason it was done overseas, was because of labor costs, much less expensive being done in China and India. But now with the new technologies that are being developed, and some of that is through our School of Pharmacy and through our Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, our faculty have developed new techniques for manufacturing, which is actually more efficient and less wasteful. And so, it’s called continuous advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing. And so, they’ve developed new techniques, new ways of manufacturing pharmaceuticals that can be incorporated here in the United States to keep down the costs. And we’ve already had some successful startups of new companies from our faculty members specifically in that area.

And that’s another area where our legislators, not only from a state standpoint, but even our federal legislators, are very interested in this because it’s a hot topic. And so, a lot of times you don’t think of our school as being, we’re a smaller school relatively speaking to all the other schools on the UConn campus, but the impact that we’re having is so tremendous. And so I’m very proud of that and I think that’s a great part of our legacy as a school, when you think about a hundred years and the impact that we’re now having on the state and even federal, on a nation and even beyond regarding what’s actually being developed here.

And so, I think we have to do a better job as academics and educators to get that word out there, because I think the public doesn’t always know what’s happening here at this UConn campus. And so, we’re very proud of that and we continue to, hopefully in the next 100 years, continue to be a leader in that area.

Jacie: You know, the School of Pharmacy seems to be a very tight-knit group. What’s the reason for the camaraderie that seems to exist in your school?

Philip: Yeah, we call it the Phamily, with P-H-A-M-I-L-Y, clever. And that’s actually Dean Robert McCarthy, who hired me when I first came to UConn, who coined that phrase. Because of the fact that our students are with us for so long, when you think about six years and they study in the same rooms and same classes, you automatically have a better bond with each other as a result of that.

And being a smaller school in that respect, we have 47 faculty and about 17 staff within our School of Pharmacy. You get to know each other quite well, and it’s easy to have more interactions. And so, combined with our student body and with our graduate program, we’ve always tried to stimulate that type of sense of family within our group.

And pharmacy itself as a profession is small, and we always try to emphasize that with our students. So, you get to know our alumni base, which is very supportive of our students and our school. And so, we want to have that type of family feel within that area. And we really emphasize that with our students when they first come in. In fact, we just had orientation for our new professional students who came in and even for other first year students who came in. And we emphasized that right off the bat, that they’re now entering not an occupation, a future occupation for themselves, but this is a profession and you’re now entering our Phamily in an essence to be a part of that.

Mike: Well, Phil, we’re all very proud of the School of Pharmacy here and we really appreciate you stopping by to join us on the podcast today, and we all look forward to celebrating all year with the School of Pharmacy on its centennial.

Philip: Thank you. We hope to continue this celebration well into the end of the year.

Mike: Jacie, thanks for joining me today.

Jacie: Mike, thanks for having me back. And I got to tell you that to prepare for this podcast, I did ask my pharmacist for some advice on telling a rash joke. She told me to make it topical.

Mike: Ah, Jacie always has the great puns whenever she’s on the podcast. Thanks everybody for listening, and we’ll catch you next time on the podcast.