The opening of a School of Pharmacy at Loma Linda University this September will mark a new era in the institution’s 100-year history of health education, says Avis Ericson, executive associate dean of the new school.

“I look on the Pharmacy School as being the last key piece of the puzzle in terms of Loma Linda being a total health professions university,” says Ericson. All the other schools—of Medicine, Dentistry, Public Health, Nursing, and Allied Health Professions—can only be enhanced by the presence of a full-scale pharmaceutical teaching program at the university, she explains. “Pharmacy has grown into a tremendous profession over past years, one which works closely both with patients and other health professionals in providing a collaborative approach to health care.”

Classes are scheduled to start late September, with the size of the first class capped at 30 students. Class size will increase with each subsequent intake until reaching a maximum capacity of 60 students in 2006. “We want the first class to be small so we’re able to be very responsive to the needs of the students as we get this program off the ground,” says Ericson.

According to Ericson, an important characteristic of the school will be its adherence to the mission of Loma Linda University—a mission, grounded in Christian ethics, that “seeks to further the healing and teaching ministry of Jesus Christ.”

“This sense of mission will give our School of Pharmacy a different ‘flavor’ from any other school of pharmacy in the country,” she says.

Ericson, who took up her position in August 2001, has been responsible for drawing together a vast array of different resources and dealing with the many administrative details necessary for making the program a reality. She will also usher the school through its lengthy accreditation process, working with the American Council on Pharmaceutical Education, the nation’s accrediting organization for schools of pharmacy. The school’s application for “pre-candidate status” is almost complete, says Ericson, and full accreditation is expected by the time the first class graduates in 2006.

Loma Linda’s Board of Trustees voted in 1995 to establish a School of Pharmacy and appointed W. Bart Rippon, dean of Loma Linda’s Graduate School, to also serve as dean of the new school. Since then, progress had been delayed by a number of challenges, including finding an administrator with an appropriate background in pharmacy to oversee the process of setting up the school.

Established in 1905, Loma Linda University has become known as one of the world’s leading health education and research institutions. It has an enrolment of some 3,000 students and employs more than 1,200 full-time faculty.