Associate Professor
Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology
Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
Apoptosis and cell death; Cell growth, differentiation and development; Endocrinology; Gene Expression; Molecular genetics; Reproductive Endocrinology; Signal Transduction; Toxicology; Vitamins and Trace Nutrients
My research and practice focuses on developing, promoting, and evaluating effective means of pharmacology instruction at the undergraduate, graduate, professional, and interprofessional levels.
Developing a competency-based curriculum in pharmacology for students at all levels, I have incorporated specific instructional methods into existing core courses that has, in effect, taken a sometimes intimidating subject like pharmacology and presented it to students in manageable ways.
Studies of the effectiveness of these methods are conducted in collaboration with professional societies, including ASPET and its Division of Pharmacology Education. Specific instructional methods in the study include: patient case presentations by professional students utilizing rubric descriptors of performance quality and 360 feedback; Pharm Fridays throughout the second year medical curriculum incorporating organized lists of pertinent drugs to recognize, student-oriented learning objectives, pharmacology study guides focusing on essential therapeutics, their indications, mechanisms of action, adverse drug reactions, and drug interactions; active participation clicker sessions with relevant board-style pharmacology questions; development of performance-based pharmacology questions within the multidisciplinary objective structured clinical exam (OSCE) taken by all DDS candidates; and video presentations demonstrating pertinent pharmacology topics such as medical sedation, use of emergency drugs in the clinic, and safe and effective means for pain management with interviews of clinical experts. These and other instructional methods in the study are highly rated by students and proven effective by outcomes on standardized exams.
For the last several years, I have been co-director of the endocrine-reproductive biology module for second-year medical students. As an ongoing means to improve pharmacology instruction, I coordinated the recent survey of pharmacology instruction in the medical curriculum, assessing adequacy of pharmacology learning objectives, utility of various instructional methods, coverage of USMLE Step 1 pharmacology expectations, and incorporated mechanisms to improve instruction and medical student preparation in pharmacology. Other recent advancements include the launching of an online pre-professional undergraduate pharmacology course with all presentations fully accessible to persons with disabilities.