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; Medical Education Research; Molecular genetics; Reproductive Endocrinology; Signal Transduction; Toxicology
My research and practice focus 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 headed teams to incorporate 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 review of national board-style questions; posting of organized and current lists of pertinent drugs in all Phase 1 course sequences; use of 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 procedural 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 presentation of pharmacology are highly rated by students and proven effective by outcomes on standardized exams.
From 2017 through 2024, I served as co-director of the endocrine-reproductive biology module for second-year medical students. This commitment has continued with the launching of the Well Beyond Curriculum as I am co-director of the Phase 1 Endocrine & Reproductive Systems course. As a means to improve pharmacology training, I coordinated the survey and evaluation of pharmacology instruction in the UB medical school curriculum, assessing adequacy of pharmacology learning objectives, utility of various instructional methods, and coverage of USMLE Step 1 pharmacology expectations. This lead to updated pharmacology instructional methods to be required in all courses. Pharmacology Practice Problem Workshops are widely used in the Well Beyond Curriculum. These workshops are pharmacology-focused problem-based learning sessions requiring student engagement and student-led presentation of national board-type questions in active learning sessions. Students continue to perform better in the pharmacology systems category of USMLE Step 1. I am currently director of the Pharmacology Curricular Thread that runs through the entire Well Beyond Curriculum. The role of the Pharmacology Curricular Thread is to build student knowledge in pharmacology and therapeutics and to deeply enrich students’ understanding of the role of drugs in medicine in today’s world. Prepared pharmacology presentations have been shared with and utilized by clerkship directors as part of the Pharmacology Curricular Thread.
In 2021 and in 2024, I was nominated for the Louis A. and Ruth Seigel Award for Excellence in Teaching, which recognizes extraordinary teachers at the Jacobs School.