A Conversation With ... Paul Gubbins

This is the third University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy in Missouri and the second satellite campus. How did it get started in Springfield?
The whole discussion really started in the mid-2000s. In 2011, the agreements were all signed. The goal was to bring the pharmacy program to southwest Missouri to help get pharmacists into the more rural communities of Missouri. There is a need for pharmacists in this area, and Springfield is the natural city to house this program because of the health care infrastructure.

Are faculty and students part of the UMKC or MSU system?
That has probably created the most confusion. It’s not easy to meld faculty into two different systems. The faculty are UMKC employees, with the exception of a technology person we contract from MSU. Our students are UMKC students; the diploma they get will say UMKC on it. They do pay a flat fee as part of their tuition, and any costs they incur on the MSU side get paid back that way. Things like computer access, the library, Taylor Health (and Wellness Center), the recreation center and they can live in the dorms. We also have an open elective policy where our students can take that coursework on any campus they’d like.

At yearly capacity with 30 students, what are the programs results in the first cycle?
Coming from Arkansas, one of the things I thought I would have to build is enthusiasm for the program. There was tremendous enthusiasm at MSU and UMKC, but I thought the greater community and certainly the health care community wouldn’t know about us. That has not been the case. Several people have commented on the importance of us being down here and the ability for health care education to occur in Springfield. The excitement has been off the scale for me. It’s almost to the point, especially with the pharmacy community, where we have to be very careful because we are still very small. People want our students to do health screenings and such, but they are just now getting to a point in their curriculum where they can do that. The limiting factor has been we just have 30 students at this point. By 2017, we will be at full capacity, in terms of faculty, and enrolling our full capacity of students.

How does Springfield’s program compare to programs in other cities?
This is very much similar to Columbia. Not to disparage or say anything bad about Columbia, but I think the dynamics are different. It seems like we are recognized more in our situation than they are. MU has done health care before. They have a college of medicine, so, to them, having a college of pharmacy is no big deal. In our case, we are new and shiny.

You mentioned a need in the area for pharmacists. Why is that?
It’s a contentious issue in pharmacy. There was an article that essentially said pharmacists are going to be waiting tables like lawyers because there are too many of us and too many new schools. In the early 2000s, there was what people considered and projected to be a shortage, but it was a little too ambitious. It was 2000 and they were projecting to 2020; nobody foresaw the dot-com bubble or the housing crisis. In response to that shortage and until now, there has been a tremendous expansion in pharmacy academia. The worry is now, there are too many students being graduated. I’m actually on the side of saying there isn’t, but I qualify that two ways. It really depends on where you live. If you live in Little Rock, and there is a college of pharmacy there, the job market might be tough. The other thing is, there is something called the aggregate demand index, which measures supply and demand of pharmacists. It goes from one to five, with less than three being heavy on the supply side. People talk about the index as if it’s uniform across the county, and it’s not. Here, our index is at a four.[[In-content Ad]]