The Pharmaceutical Discovery & Preclinical Development Community (PDPD) of American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) is organizing a new Education Forum for Pharmaceutical Scientists, especially faculty and Educators.

[Background]

About 38% of AAPS members are from academia (15% faculty, 5% postdoc, 18% students), but faculty activates and involvement seems to be decreasing. AAPS should still be the home of pharmaceutical sciences faculty, although less and less faculty attended the AAPS Annual meeting for various reasons.

Gap between Faculty Teaching and Research

Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences need a forum and gathering venues. There has been a gap between Scientific organizations such as AAPS (mostly industrial scientists now) and Educational organizations like AACP and others. To help both AAPS and Pharmaceutical Sciences faculty, we can have a team to improve the Annual Meeting contents with more exciting research from academia, and to promote more collaborations among university-industry-government.

Need for Better Pharmaceutical Sciences Education

A fundamental mission of AAPS is education. AAPS has tried to invest and reach out to more campuses, even beyond pharmacy schools. But the education programs of Pharmaceutical Sciences has had little change for decades, when PharmD and other education programs expanded dramatically with many innovation curricula and pedagogies. We need a body of educators to bring new models and approaches of Pharmaceutical Sciences Educations, as well as trainings for established professionals and executives, as well as the public.

Value for AAPS members – Academic Career Development

I got to know many good mentors and friends from AAPS through my earlier career. But we met less and less in AAPS, without a common topic, forum or venue. We need a team to submit more good programs that interests faculty as well as others. We can help scientists who like to join or being adjunct faculty in universities to advance their career goals. We need to encourage more young colleagues-in-training to join our academic pipeline.

Value for AAPS-PDPD – membership Engagement

PDPD have many of faculty members, maybe the majority of faculty in AAPS. Therefore, we start here. Thank you for joining us, either you work in a college or you are Pharmaceutical Scientist interested about education or training, wherever you are.

Therefore, I draft the following proposal to organize a AAPS-PDPD-Education Forum (tentative name) for more discussions:

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AAPS-PDPD-Education-Forum Proposal Draft for Further discussion:

Vision: Home of Educators to Revive Pharmaceutical Sciences

Mission:

• Be a home forum for Pharmaceutical Scientist-educators to advance education and research
• Enhance the network of faculty and young colleagues-in-training for career development
• Advocate and strategize for intra and extramural support to advance pharmaceutical sciences on campus
• Revive Pharmaceutical Sciences by creative academic research and innovation,
• Foster collaborations between academia, industrial and government by innovative mechanisms

Near-term tasks:

1. teamwork to bring more and better programing that interest all

1. Annual Meeting 6^thtrack: Discovery and Basic Research
2. Annual Meeting Events: Community Social and Special sessions during weekend
3. Year around programs of webinar

1. Explore new approaches and models of Pharmaceutical Science Education,

1. g. how to use AAPS great contents for education and trainings, and eLearning’s,

1. Form a network of active Pharmaceutical Sciences Educators for mutual support and career development

1. g. mentor/help colleagues who are interested in academic career (industrial scientists, postdocs, students…)
2. g. how to collaborate among Academy, industry and the FDA

HaiAn Zheng

(1/31/2020)