Local students get peek into pharmacy careers
Yuma students in the University of Arizona’s Pharmacy Camp here recently got to see Elvis in action.
Though the real king of rock ‘n’ roll would be 83 and most likely not able to step on anyone’s blue suede shoes, the Elvis pharmacy robot at Yuma Regional Medical Center was the highlight of the camp for some students.
Pharm Camp student Dominic Dobosz said getting to see the robotic dispenser was one of the “fun” things about the camp.
“And learning about Elvis the robot that they have,” the Centennial Middle School student said of the hospital tour. “And learning how they make the IV bags.”
“It was really cool meeting the pharmacists and the machines and learning what they do, and how many prescriptions they do a day is over 3,000. It’s a lot,” said Hannah Maynard, who will be in eighth grade in the fall.
The four-day camp is designed to pique interest in pharmacy and related careers, said Allison Gilliland, academic adviser for UA-Yuma and the junior biotech coordinator for Yuma, La Paz and Imperial (Calif.) counties. “We use pharmacy as the platform for exploring STEAM careers.”
STEAM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics, and Gilliland noted that the camp is not geared just toward future pharmacists.
“Because there are so many overlapping skill sets with public health, medicine, pharmacy, nursing, veterinary, engineering, it’s just kind of a nice, broad way to show that students really do need to keep up with their math and science skills as they go through school,” she said.
Camp counselors, who are students from the UA’s various programs in Phoenix and Tucson, are role models, Gilliland said.
“I think all of our counselors are either currently finishing up pharmacy school, getting ready to apply to pharmacy school, or getting ready to apply for nursing, for their BSN. They get to talk throughout the week about their experiences with that,” she said. Talking about those experiences is another aspect of the program — getting kids thinking about college and life after high school.
“For a lot of people college is super scary for them because they don’t know anybody that’s actually completed,” Gilliland said.
Students might know someone who “maybe went to AWC for a couple of semesters, or they’re so excited about college but they have no idea where to go,” she said of the exposure to older students being a positive encounter for younger generations.
This year marks the ninth camp that has been offered in Yuma County, Gilliland said, and part of its success is due to partnerships with local health agencies such as Yuma Regional Medical Center, Regional Center for Border Health, the San Luis Walk-in Clinic, the Yuma Fire Department and Walgreens Pharmacies and the Yuma Union High School District’s Cibola High. Partners offer tours, speakers, promotional materials, and in Cibola’s case, classroom space in its new state-of-theart chemistry lab. “(The camp) also gives students the flip side too, of being around professionals and people who are in school for professional degrees, because we do have a low percentage of people who actually have a bachelor’s degree in Yuma County,” she explained. After a decline in camp enrollment, this year the camp had an abundance of applicants. “This year for whatever reason, students were super excited about it. We had big turnouts for the information meetings at both Centennial and Crane middle schools,” Gilliland said. “It was really exciting. We had great applications and great interviews. The teachers and the principals from both schools were just like can we please let everybody go?”
The camp ended up enrolling 35 students after Dr. Ted Tong, the associate dean of the College of Pharmacy, gave his blessing.
“Usually we cap it at 30 just for seats and how we have the labs set up, and so he’s like five more is not too many,” she said.
Maynard, who will be in the eighth grade in the fall, said the camp helped her narrow down what she is considering for a career.
“I was thinking of being a botanist, and then I realized not many people are botanists now, so maybe I could just be a pharmacist or something. It sounds like fun to help people and stuff.”