Looking Ahead to the New Year

Dean Kashuba’s perspective on where we are going in 2023

Published January 3, 2023

Recently I was asked what excites me most about thinking of 2023 at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. I’ve spoken a lot these last few months about the progress made on our strategic plan: the work we have been doing on engagement and culture, advancing pharmacy practice throughout North Carolina, developing new learning opportunities for current and future students, executing on a neuroscience strategy, and ensuring the financial health of our school and the Eshelman Institute for Innovation. I’m looking forward to all the new successes we will have in all these areas in 2023.

Likewise, the work that our Pharmacy Foundation is doing to support our mission and achieve our vision is exciting, as is the continued engagement of our Pharmacy Alumni Association in connecting our alums with our current and future students. We truly have wonderful people advancing worthy initiatives.

One new area that’s particularly exciting to me is a renewed focus on the student experience. With so much change occurring both in students and in the educational experience, now is a good time to reflect on how we might be most impactful. For many years, we have been collecting a significant amount of data on how our students feel about their time with us: from student recruitment through job placement. We have used these data most often to improve specific classroom and rotation experiences. However, our Office of Organizational Effectiveness is creating comprehensive dashboards to interrogate these data, understand trends, and identify areas of success and improvement.

At the beginning of this year, the Dean’s Council will be spending a significant amount of time with these data wholistically to identify where we might focus our efforts. I am eager to hear your perspectives on how we can make the student experience the best it can be.

We have many exciting opportunities ahead at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in 2023, and I look forward to you being part of our journey. I wish you all a happy, healthy, and successful 2023!

All the best,