Florida A&M University’s College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences has been taken off probation.
A media news conference took place Jan. 14 in the lobby of COPPS to announce the news and congratulate the hard work of the students, faculty and the college’s dean, Dr. Henry Lewis III.
University President James H. Ammons, headed the news conference. Ammons said he was pleased to announce the news that the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education had decided to lift the probation.
“One of the major priorities that I had as I took over as president of the University was to make certain that the college of pharmacy had everything that it needed to not only get off of probation, but to thrive as the college we’ve known over the years,” Ammons said.
COPPS was placed on probation in January 2007 and was ordered to meet up to 30 standards.
“We did in five months what normally takes 15 months,” Lewis said. “We totally revamped our accreditation sub-study document. We were going to be sure that this college met all 30 of its standards.”
Now that COPPS has been lifted from its probation, other matters will be brought to the forefront and addressed.
“As a result of this action by the accreditation council, this college can now go back and focus more of its attention on continuing its legacy of producing outstanding graduates in this field,” Ammons said.
Ammons congratulated the students on the hard work they had put into aiding the college’s success.
“Your hard work has made a big difference in the stature of the college today,” Ammons said. “You have worked hard and you have made great strides in the program and this was evident by the recent achievement of 100 percent passage rate on the North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination for the 73 students or graduates of the college of pharmacy who took the test for the first time.”
Board of Trustees Vice Chair R.B. Holmes was also in attendance to celebrate the news.
“Many more great moments are going to come because are best days are not behind us, are best days are before us,” Holmes said.
The new standards will be enacted this year, Lewis said.
“We’re going to do things that schools do when they’re not on probation,” Lewis said. “As you heard, we had to revise our old curriculum. We’ve done that and the new curriculum started in 2008. With that, we have new courses that have to be restructured, courses that have to be implemented and changed within the sequence factor.”