CART Students Visit CHSU for a Hands On Learning Experience

On Thursday, May 18, 2017, PharmD students and faculty at CHSU College of Pharmacy hosted an on-campus learning experience for approximately one hundred twenty 11^th and 12 graders from the Center for Advanced Technology and Research (CART) in Clovis. The purpose of the event was to expose high school students to the role of pharmacists in the fields of health care and research by engaging the students in hands-on learning activities.
The students were given a warm welcome by our Vice President of Marketing and Communications, Richele Kleiser, and they learned about our campus, careers in pharmacy and the need for health care professionals in our local area. Many students were surprised to hear that the average median salary for a practicing pharmacist is approximately $136,000 in the Central Valley, which is higher than the Bay Area or Los Angeles!
After a quick overview, the students were introduced to our Chair of the Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences department, Inder Sehgal, DVM, PhD; and members of his faculty: M. Delwar Hussain, MPharmD, PhD; Sree Pattipati, PhD; Anitha Shenoy, PhD; and Vinayak Shenoy, PhD. The students were interested to learn that pharmacists work in many fields, including Veterinary Comparative Counseling.
Dr. Sehgal gave a presentation about medications that are often prescribed to pets and challenged the students to make a transdermal cream for cats that do not like to take medications in pill form, which most do not. CART students worked in teams to mix a simulation of a thyroid drug (no real medications were used), calculate the correct dosage, and apply it to the ear of a stuffed, toy cat.
CART students also had an opportunity to meet some of our pharmacy students, including: Armen Nalbandyan (P3), Allen Keshishian Namagerdi (P4), Katayoon Samadi (P4) and Pawan Bagari (P4). The CART students toured our Research Lab and learned about cell cultures by identifying the cells under a microscope and learning how cells are stored in Liquid Nitrogen for study.
Students also had an opportunity to understand how a pharmacist can make specialty medications, which is called compounding drugs, and how this specialty medication is measured and tested to ensure the concentration of the drug is accurate.
We look forward to hosting CART students again, along with other local high school students. We hope their interest in pharmacy, medicine, and health care grows so they come back to pursue their professional education at CHSU in the future!
Visit the CHSU Facebook page for photos from the CART learning experience: https://www.facebook.com/pg/californiahealthsciencesuniversity/photos/?tab=album&album_id=815819761910089