Pharmacy Education Goes Global

While the university was trying to deal with concerns over the integrity of its exams, it was also trying to set a higher standard regarding scholarly productivity of the academic staff within the Faculty of Medicine, adding another aspect to Desselle’s project. “A lot of people in developing countries, even though they have good data and so forth, tend to publish their results in more regional journals because their research might already have been conducted elsewhere, but they’re being done for the first time in that particular country,” he said. “So I came in, among other things, to help them leverage the research they have, change or tweak the research ideas that they have to make them more acceptable on a global scale, and to design and conduct the research in a way that it provides something novel. This might allow them to publish the results of their studies in global and impactful journals.”

Desselle found that the resource-constrained environment presented myriad challenges, given that the institution has to rely on much of its revenue and, to some degree, approval of its decision making from the government. “With a few more people getting training and becoming more versed in the language and culture of assessment, and with some investment in things like course management and assessment and tools, they might be able to free up people’s time and move away from performing more perfunctory tasks, such as being sequestered in a room to write questions [ensuring the integrity of exams], to higher-level cognitive and more engaged sorts of tasks that deal with assessment,” he noted. Since his time there, Desselle said the assessment center is taking root, as the university has appointed an individual to work with the government to secure resources for the center.

Attracting International Students

“What I took away from the University of Pristina is just how passionate people can be in a university system that’s inherently centralized and bureaucratic, how passionate its scholars are and how tremendously desirous they are of taking the university to the next level,” said Desselle, who specializes in social pharmacy and was able to meet students working in social pharmacy and presenting their master’s thesis defenses. “So here we are, we’re at a university that’s centralized, bureaucratized, resource-constrained, and yet I met with faculty and students who are doing some really interesting, theory-driven work, and that was very compelling.”

One student, Hyllore Imeri, presented her project on facilitating patient activation among community pharmacy clients, using Internet ads and social media means to more actively engage patients. Given the theory-based nature of the work, quality of research and Imeri’s extraordinary English language proficiency, Desselle spoke with Imeri and Hoti, her academic advisor, about having her apply to a Ph.D. program in social pharmacy in the United Staes. Imeri was accepted into several programs and will begin her studies at the University of Mississippi in August. Desselle will co-author a few papers to come out of Imeri’s master’s thesis. He and Hoti intend to continue publishing her work, hoping to keep working with her in a collaborative effort among the University of Mississippi, Pristina and Touro University California College of Pharmacy, where Desselle teaches.

“Just as I’ve seen in the past with students from Beijing, China, and from Mumbai, India, when the first students from another country end up in Ph.D. programs at a particular school or two in the United States, it opens doors for others,” Desselle said. “The hope is that Hyllore will encourage other students and when they see her coming to the United States and succeeding, they will want to apply to Ph.D. studies here, as well. So it establishes a gateway for potential Ph.D. students in pharmacy, because even though we have a number of applicants from certain countries, we definitely could open the door for students from more regions around the world to at least entertain the thought of doctoral training in the United States.”

To pharmacists interested in the Fulbright Specialist Program, Desselle advises contacting a potential host institution and finding an advocate, not only for the application to be successful but for the visit to be successful. He said Hoti’s advocacy was instrumental the entire time he was in Kosovo. Academics must gain support from their universities as soon as possible, so whenever they are called upon their schedules can be flexible. Presenting a formidable application that builds trust using a strong record of publishing in a certain area is key to Fulbright application evaluators. He encourages his peers to consider the program and keep an open mind about all the places they might go. “Anyone ranging from medicinal chemist to pharmacy practitioner to social pharmacy scientist to pharmacologist, there’s room for everyone within our broader pharmacy discipline to be able to contribute something to the Fulbright Specialist Program.”

Athena Ponushis is a freelance writer based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.