Florida pharmacy school accepts first students

Larkin Health Sciences Institute College of Pharmacy in Miami, Fla., has accepted its first 30 students and is scheduled to begin classes this August.

Larkin, which will be the only pharmacy school in Miami, is expecting 80 to 100 students this year. The school will continue accepting applications through May 18, 2016. Eventually, it will accommodate 120 students per class.

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The private, nonprofit school will be housed in a 44,000-square-foot building at 18301 N. Miami Ave. for which construction is nearly complete. The school will grant graduates a four-year PharmD degree in a three-year period that includes summers.

Gary M. Levin, PharmD, BCPP, FCCP, the school’s founding dean, said Larkin’s mission will be to promote and foster pharmacy education to create compassionate and knowledgeable pharmacists.

“The College of Pharmacy will be the first year-round, three-year block program in the State of Florida,” Levin wrote on the school’s website. “Although students will complete their [doctorate] in three years, as opposed to the more traditional four years, because of the design of the curriculum, they will have approximately 25% more contact time than four-year programs.”

According to the school’s website, students will be taught through a block curriculum will allow them to focus on one major topic at a time. Several courses will be taught longitudinally over an entire year.

Students will meet with faculty, receive didactic teaching, and “participate in active learning activities to allow the large amounts of information learned in pharmacy school to be applied regularly, limiting the need for excessive memorization.”

The pharmacy school will eventually be part of Larkin Community Hospital’s health sciences campus in Homestead, Fla. Also housed there will be the hospital’s nursing school, biomedical sciences college, medicine college, and dentistry college.

In hopes of attracting more minorities into healthcare professions, the campus will also include a magnet middle school and a high school that focus on careers in healthcare.