The Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences is one of two academic departments in the College of Pharmacy at NEOUCOM. The Department was created as recently as 2006 and is a vibrant and rapidly growing component of the NEOUCOM community. Currently, the Department consists of 7 full-time faculty members and two jointly appointed faculty, reflecting its interdisciplinary nature. The Department is on track to grow to approximately double its current size by 2010. The department's academic role is to provide students in our Pharm.D. program with an excellent theoretical and practical knowledge base in the pharmaceutical sciences through delivery of a world-class curriculum. This curriculum includes the didactic instruction of components as wide-ranging and diverse as pharmaceutics, to pharmacy management systems; pharmacokinetics, to health care delivery systems; pharmacodynamics, to pharmacy law and ethics; drug delivery systems, to pharmacotherapeutics; principles of drug action; medicinal chemistry; toxicology; nutraceuticals; pharmaceutical biotechnology, and many more.

Research Program

 
The department maintains a highly visible research program with emphases on drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases and cancer, and drug delivery systems for drugs targeting these diseases. Pharm.D. and M.D. students enrolled in the NEOUCOM professional courses, who are interested in research can also participate in laboratory research under the mentorship of department researchers.

Graduate Program

 
Faculty members of the Department provide education and training for Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy students with research interests in drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases and cancer, and drug delivery systems for drugs targeting these diseases. The program provides graduate students interested in entering a career in the pharmaceutical industry or academia with an excellent integrated pharmaceutical medicine graduate education, while benefiting from the Institution’s environment with a culture embodied in its Five Cs of competence, communication, caring, community and character.

Graduate degrees are offered through the School of Biomedical Sciences, a cooperative graduate education program between Kent State University, NEOUCOM, Youngstown State University and the University of Akron, with degrees awarded by Kent State University. Specific research areas of interest to students who may join faculty in the Department resort under one or more of the following umbrella topics of the School of Biomedical Sciences: Cellular and Molecular Biology, Neurosciences, Pharmacology, and Physiology. In the didactic portion of the curriculum students receive appropriate core training while additionally, a curriculum of relevant specialized courses is designed for each student to provide the theoretical and technical tools needed to pursue his/her research interests. During the research component of the curriculum, the student chooses an advisor based on an interest in the advisors' research subject.  The student then serves a research apprenticeship in that faculty member's laboratory.

The research interests of Pharmaceutical Sciences faculty members are listed on the Department's home page, together with their telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and mailing addresses. Potential students are encouraged to contact individual faculty members for additional information about their ongoing research. For more information concerning the School of Biomedical Sciences, please go to the following website: http://dept.kent.edu/bms/.