Midway College to open pharmacy school in Kentucky next year to help fill jobs in state

Midway College to open pharmacy school in Ky.

A small college in Kentucky’s bluegrass region rolled out plans Monday to open a pharmacy school in the heart of Appalachia, vying for a role in solving a nagging problem filling pharmacist jobs in the state.

Midway College officials said the pharmacy school is set to open in August 2011 in Paintsville, about two hours from the college’s main campus nestled in thoroughbred horse country between Frankfort and Lexington.

Its four-year pharmacy program will enroll up to 80 students per year, with a maximum enrollment of 320 when fully operational. Midway College President William B. Drake Jr. called the projected $20 million startup venture one of the biggest decisions ever for a college whose roots predate the Civil War.

“We’re going to specifically focus on students from Appalachia initially, and then from Kentucky,” Drake said in an interview. “Because our whole goal in this is to provide pharmacists for Appalachia.”

Kentucky has pharmacy schools at the University of Kentucky and at Sullivan University in Louisville.

In October 2009, only Wisconsin, Alabama, Texas and West Virginia had more difficulty filling pharmacist positions, according to national statistics cited by Katherine Knapp, dean of the Touro University California College of Pharmacy. Kentucky was tied for fifth with Missouri, North Carolina and North Dakota.

“Kentucky has been consistently above the national level in the difficulty in filling open pharmacist positions,” Knapp said.

Midway has already hired a dean for the pharmacy school and is interviewing prospective faculty members, Drake said. Tuition hasn’t been set but is projected to be about $31,000 a year.

The pharmacy school will employ about 100 full- and part-time faculty and staff. Drake projected that the school will generate more than $30 million in economic activity in the Paintsville area each year.

The school will be located temporarily on the Mayo Campus of the Big Sandy Regional and Technical Center in Paintsville until a permanent campus is created, school officials said.

Drake said the college has plans for an approximately 60,000-square-foot building that will feature classrooms, laboratories and auditorium. The college doesn’t have plans for dorms in Paintsville.

Midway will seek funding support from the Appalachian Regional Commission, and will work with local officials in hopes of tapping coal severance tax money for scholarships to pharmacy students, Drake said. The school also has received private donations, but Drake declined to identify the donors or specify the amounts.

Drake said he would like to see Kentucky students make up some 70 percent of the pharmacy school’s enrollment, with a majority of the instate students coming from eastern Kentucky.

“I would hope that could be the case, but that remains to be seen,” he said.

The University of Kentucky’s highly ranked College of Pharmacy recently began moving to its new $134 million, 286,000-square-foot building on its Lexington campus. Classes begin in the new building on Tuesday.

UK enrolls more than 500 pharmacy students from more than 90 of Kentucky’s 120 counties. UK’s pharmacy college is ranked fifth in the U.S. News & World Report’s survey of pharmacy programs.

Sullivan University, a private school, opened its College of Pharmacy in 2008 with a class of 74 students and expects to reach its maximum enrollment of 100 students per class in 2011, said dean Hieu Tran.

At Midway, the pharmacy school opening is the latest expansion effort. The college hopes to more than double its current enrollment of 1,800 by 2014. It has a women’s-only day college on its main campus in Midway, Ky., and has co-educational evening programs and an online program. The college introduced an MBA program in 2008.