New York City – Touro College will unveil the Touro School of Pharmacy Thursday evening at a traditional white coat ceremony, where incoming pharmacy students are given white laboratory coats to wear. It is the third pharmacy school in the five boroughs—St. John’s University’s School of Pharmacy is in Queens and Long Island University’s Arnold & Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences is in Brooklyn—and the sixth in the state of New York. Three hundred guests are expected to attend the opening event at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. Classes begin next week.
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“There is an extreme manpower shortage in pharmacy,” said Stuart Feldman, the founding dean of the pharmacy school who joined Touro two years ago to build the new program. “We need to increase the number of pharmacy graduates nationwide.”
According to the Aggregate Demand Index, overall, 92.9% of the U.S. population was residing in states where filling open pharmacy positions was at least moderately difficult in July 2008—up substantially from 87% in the previous month.
Touro began hiring faculty and developing curriculum for the news school last year. By the end of 2011 it expects to have a faculty of 40 and an operating budget of about $11 million. For the inaugural class of 66 students, the school has 18 faculty members.
The four-year Doctor of Pharmacy program will stress public health and health disparities in diverse populations. According to Mr. Feldman, there were 10 applicants for every seat in the pharmacy college. Fifty-five percent of the current class comes from New York State and the rest come from out of state. A prerequisite for admission into the school is a bachelor’s degree.
“There is a strong applicant pool,” he said. “There is a lot of demand.”
The new school is not the first pharmacy school for Touro College, which was founded in 1971. Three years ago it opened a pharmacy school in San Francisco. Touro expanded into health education about nine years ago and since then has established Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine and Touro University International, both in California. Touro has about 17,500 enrolled students in New York, California, Florida, Nevada, Jerusalem, Moscow, Berlin and Paris.
I hope its not going to be the same disaster as their Social Work School (lack of accreditation, among other issues).
Dr. Bernard Lander, founder and President of Touro College, deserves special recognition for enabling thousands of young men and women to gain the skills, so that can support themselves and their families with respect and dignity.
Touro College is not taken seriously by business world or any other serious company. It fails to provide its students with the basic education and proper skills to compete on the professional level with graduates from other institutions. Just last year Touro College became famous by giving out fake diplomas.
hey 11:36 i beg to differ i just graduated from touros physical therapy program and you would be surprised at how many people failed out becuse they could not keep an 80 avg required for graduation. Columbia, NYU and other big name schools do not require an 80 to pass they require a C average. what you also dont know is that the touro program has professors that teach in all the big name physical therapy schools such as NYU, columbia, hunter, LIU, downstate etc… Not only that but their graduates get hired at the best hospitals for example Hospital for special surgery which happens to be the number one hospital in the united states for orthopedics and sports medicine has many touro grads that have senior postions including postions with numerous new york sports teams like the mets, knicks and Giants. So please do not insult my intelligence and my fellow touro graduates because we are taken seriously out there!
11:36
NYU Had Scandles Too. It’s not any dirreferent than a teller in bank embazzling money from the bank. So, here on or two ewmployees robbed the College and sold few fake degrees, for which they will sit in prison a good number of years. What does this have to do with the college itself?
Look in this week’s Jewish Press and you find that researchers in Touro College made a significant discovery regarding a cancer vaccine.
I do not know where that comment about Touro not being taken seriously comes from. I taught in Touro for almost 20 years. Many of my former students are now partners in law firms, accounting firms, controllers and vice presidents. Every student who graduated our accounting program had a job before the end of their senior year. Touro College has one of the highest percentages of passing grades on the CPA exam, on the law boards, and in the amount of students who go on to graduate schools. And this only in their accounting and business program. Touro College and its students are taken very seriously both in the acedemic world and business world.
I am glad that Touro is at least doing something to set some basic standards. 80 average which is B-, C + is too low of a bar. All graduate schools place a student on probation when he/she has a C average. Student who got accepted to top tier schools like NYU and Columbia is already a top notch student being able to face top academic standards that he was able to demonstrate while earning his BA. Touro students do need to be checked that they can at least keep B-, C+ average. Phys. therapy program is most probably the only Touro Program that has that rule. Dr. Lander probably felt guilty that these graduates will be somehow responsible for somebody’s health and they can’t be totally clueless, and if most of them drop out because they can’t maintain that low average, its better for us.
Chaim i am not sure where you got your statistics from, but Touro Law School has a pretty low Bar Passage rate. They are partners in their own law firms, which they formed with their school mates ( due to inability to find a job, and of course their partners.About going to grad. school I would have to agree with you. They do that because its almost impossible to find a job with a BA from Touro, so they have to go further, atleast I hope that they are not going a Touro affiliated institution this time around. Before you go to Touro grad. school please check their nation wide accreditation status, in case you would want to move out of NY one day, you will probably won’t be able to do so because you won’t be able to get an out of state license. For example Touro College School of Social Work.