Professor of Pharmacy Practice

A Professor of Pharmacy Practice occupies one of the more demanding faculty roles in health professions education because the job is genuinely two jobs at once: educator and practicing clinician. ACPE accreditation standards — the external authority that determines whether a pharmacy school's graduates can sit for licensure — require that faculty teaching clinical content maintain active, relevant practice. That requirement shapes everything about how these positions are structured.

On the academic side, the role involves teaching didactic courses in pharmacotherapy, drug information, or specialized clinical topics. Pharmacotherapy is typically taught as a multi-semester sequence covering cardiovascular disease, infectious disease, oncology, psychiatry, and other therapeutic areas, often in an integrated case-based format. Faculty write and update course content continuously as clinical guidelines evolve — ACC/AHA heart failure guidelines, IDSA infection treatment protocols, and FDA label changes don't pause for the academic calendar.

Experiential education is the other major teaching component. Pharmacy students complete Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experiences (IPPEs) and Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences (APPEs) at clinical sites, and faculty preceptors are responsible for their supervision, instruction, and evaluation. A faculty member with an ambulatory care clinic site might precept four to six APPE students per year, each spending five or six weeks in the clinic. This is where students translate classroom knowledge into clinical judgment, and the preceptor's role is to accelerate that translation systematically.

The scholarly expectation varies significantly by institution. Research-focused programs at R1 universities expect external grant funding and a consistent publication record in clinical or educational research journals such as the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, Pharmacotherapy, or the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education. Teaching-focused programs may define scholarship more broadly to include curriculum development, systematic reviews, and quality improvement publications.

Service obligations round out the position: committee assignments, student advising, residency precepting, and participation in professional organizations. The cumulative demands are substantial, and new faculty who underestimate the clinical maintenance piece — staying current across a specialty area while meeting teaching and scholarship expectations — are the ones who struggle most in their first three years.

Required credentials:

• Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) from an ACPE-accredited program
• Active pharmacist licensure in the state of employment (multi-state licensure increasingly expected)
• PGY1 pharmacy residency (effectively required at most institutions)
• PGY2 specialty residency or fellowship for research-track and specialty-specific positions

Preferred credentials:

• BPS board certification in a relevant specialty (BCPS, BCACP, BCCCP, BCCP, BCID, BCOP)
• Established publication record for tenure-track positions; 3–5 peer-reviewed publications before first faculty appointment is competitive
• Prior teaching or precepting experience during residency training

Teaching and curriculum skills:

• Course design: learning objectives aligned to ACPE Standards 2016 and program-level competencies
• Assessment development: OSCE design, rubric construction, written examination item writing (NBCE/NAPLEX item-style)
• High-fidelity simulation facilitation and structured debriefing methods
• Learning management systems: Canvas, Blackboard, or equivalent

Clinical competencies (vary by specialty focus):

• Ambulatory care: chronic disease management protocols, MTM, collaborative practice agreement development
• Acute care: medication reconciliation, pharmacokinetics dosing, sepsis bundle management, anticoagulation
• Community/population health: immunization programs, point-of-care testing, naloxone distribution, health literacy

Scholarly and research skills:

• IRB protocol development and human subjects research training (CITI certification)
• Statistical analysis: SPSS, SAS, or R for clinical outcomes data; REDCap for data collection
• Grant writing: NIH R-series, PhRMA Foundation, ASHP Research and Education Foundation mechanisms
• Manuscript preparation and peer review process familiarity

Professional engagement:

• Active membership in ASHP, APhA, ACCP, SCCM, or specialty-specific organizations
• Presentation experience at regional or national pharmacy meetings

Pharmacy education is at an inflection point that creates real complexity for anyone evaluating this career path. On the one hand, the clinical faculty shortage is documented and persistent — pharmacy programs consistently report difficulty filling practice faculty lines, and the pipeline of residency-trained pharmacists with genuine academic interest has not kept pace with the expansion of pharmacy school seats over the past 15 years. That shortage gives qualified candidates real leverage.

On the other hand, the total number of pharmacy schools has grown sharply, and several programs have faced enrollment challenges, accreditation scrutiny, and in a small number of cases, closure. ACPE's Standard 24 on financial resources and Standard 25 on enrollment management have become live issues for programs that expanded on optimistic projections. Faculty positions at financially stressed schools carry employment risk that positions at well-established programs do not.

The distinction that matters most when evaluating an academic position is institutional stability: enrollment trends over the past five years, board passage rates, ACPE accreditation status (full versus on probation), and the health of affiliated clinical partners. A program graduating 120 students per year with stable NAPLEX pass rates at a university with a strong health system partner is a fundamentally different employment situation than a for-profit school with declining enrollment.

For faculty at stable institutions, the career trajectory is well-defined. The progression from assistant to associate to full professor typically takes 10–15 years on the tenure track and involves accumulating a publication record, obtaining external funding, and demonstrating teaching effectiveness through student evaluations and peer observation. Clinical-track faculty advance based on clinical productivity, precepting quality, and service contributions.

Adjacent opportunities are expanding. Pharmacy schools increasingly partner with health systems on population health programs, embedded clinical pharmacist models, and telehealth pharmacy services — all of which create practice opportunities for faculty that didn't exist five years ago. The USPSTF-backed push for pharmacist-led chronic disease management in ambulatory settings has increased the visibility and scope of clinical practice sites that faculty can anchor.

Total compensation, including clinical supplements from health system partners, makes pharmacy practice faculty positions competitive with staff clinical pharmacist salaries at major health systems — historically a challenge in recruiting strong candidates who could earn more in pure clinical roles. That gap has narrowed, and it continues to narrow as pharmacy schools compete for a limited pool of residency-trained faculty candidates.

Dear Search Committee,

I am applying for the Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Practice position in ambulatory care at [College of Pharmacy]. I will complete my PGY2 ambulatory care residency at [Health System] in June and hold BCACP certification. During my training I've had consistent teaching responsibilities and am looking for a faculty position where clinical practice and didactic education are both central to the role rather than one being an afterthought to the other.

My clinical practice focus is chronic disease management — specifically hypertension, diabetes, and hyperlipidemia — in a collaborative practice agreement model with internal medicine and family medicine physicians. I currently precept four APPE students per year in the clinic and have developed three case-based simulation scenarios for the P2 pharmacotherapy sequence at [School of Pharmacy] that are now part of their standing curriculum.

On the scholarly side, I have one manuscript in press at the Annals of Pharmacotherapy on pharmacist-led hypertension management outcomes in a federally qualified health center population, and a second manuscript in preparation examining BCACP-certified pharmacist performance on chronic disease metrics compared to non-certified counterparts in similar settings. I presented preliminary findings from the first project at ACCP Annual Meeting in October.

I'm drawn to [College]'s model because the ambulatory care practice site embedded within [Partner Health System]'s primary care network would allow me to continue the patient population I know well while building a student rotation program that feeds directly into coursework I'd be teaching. The research infrastructure and the PGY1/PGY2 residency co-sponsorship also align with where I want to develop.

I would welcome the opportunity to discuss the position with the search committee.

[Your Name], Pharm.D., BCACP