PharmCAMP is a program designed to
stimulate interest in young kids in
science careers and to engage them in
science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics at an early age. When we were
developing PharmCAMP, our overall vision
was to foster life learning as a means
of self growth for all students and our
mission was to really inspire all
students to pursue higher education.
We went with what what was taught in the
elementary schools and the middle
schools so it is good for them to get
them to thinking at the early age
what they can do with the different
careers. We want to make it exciting and
stimulating and
we want them to see people that are
role models so they can envision
themselves in those careers and consider
those for the future. We're targeting
underserved areas because these
students are really students who don't
have the opportunity to talk to a lot of
role models that are highly involved in
science and technology. I grew up in a
underserved community and like anyone
from there you know we struggle to
achieve above our surroundings what they
had to offer and luckily for me I had
amazing mentors and teachers at every
grade level and PharmCAMP is my way of
giving back. We see the pharmacist
behind the counter with the white coat
and we see people counting pills and
that's what we think pharmacy is all about.
But pharmacy has so many options
and so by bringing them in and exposing
them to those options, they may consider
pharmacy as a career that would be
satisfying for them.
Elementary, middle, and high school
students learn about topics like
prescription drug abuse, poison
prevention, immunizations, sugar intake
and diabete. They also get to engage in
pharmaceutical compounding through
things like making ice cream or IV bags
or capsules. They extract DNA from
strawberries as they learn how it
relates to rare diseases. It was really
nice to show them, "Hey this is a little
snapshot of what science is and if
you're having fun doing this right now
you can do this later when you actually
decide to pursue STEM in college."
Seeing another little kid like science and
want to do the hands-on experiment parts
of it, I think for me that was the
best part because I got to see what
I looked like as a little kid. PharmCAMP
was truly a campus-wide collaboration
here at KGI. Various student
organizations worked really hard to
develop curriculum that was really
exciting for young kids. Bringing all the
materials of planning the event,
executing the event and getting the
feedback from the students. If you were
there PharmCAMP day, you realize just how
amazingly well prepared and organized
each of the workshops were. To see them
and tell me about what they learned and
what they took away from PharmCAMP
and from all the activities, it was
rewarding because we were essentially
their teachers for that day. You
actually see your students teach somebody else
and you're actually witnessing
them to do the same thing that you are
trying to explain to them in a different
setting is a great experience for us to see.
I've had fifth graders tell me that
this was the best field trip they've
ever been on, that has got them really
interested and excited about science.
Eventually what will happen is the
students that they work with in these
PharmCAMPs will show up in pharmacy school and
that's such an exciting, satisfying thing.
I would definitely encourage other KGI
students to be part of PharmCAMP if I
had to give one piece of advice, it
would be be open to the experience.
Be open to what the students coming in can
teach you and what you can teach the
students that are coming as well. The
inaugural PharmCAMP event was a huge
success.
The students, teachers, principals,
and volunteers got a tremendous amount out
of the program. I look forward to future
years as we develop new curriculum and
add workshops and recruit additional
students to participate in the program.
