Portfolios

The Student Portfolio is documentation of progress toward a student's professional and personal goals and the aims of the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Pharmacy. One of the College's goals is to facilitate progress of the students towards his or her goals by providing selected purposeful experiences and requiring certain activities for personal and professional growth. The student portfolio will include required and self-generated assignments as well as personal reflection in a variety of growth areas. The Portfolio is not meant to "merely store" documents in a file-cabinet-like fashion, but serves as a collection of evidence that reflects a students current stage of development.

The process of reflection and documentation begins at the College of Pharmacy's Orientation with a self-analysis of personal and professional strengths and weaknesses. Self-evaluation and reflection are useful tools in long-term, Continuous Professional Development. Documentation of a personal philosophy, professional goals, strategies for improvement, and a listing of accomplishments should be included in the document. Although portfolio content will be highly individualized and reflect personal aspirations and experiences, the College of Pharmacy will stipulate certain inclusions and expectations. Ideally, it will be a tool that is utilized as part of a periodic evaluation process over the students lifetime. Portfolio building is meant to be individual, personal, innovative, creative, and original. As such, it provides valuable insights into a student's thinking, planning, self-evaluation, and goal setting abilities at various steps along the journey. Quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the content is possible, however, and will be performed to assess the student's progress. The portfolio can help the student to understand personal limits and how to improve.

Curriculum

The pre-pharmacy curriculum identifies the requirements for English, history, and political science as contributing to this outcome. The pre-pharmacy and professional curriculum provides elective course opportunities. The general education breadth requirement will be satisfied by the selection of available courses. Students should consult with the pre-pharmacy advisor regarding course requirements.

The professional curriculum of the College also enables students to continue to develop these general education outcomes. Within their professional education, students will be encouraged to develop a well-rounded scientific and general education perspective as a framework for comprehensive analysis of societal issues as they affect health problems, health care and social services.

A particular focus of the general education course selections will be on developing perspectives from the behavioral, social, and humanities areas of knowledge that contribute to student growth as a citizen and as a professional, and that also involve the students in developing the outcome abilities adopted by the faculty as curricular goals.

Library and Learning Resources

The Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Pharmacy students, faculty and staff have access to learning resources through several venues.

The Medical Sciences Library on the Texas A&M University College Station campus serves as the primary point of contact for resources relating to College of Pharmacy research but all of the Texas A&M Libraries and services are available to our students, faculty and staff. The Medical Sciences Library selects electronic versions of journals and books when possible and currently has subscriptions to more than 1,250 journals and thousands of electronic books. These resources may be accessed at http://msl.library.tamu.edu/  .

College of Pharmacy students are able to utilize the Jernigan Library building on the Texas A&M University- Kingsville campus, including the use of study areas, and the circulation of books through the TexShare program. Hours of operation for the Jernigan Library are available on the library's website at http://lib.tamuk.edu/  .

Within the College of Pharmacy building, the Drug Information Center on the second floor houses a print collection of pharmacy publications and resources held on reserve by faculty members. Computer workstations allow access to electronic resources available through the Texas A&M University Libraries. A network copy machine with scanning and e-mail features is available for student use.

Assessment

The College's assessment activities examine the expected course outcomes of the students at the various levels in the curriculum and construct the assessment activities in a comprehensive, longitudinal manner. Questions and assessment activities are developed from the proficiencies, curricular outcomes, and terminal behavior objectives of all courses offered in that year. These assessment activities test cumulative knowledge in identified areas that consist primarily of areas:

• case-based, multiple-choice questions;
• pharmaceutical calculations problems;
• translations;
• definitions; and
• objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs).