A proposed pharmacy school at East Tennessee State University has officials at the University of Tennessee fearing competition for state funds.
“Absolutely it’s a concern,” said Dr. Dick R. Gourley, dean of the UT College of Pharmacy. Currently, UT has the only pharmacy school in the state.
UT’s concerns began when ETSU President Dr. Paul E. Stanton announced plans during his State of the University Address Aug. 25 to open a college of pharmacy near the James H. Quillen College of Medicine on the Veteran Affairs Campus at Mountain Home.
Stanton said the school would help fill a “severe scarcity” of pharmacists, especially in rural and underserved areas.
“The amount of support for a college of pharmacy among the region’s health care community has been most encouraging,” Stanton said.
Though ETSU would initially avoid using public money by asking private donors to finance the $10 million in renovations and $6 million for annual operating expenses, future improvements could require public money, said Dr. Peter Rice, associate professor of pharmacology at ETSU.
This could put ETSU directly in competition for state funds with the UT pharmacy school, which quickly announced plans to expand its own program soon after the ETSU proposal was made public.
UT’s plan would extend its Memphis-based pharmacy school to Nashville and Knoxville. And like the ETSU plan, it would provide more Tennessee-trained pharmacists across a wider area of the state.
The expansion plan, which UT officials said they had been working on for four or five years, would give UT greater coverage in Middle and East Tennessee and increase class size, possibly eliminating the need for pharmacy school at ETSU.
“All students would spend their first year of school in Memphis,” Gourley said of the UT plan.
“After the first year, the class will be split up with some completing their degree in Nashville, Knoxville or Memphis.”
But Rice finds it difficult to believe that the state would agree to extend UT’s pharmacy school across three campuses over a distance of 400 miles.
“We already have facilities and resources in place here,” Rice said. “I can’t help but think it’s a natural progression for ETSU.”
In addition, Rice said the ETSU plan would provide not only for more pharmacists, but pharmacists trained against the backdrop of an already thriving medical school and nursing facilities.
“If we’re allowed to bring this to fruition, I think we’ll be the strongest pharmacy school to open in the last 20 years,” Rice said. “We’ll be in a position to push pharmaceutical care in community pharmacies.”
Rice also said that the ETSU plan will allow for more students to begin pharmacy school after only two years of pre-pharmacy undergraduate education, making it a quicker program to get in and out of.
Most students attending the UT pharmacy school must complete four years of undergraduate education before being accepted.
To settle the matter, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission has hired a private consultant who will examine both proposals and act as a mediator for the schools and their governing bodies.
The consultant is expected to make recommendations to THEC beginning in October, but it is uncertain when a final decision will be made.
Though the outcome is not clear, the dispute is similar to another state-funding battle 30 years ago, when UT contested ETSU’s decision to establish a medical school.
In 1974, UT officials argued that the state could not financially support another medical school.
The argument eventually erupted into a political showdown in the Tennessee General Assembly that ended in a one-vote victory for ETSU.
“It appears to be shaping up the same way,” Rice said. “I can’t remember the exact words [UT officials] used, but the impression you get is that they made this mistake once and they don’t want to make it again.

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