After conducting a national campaign to find a founding dean for the ETSU College of Pharmacy, the search committee has narrowed its pool to four final candidates for the position.
“We had a strong, positive response,” said Joseph E. Smith, coordinator at ETSU University Relations.
The search committee, made up of university officials and members of the region’s pharmacy community, has interviewed two of the candidates in a process that should be completed near the end of the month, Smith said.
“The dean must have the vision and ability to establish an infrastructure which supports a strong, community-based college of pharmacy,” reads the position announcement posted on the school’s web site in July.
Two of the candidates are based locally and were strong supporters of the school during its struggle to obtain approval and funding. They are: Larry D. Calhoun, president and chief executive officer of Wilson Pharmacy and Home Health in Johnson City, and Peter J. Rice, professor of pharmacology at ETSU.
Other candidates are: Shane D. Scott, head of the discipline of pharmacy and experimental pharmacology program at the University of Newcastle in Australia and Diane Swaffar, a consultant for the new pharmacy program at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine and the former founding dean and professor of pharmacology for the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine.
After being selected, the new dean will report to Dr. Ronald Franks, who announced last week he would step down as dean of the Quillen College of Medicine to concentrate on his duties as vice president of the Division of Health Sciences.
As vice president, Franks will oversee the administration and development of the growing division, which will eventually include five colleges: medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health and allied health.
The ETSU College of Pharmacy is expected to open its doors in the fall of 2006 with a class of 65 students. It will be the second college of pharmacy in the state.
Final approval for the new college was gained July 14 after nearly a year of controversy in which University of Tennessee officials fought against it, fearing state money would be diverted from their own pharmacy program in Memphis.
But a turnabout came on March 17, when Gov. Phil Bredesen leant his support to the ETSU program by helping to kick off a fundraising drive to raise $7.5 million in private funds for the program.
Since then, more than $6.2 million in corporate and individual donations has been raised, Smith said.
Program coordinators are currently working out of an office in Building 1 on the Veterans Administration campus, where they are finalizing the program’s admission procedures, curriculum and course content, Smith said.

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