March 1, 2016

Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences to recognize Dean Marie Chisholm-Burns at annual Roland T. Lakey Award Lecture

The Department of Pharmacy Practice and the Alpha Chi Chapter of the Rho Chi Society — the academic honor society in pharmacy — of Wayne State University’s Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences will host the annual Roland T. Lakey Award Lecture at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 30. Marie Chisholm-Burns, Pharm.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., FCCP, FASHP, this year’s honoree and dean of the College of Pharmacy at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, will deliver a presentation titled “Research in Practice: Pharmacists’ Value in Providing Patient Care.” The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will be held in the auditorium on the lower level of the college, located at 259 Mack Avenue in Detroit.

“Dr. Chisholm-Burns is a nationally recognized scholar, researcher, educator and administrator,” said Brian L. Crabtree, chair and professor in Wayne State’s Department of Pharmacy Practice. “She, like many other recipients of the Lakey Award, is a pioneer and thought leader in the academy and profession of pharmacy, particularly with respect to medication access for organ transplant patients. I look forward to her sharing her passion for teaching, learning, making a difference and improving health care for all with our students, faculty and the WSU community.”

The first female and African American to serve as dean of the University of Tennessee College of Pharmacy, Chisholm-Burns earned her bachelor’s in psychology at Georgia College, her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in pharmacy at the University of Georgia, her master of public health at Emory University, and her master of business administration at the University of Memphis. She is founder and director of the Medication Access Program in Georgia, which helps provide medication to more than 830 solid-organ transplant patients. Chisholm-Burns has received approximately $9.5 million in external research funding as principal investigator from several organizations, including the National Institutes of Health, and her work has appeared in more than 270 publications. She is a two-time recipient of the American Medical Writers Association’s Medical Book Award for Pharmacy Management, Leadership, Marketing, and Finance and Pharmacotherapy Principles and Practice, two textbooks she co-edited that are used in many schools of pharmacy, medicine and nursing. She has received many other honors and awards, including the Daniel B. Smith Practice Excellence Award from the American Pharmacists Association, the Robert K. Chalmers Distinguished Pharmacy Educator Award from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy, and the Rufus A. Lyman Award for most outstanding publication in the American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education.

Since 1963, the Alpha Chi Chapter of the Rho Chi Society has honored the life and legacy of Roland T. Lakey — the founding dean of Wayne State University’s College of Pharmacy — by recognizing exceptional leaders who have impacted the profession of pharmacy through research or other scholarly contributions in the clinical or basic sciences. Past Roland T. Lakey Award recipients include Nobel Laureate Julius Axelrod and Robert Langer, Laurence Hurley, Richard Silverman, and Rakesh Jain — individuals widely acknowledged as forefathers and seminal contributors to the pharmacy profession.

“Rho Chi is proud to be part of this annual award presentation and lecture because they help all pharmacy students link concepts we explore in class to application and research,” said Jessica Hadchiti, president of the Alpha Chi Chapter and a member of the Pharm.D. Class of 2017. “It also gives us the opportunity to meet and learn from pharmacy leaders like Dr. Chisholm-Burns and to hear firsthand about the many ways in which pharmacists can impact health care, from addressing health disparities and expanding access to health services to improving patient care and meeting health care needs of people in our communities, in our country and around the world.”

Born in 1883, Roland T. Lakey earned a bachelor’s in pharmacy from the University of Buffalo and a master of science from the Detroit Institute of Technology. In 1920, he became an assistant professor in the College of Pharmacy at Wayne State University. Lakey was named professor and director of the college in 1925. He became dean in 1933 and retired on his 70th birthday in 1953.

For more information about the Roland T. Lakey Award Lecture, contact Angelique Meiu at 313-577-0826 or angelique@wayne.edu.  

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About the Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences 
The Eugene Applebaum College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences is committed to advancing the health and well-being of society by preparing highly skilled health care practitioners and conducting groundbreaking research to improve models of practice and methods of treatment in pharmacy and the health sciences. To learn more, visit cphs.wayne.edu.   

About Wayne State University 
Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution of higher education offering more than 380 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to more than 27,000 students. For more information, visit wayne.edu. 

About the Rho Chi Society
Established in 1912, the Rho Chi Society seeks to advance pharmacy through intellectual leadership. As the academic honor society in pharmacy, it recognizes and rewards intellectual achievement, promotes highest ethical standards, and fosters collaboration. Membership is granted to those who exhibit outstanding academic and professional achievement; members may be elected as professional or graduate students in pharmacy, as members of faculties of schools and colleges of pharmacy, as alumni who distinguish themselves in the profession, or as honorary members by special action of the Society’s Executive Council. To learn more, visit rhochi.org.

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