The importance of educating pharmacy students often is discussed, but the realities are that teaching is generally low on faculty members' priority lists; faculty members strive for promotion whether they are on a tenure or nontenure track; teaching is time consuming and a challenge to do well on a consistent basis; teaching sometimes involves dealing with unmotivated students; and teaching effort is not remunerated as is scholarly activity. In general, teaching may not contribute anything to future promotion decisions. A priority impacting faculty members is the institution's need for additional funding beyond tuition revenue and/or state financial support, pressuring faculty to generate money through research funding and/ or the delivery of clinical services. However, the term ''to educate,'' is derived from the Latin, educatus, meaning to lead forth, ie, to provide schooling, to develop mentally and morally.1 Thus, as pharmacy educators, it is our duty, in spite of the aforementioned realities, to educate our students as best we can, through our dedication and motivation.As pharmacy students begin their last professional year within the doctor of pharmacy curriculum,they do so with trepidation and the ''feeling'' their base knowledge and performance-based abilities are deficient. As a result of students' examination outcomes during the first 3 years of the professional program, many students perceive they are deficient in the requisite knowledge and abilities. Obviously, they are knowledgeable and have the skills needed for their advanced pharmacy practice experiences (APPEs), which bode well for a successful fourth year. Unfortunately, it may be impossible within any curriculum to demonstrate satisfactorily to a student that he/ she does know something and can perform some of the necessary performance-based skills.At the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Pharmacy (UIC COP), a 5-semester professional development seminar series was created for 2 of the authors' advisees using the faculty-adopted curricular performance-based skills as a framework to facilitate the students' growth and development.2-4 During the next-tolast seminar session in the spring semester of the third professional year, the authors challenge their advisees to reflect on the following questions: The intent of the questions is for the advisees to realize their fourth year APPEs are distinct ''hands on'' learning opportunities to develop and refine their knowledge and skills. At the same time, the hope is the students become more reflective and learn from their experiences during this last year. Another goal is to secure information to share with APPE faculty preceptors illustrating their important role in the development and maturation of students.The amassed student responses to these questions (approximately 60 students over a 2-year period) demonstrated interesting trends. When asked what their expectations were of themselves as APPE students, the majority of students wanted to do well on patient-centered experiences and indic...

Objective. To evaluate the effectiveness of holding weekly 60-90 minute conversation forums for faculty members to discuss, explore, and reflect on various teaching topics in a relaxed, informal, interactive format. Methods. Weekly, 60-90 minute sessions were held for faculty members of the University of Illinois College of Pharmacy. A 15-item retrospective pretest-posttest questionnaire was developed and administered at the end of the first year of implementation to evaluate the participants' perceived knowledge, abilities, and confidence gains relative to becoming effective educators. Results. Eleven faculty members completed the questionnaire. All respondents tended to agree (6/11) or agreed (5/11) that their confidence as educators improved after attending the conversation forums. In addition,7 respondents tended to agree and 4 agreed that their ability to self-assess their teaching had improved.Conclusions. An ongoing weekly conversations forum provides faculty members opportunities to explore and learn about facets of teaching in a safe, informal environment.

Literature about the urban campus indicates that traditional, full‐time faculty who teach and engage in scholarly, creative work, or research may need to shift to more applied and community‐oriented service programs. Hence, the role of faculty development is changing because the issues facing the urban university are changing. These changes are prompted by the unique growth and development within the neighborhood of urban‐based campuses. Pressure from the communities to make the campuses more community oriented, along with growing concern for the nature and quality of instruction, help foster change. Campus administration concerns about the institution becoming a “good” neighbor by contributing to the community puts unique pressures on the faculty developer. The faculty developer is in a position to see campus changes which can affect instructional methods or styles such as increased numbers of minority or immigrant students and more part‐time faculty. While these changes occur, the general faculty often remains relatively traditional in its attitudes about teaching.