We’re joined in this episode by Dr. Ralph Lugo, Senior Associate Dean and Professor at East Tennessee State University Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy. He has been with the college since its founding, joining in 2006 as the founding Chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice and serving in that role for 17 years before being promoted to Senior Associate Dean. Dr. Lugo discusses the role of AI in pharmacy education, including both the benefits and risks of the technology. He also reflects on the college’s 20th Anniversary, how Gatton has grown and evolved over the years, and where he believes it is headed in the future.
Transcript
Teaser Introduction:
What you're going to get here at Gatton is a great education, where you also have high impact opportunities and a wonderful culture, a community focused culture, a student centric culture with relatively small class sizes compared to many other schools where you're going to know your professors and they're going to know you, and you're going to develop lifelong relationships with your colleagues.
That doesn't always happen in all schools.
Michele Williams
Welcome to White Coat Radio, a podcast from East Tennessee State University Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy in Johnson City, Tennessee. Each episode, we cover a wide range of topics about the pharmacy school experience, from study tips to deep dives with faculty and student pharmacists. I'm one of your hosts, Doctor Michele Williams, assistant professor and director of academic success.
Stephen Woodward
And I'm Stephen Woodward, marketing and communications manager. On this episode, we talk with Doctor Ralph Lugo, senior associate dean and professor at ETSU Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy. He's been with the college since its founding, joining in 2006 as founding chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice and serving in that role for 17 years before being promoted to Senior Associate Dean.
Stephen Woodward
During this time, again, Doctor Lugo is primarily focused on administration, program development, and teaching. And before coming to Etsu, he served as vice chair of Pharmacotherapy at the University of Utah. Doctor Lugo’s practice experience and interest is in pediatrics, specifically in pediatric intensive care. His research interests include lifestyle medicine, pediatrics, neonatology, pediatric intensive care, analgesia, sedation, and his research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Stephen Woodward
Well, Doctor Lugo, thanks for coming to Waco Radio today.
Ralph Lugo
Yeah. Thank you, Stephen, for having me. Doctor Williams, thank you for having me today. Look forward to our conversation.
Michele Williams
We're happy to have you here.
Stephen Woodward
So you came again as founding chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice. Can you talk about your long history here and what roles you currently serve in?
Ralph Lugo
Sure. I came to Gatton in 2006. I was hired in 2005, so I've been here 20 years now, which is just amazing to think that I've been here that long. And I was hired initially as the founding chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice. As you all know, we have two academic departments Pharmaceutical Sciences and Practice. At the time, at the time, I was at the University of Utah as vice chair of Pharmacy practice and an associate professor in pediatrics.
Ralph Lugo
I think most people know that my specialty area had been pediatrics in my up but in the air quotes. Former life as a as a clinician in the pediatric intensive care unit. And I had always wanted to come back to the East coast. Was born on the East Coast. I trained in North Carolina, worked in North Carolina. I really enjoyed the South East a lot.
Ralph Lugo
So my wife and I, we started a family out in Utah, and we really had a desire to come back east and specifically the southeast. So I saw this position open up, and it was just a natural move for me to move from a vice chair position to a chair position. And I had been in academia long enough that 13 years at the time to be able to handle such a thing.
Ralph Lugo
Of course, it's always very challenging, but really look forward to the opportunity. But there were some things in particular, I think, that really attracted me to Gatton. Number one, we were starting a college of pharmacy from scratch. There's not a lot of opportunities that come up in the country to start a pharmacy school from scratch, to no avail.
Ralph Lugo
And and you know, there's as you go around the country and you train in different places, you realize that some things you know, I might do a little differently or the culture may not be as I would want it to be in certain places. And so here was this opportunity to start with a clean sheet of paper.
Ralph Lugo
And I thought, what a wonderful professional opportunity that really doesn't come around very often. And and then I interviewed the for the position and was just overwhelmed by the community support for this for this college of pharmacy. Nothing I've really seen before coming from Salt Lake City. City of 1 million plus College of Pharmacy doesn't get much airtime or press.
Ralph Lugo
And it seemed like here at the College of Pharmacy was in the newspaper towns, the city press constantly above the fold type of articles, on the news, on the marquees, on the bumper stickers. I mean, it was just all over and I was just amazed that the community support, so that really attracted me here, as well as meeting with Dean Calhoun at the time, really communicated a student centric focus to Gatton, which I really appreciated.
Ralph Lugo
So between all of those things, the stars just aligned the right way from a career standpoint for me and Gatton seemed real attractive in a place that I wanted to live. And then, you know, the place sort of got pushed off into the background somewhat in front and center was there's a great opportunity here in Johnson City to establish something really unique, and I want to be a part of it.
Ralph Lugo
So that's really what what got me here. And that's what's kept me here for 20 years.
Michele Williams
That's great. So what is your favorite part about your job?
Ralph Lugo
Well, I love working with students. I'm an administrator at least half my time, but I still teach a lot in the classroom. So depending on the semester, I may be teaching 30 or 40% of my time. In some semesters, I'm teaching 50% of my time. So I teach more than most administrators teach. And that's not something that I wish to give up.
Ralph Lugo
I really enjoy being in the classroom. I really enjoy being around the students. That's not unique to being a founding chair of the department, but that's a part that I really wanted to hang on to and have hang on to, you know, because I could have given that up in various ways over the years, but I intentionally retain that, especially since I, I no longer practice, and I love practicing, too.
Ralph Lugo
So I gave that up because there just wasn't enough time in the day to do all those things. So I gave that up, but did not want to give up teaching. So love teaching, love working with students, love working with the faculty. And that's the that was the hook for me about being a department chair is you really have an opportunity to work closely with the faculty and trying to create opportunities for faculty members, trying to promote them.
Ralph Lugo
I don't mean promote the necessarily from assistant to associate, but promote them in their career development, to promote them in their daily practice and just just helping them come along as faculty members. That was something that was very attractive to me, and I've enjoyed that ever since. And that's the one thing I actually miss, in being in my current position right now, is I don't work as closely with the faculty members, but I still do work with them.
Ralph Lugo
So, because I'm no longer department chair, I'm sure we'll get to that, soon, but, but those are the things I think that I really enjoy about my position.
Stephen Woodward
Can you talk about your transition from department chair to senior associate dean now?
Ralph Lugo
Right. So, so several years ago, after serving in that as a department chair for, for 17 years, Dean Byrd was, was provided with a wonderful opportunity to serve as interim dean of the College of nursing. And, in order to make that happen, we really needed to have somebody here that could assist, her to continue that leadership role.
Ralph Lugo
And so she asked me to serve as it was at that point, it was called executive associate dean, which has since transitioned, entitled Who's Senior Associate dean. But essentially it functions in the same way. So, a few years ago, that transition occurred when she took over that, that interim role in the College of Nursing. And then she served in that role for a period of time and is now back full time here in the College of Pharmacy.
Ralph Lugo
And I'm still in that position of senior associate dean. So that's how that transition occurred. That's what prompted that transition. I moved into the senior associate dean role, and then Sarah Thomas and moved into the department chair role. And it's been a wonderful transition, a wonderful new challenge for me as well. And I still do many of the same things I did before, even as a department chair, with the exception of working as closely with the faculty, as I mentioned earlier, earlier.
Michele Williams
So, what is something that people at Gatton might not know about you?
Ralph Lugo
I think.
Michele Williams
Ralph Lugo
I think many people, some people might know about my recent interests from a professional standpoint. As you all know, I trained in pediatrics, served in that capacity for a number of years, and still have an interest in that. But professionally, as the years went on, my interests sort of blossomed in other areas. And that particular area is lifestyle medicine.
Ralph Lugo
And so about 25 years ago, an organization was formed called the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, and it was formed by a number of physicians. And the primary goal and mission of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine is to try to address the root causes of disease and try to improve health through lifestyle interventions. As we all know, we have a very needy, sick population in this country and we have various epidemics that are unfolding as we speak.
Ralph Lugo
Certainly, diabetes would fall in the category Alzheimer's disease would fall under that category, and cardiovascular disease continues to be the number one killer worldwide and in the US, and of course, cancer as well. And all of these things absolutely need to be addressed. But there's not a lot of reimbursement opportunities to try to prevent disease and try to get at some of the root causes.
Ralph Lugo
So that that has been an area that's been somewhat ignored over the years. So this organization was created to try to address root causes and lifestyle modifications. And lifestyle modifications are in many of the guidelines that currently exist for treating various diseases. But the problem is that when physicians say you need to change your diet or you need to change your lifestyle, that's as far as they go in many cases in terms of describing that.
Ralph Lugo
And the patients don't necessarily know what that means. And if you ask ten patients what it means to change your diet, you're going to get 15 different answers. So so this organization is really about trying to prevent disease. So I really sort of latched on to that about ten years ago. And so I'm now working with a number of students, seven students actually to write four papers.
Ralph Lugo
No, it's actually more than that. It's 8 or 9 students to write four papers on the pharmacist's role in lifestyle intervention, the community pharmacist in particular. So things like preventing dementia, things like preventing anxiety and depression, that's what we're writing on. We're writing on we're we're considering just writing on the pharmacist role in lifestyle modifications in the community pharmacy, trying to educate pharmacists and give them the tools necessary to be able to address these issues in their patients.
Ralph Lugo
We have a captive audience here. We have patients coming to the pharmacy, and pharmacists are the most accessible health care workers. So there's a great opportunity for this intervention. But pharmacists need to be educated in this area of lifestyle medicine, and it's not currently in the curriculum. So I'm trying to champion more education about that. Part of the way I'm doing that is through scholarship, writing articles and engaging students.
Ralph Lugo
I hope to develop an elective in this area in the near future, and I think a number of students would probably be very interested in that.
Michele Williams
Definitely.
Ralph Lugo
So I think if you just bring this back to your question, Doctor Williams, I, I think probably many students don't know that some faculty might know it, but not all faculty might know. And so I'd say that's that's an area that, that's probably at least known about me.
Michele Williams
And they know it now. So yes, that's right. More requests for students to participate in that research. That's right. You're doing. Yeah.
Stephen Woodward
What? And I know everybody knows about you that you're a huge fan of AI and that the rise of AI over the past few years is just it seems like it's taken over, not quite in like, Terminator style yet, but maybe we're getting close to that. Can you talk about how you got interested in artificial intelligence and what do you find most useful about.
Ralph Lugo
Yeah, AI is is really interesting. I like to utilize technology as a tool, not just I, you know. Yeah, some of the faculty, they'll probably poke, poke fun at me because I'm always looking for a better app to do certain things. You know, whether it's project management and some faculty. I won't name any names, but some faculty may laugh at me in terms of, you know, the newest and the greatest project management tool, a doctor you logos using well, whether it's Trello or whether it's Clickup, which is which is what I'm using right now.
Ralph Lugo
So there's a little bit of fun there that folks have with me. So I've always been very interested in utilizing technology to improve efficiency. I'm very much about maximizing efficiency, whether it's.
Ralph Lugo
Driving a car that has good gas mileage or whether it's squeezing every dollar out of your budget or whether it's, trying to get the most work out of a work day. You know, that's just kind of like how I'm wired. And so technology has always been a part of that. So that got me interested. And then when I found out about I happened to be in a, I was in a, a faculty meeting on main campus, it was a it was a group of faculty members, that were addressing, it was actually a number of chairs that were meeting and we were addressing the charge to write a faculty handbook for new
Ralph Lugo
chairs. This was about four years ago. And the, the, person that was leading this, this committee said I used ChatGPT to give me an outline of what a faculty handbook would look like. And he showed it and I was like, wow, that is amazing. Now, meanwhile, I had heard of ChatGPT. I wasn't quite sure exactly what it did or what it was, but I was amazed at the output.
Ralph Lugo
So I started tinkering a little bit with it and then, you know, and then things began to snowball. And then we had a number of, faculty development sessions here at the college. I actually gave one of those sessions and, and we went to a number of national meetings where we had sessions on a all things I. So I learned a lot about it.
Ralph Lugo
And now I would consider myself. I'm certainly not an expert at it, but I'm probably an early adopter and I'm very enthusiastic about its potential. I'm not completely ignorant about the downside of using AI. It certainly does have downsides and limitations and disadvantages, but I think a lot of things do, you know, and people say the internet has downsides.
Ralph Lugo
Yeah. If you're in the wrong places at the wrong time, it can be very detrimental. Right? But it's got a huge upside to so it's just a matter of trying to balance that and learning when to best utilize and how to best utilize AI in order to help you in your productivity guardrails. So let me talk a little bit about guardrails with AI use, because that's what people will ask about is this like, how do we how do we put guardrails around its use so that it can be used wisely?
Ralph Lugo
So I would say, first and foremost, we need as a foundational issue, we need transparency. It needs to be clear when AI is being used. It's a, it's a, some measure of academic honesty and, being genuine is to declare when AI is used in order to assist with certain things. And that's coming from a professional standpoint, but from a student standpoint, too, academic honesty really depends on disclosing when I was used.
Ralph Lugo
And so we need to we need to set up guardrails about disclosure. And I think that needs to be in policies as we move forward. Things are changing so rapidly. Policies are being developed, guidelines are being developed. So I think those things will be important to include moving forward. The other part of guardrails is we need to be careful about not encouraging students to take shortcuts around critical thinking.
Ralph Lugo
We are trying to teach critical thinking here at the College of Pharmacy. That is an important outcome, and there are certain exercises that require critical thinking. It's not necessarily we're trying to get the answer as quickly as possible. We're trying to put you through that exercise of critical thinking and synthesizing and taking all this information that you're learning over the years and coming up with a cohesive, cogent answer.
Ralph Lugo
And that's the exercise. That's the benefit. You got to struggle a little bit with that. Well, we can assign that to AI and come up with an answer. And, a 10th of the time, perhaps, but the student will not have grown from that exercise of critical thinking, and they may not know how to critically think if they continue to take shortcuts.
Ralph Lugo
So we need to have mechanisms in place to protect those critical thinking opportunities. Also, clinical reasoning students need to be able to reason through certain questions, and they need that practice. They need also to, demonstrate competencies. You know, our skills, we have these skills here in the in the college. They have certain things like oral exams or direct observations or practice labs where you have to display certain competencies.
Ralph Lugo
You're able to do certain things. AI is not going to help you there. So so that's an important part of the guardrail as well. And then, faculty development from our faculty need to be, competent users themselves before they can be thoughtful regulators. So we as faculty need to create these guardrails. We need to create these policies.
Ralph Lugo
But we also need to be able to utilize them, utilize AI ourselves so that we know where the pitfalls are, where the landmines are, and where students can get into trouble. So, we're in the process of, in AI and I say we I mean, college pharmacy, Etsu, the academy, the profession. You know, we're in the process of developing these things as we go along.
Ralph Lugo
And in the meantime, we have people that are, like, totally embracing it. And we have people that are tepidly cautious. And then we have people that are naysayers. And so all the above, I, I'm, I'm enthusiastic, but not ignorantly, ignorantly. So in other words, I'm not just embracing everything. I, I think it needs to be within the context of guardrails.
Ralph Lugo
Michele Williams
I agree, I share some of your concerns about AI co-opting somebody's ability to think critically or to even just practice those skills of reasoning through a problem and problem solving. On their own. I know in the classroom they have opportunities to do that, but it, it does seem like it would be very tempting to get AI to do some of that.
Michele Williams
So I think, yeah. What you talk about with, with guardrails and, and not only guardrails, but sort of offering rationales and helping students look further down the road to why is it that you need to be the person doing this sort of reasoning and thinking?
Ralph Lugo
Yeah. And and how to use AI in the context of that reasoning? You know, I can be right. Appropriately, AI can be a tool in that reasoning process, maybe to provide them with some information as long as the information is double checked in terms of accuracy. But the reasoning is really important, and human judgment enters that reasoning very often.
Ralph Lugo
So things like empathy, things like, context of patient care, you know, understanding Mrs. Jones social situation and the fact, whatever her limitations are socially, you know, she doesn't get out of the house or she limited mobility or all these things go into helping to make decisions for patients that I can't necessarily reason through. And you have ethical decisions as well that come up.
Ralph Lugo
And I again, may not be able to help with that. I, we have to recognize that AI is trained on a data base that exists in the past. And so there may be some ethical situations that come up which are contemporary, which are not necessarily in the training data base that one needs to think through critically in order to come up with an answer to best fit that patient.
Ralph Lugo
It's kind of like evidence based medicine in a way. We can have all of the objective clinical trial data on a drug. We can say very clearly, this is the most efficacious drug for this disease. State, but if Mrs. Jones is not going to take it, or if it's too expensive for Mrs. Jones, or if there's three other reasons why it's not going to work and Mrs. Jones, then it may not be the best drug for Mrs. Jones, even though it has the most compelling data.
Ralph Lugo
So it's the same with I may gave you some very good objective information, but it needs to be contextualized so that you can determine what is best for this patient. That requires empathy, human reason, human judgment, contextualization and AI at this point doesn't do all of those things. Yeah.
Ralph Lugo
You know, I might I might mention another thing. And I know Doctor Williams, this kind of resonates with you with regard to professional identity formation. I know that's an area of interest for you. But, you know, one of the things as we're trying to develop professionals here at the Gatton College of Pharmacy is we want students to be able to wrestle with difficult questions and sometimes failure, sometimes critique, sometimes not having the right answer, sometimes struggling and being corrected helps with that professional identity formation so that it helps them become a better professional.
Ralph Lugo
And, you know, I can think we were just having a conversation just recently, another faculty member and I, about some of the students in the past that may have had some academic or behavioral challenges, shall we say. And I'm talking about the distant past. And I think in some cases, some of these some students may be young. They may they may not have that full maturity.
Ralph Lugo
Certainly they're not fully matured professionally, that professional identity formation. But they've they went through a process that helped to correct them, to guide them, to corral them and shepherd them. And in that process, they came out on the other end and have created wonderful careers for themselves through that process. And sometimes a few hard knocks along the way will help people correct course, correct along the way, and help them become more successful.
Ralph Lugo
So that's, you know, it's not always about having the right answer. That's true. And having all your eyes dotted and t's crossed, which I tends to do. Right. Great answer. I now let's put it in the context of training pharmacy students.
Michele Williams
I agree, I agree.
Stephen Woodward
It's got to be pretty satisfying to see a student from a long time ago struggle, but then come out on the other side and then go on to in a career.
Ralph Lugo
Yeah. Very much succeed. Right. Yeah. And and you don't appreciate it or recognize it immediately until years down the road and you kind of look back and you say, wow, this person's really made a name for herself or himself. And and it's not always about making a name for yourself, but that making a name for yourself is usually because you're a great pharmacist and you take care of patients in a in a great way.
Ralph Lugo
And, you do all the things necessary to be a wonderful practitioner. And so that's really what it's about, whether you make a name for yourself or not. Yeah.
Stephen Woodward
Well, so you talked about you came to Gatton, I think you were hired in 2005, which was at the time of the founding 20 years ago. We're celebrating our 20th anniversary this academic year. Talk about the importance of our 20th anniversary here at Gatton, how far you've seen us come and where you think we're going in the future.
Ralph Lugo
Yeah, that's a that's a great question. 20 years is a great milestone. So it's 25 and we'll probably have, you know, even a bigger celebration at 25. But it sort of represents similar milestones in some respects. And what I mean by that is that many of our founding faculty are still here, and we can look back at the early days and we can appreciate the struggles, and we can appreciate the challenges, and we can appreciate where we have come from and what we have built over the years.
Ralph Lugo
So in many respects, 20 years, 25 years represents as somewhat of an inflection point where you have enough people here that were here in the beginning that recognize that the first 20 years was like maybe chapter one, or maybe it's, you know, maybe it's one with various sub chapters, but really it's it was when we started, it was we were getting things off the ground, and we achieved a number of wonderful things in those first 20 years in not only accreditation and re accreditation, of course, but we also achieved great academic, achievements nationally.
Ralph Lugo
You know, winning a CCP clinical Challenge award twice, community service awards at the national level. Our operation study is an award winner. Now I think it's 12 years in a row, either national or regional. And it's just it's just amazing to think that a new school would achieve that level of national recognition and, national prowess, in the first two decades.
Ralph Lugo
I think as we look forward, not only oh and I'll, I'll mention one more thing about those first 20 years is that we grounded ourselves in an amazing and outstanding culture. And that's where Gatton really shines in many respects. There are a lot of good schools academically. There are a lot of good schools that do community service.
Ralph Lugo
When I tell applicants that that, applied to Gatton is you can get a pharm.d from many places where academically you're going to get a great education. What you're going to get here at Gatton is a great education, where you also have high impact opportunities and a wonderful culture, a community focused culture, a student centric culture with relatively small class sizes compared to many other schools, where you're going to know your professors and they're going to know you, and you're going to develop lifelong relationships with your colleagues, that doesn't always happen in all schools.
Ralph Lugo
And so in the beginning, that was our aspiration to create that culture. That was the vision of Larry Calhoun, our founding dean. And he did that very well. And he articulated that to the faculty and the students and to the leadership team. And we just have propagated that forward over the last 20 years. And now, of course, Dean Debbie Byrd is in place for the last ten years.
Ralph Lugo
And she of course, that's what she's about as well. So it was like we didn't even misstep when we changed deans. And so it's been this continuous progress of developing this amazing culture. Great place to work, great place to learn, student centric, people come first, you know, all bathed in academic excellence and, and community and student service.
Ralph Lugo
Right. So that's a great three legged stool, right? Service. Community service, academic excellence and culture. Now in the next 20 years, we're going to have people retire. We're going to have people that maybe weren't here in the beginning. So there's going to be a little bit of a different flavor. But I'm fully anticipating that the culture is here to stay because we have foundationally set it in concrete and then the concrete is dry.
Ralph Lugo
So I don't think it's going anywhere. And, you know, in the first three years or five years, maybe the concrete hadn't dried yet, but but now I think the concrete is dry. Everybody carries this culture, you know, inside of them. It's part of the fabric of who the faculty and students are. We talk about it a lot. We cultivated and and so I don't think it's going to change in the next 15, 20 years.
Ralph Lugo
So that's going to continue. But now we've added some other things, you know, now we're we're working on streamlining our curriculum to become the most relevant, essential curriculum for training pharmacists. So that's what we just recently did in our curricular revision. And and also we're looking out towards our research and trying to improve our scholarship and our productivity from a research perspective so that we can become better known for our scholarly output and our research productivity, especially in the context of Etsu use research strategic plan and their, desire to improve scholarship as headed up by Nick Haggar.
Ralph Lugo
Meyer, who's also one of us, here at the College of Pharmacy. So I think as we project out, it's a little bit of an inflection point. Just to summarize a little bit of an inflection point. And over the next 10 to 20 years, you're going to see people are not going to remember the beginning anymore. But I think we've wound this thing up sufficiently that there's enough momentum keeping it moving forward in the ways that are important, these high impact ways that it's not going to turn around anytime soon.
Ralph Lugo
And we can just build on our successes and make it even a better place next decade, next two decades. Good to great is kind of our motto.
Stephen Woodward
I love what you said about culture. I feel like, I mean, I've been here almost seven years. I don't think I realized how important culture is for just organizations in general. But hearing you articulated, kind of experiencing it here from a newer, newish organization like it's super important as the foundation and just helps lay the groundwork for everything else that is laid upon it as a like a good, solid structure.
Ralph Lugo
You know, I think that's the reason why we've been so successful in, attracting students. I mean, every, every year we sit down with the PS1 students. The dean has a lunch with subgroups of the P-1 class, 8 to 10 at a time. And we ask them why they came here and what are the things that attracted them about Gatton College of Pharmacy?
Ralph Lugo
And everybody talks about there are a number of things that attracted them. Of course, geographic location is always important, and there's a number of things that are important. But the culture and the receptivity and the warmth. Yeah. On their interview day is somewhat unmatched by other places. And so they felt at home here immediately, and that that's what attracts them.
Ralph Lugo
Also, I think that's what keeps people here, both staff and faculty. Is that it? For that reason, it's a good place to work. You don't you don't have the, some of the, problems that other universities have with, disgruntled employees and backstabbing and competitiveness, and it just doesn't exist here. So it's just from that standpoint is just a wonderful place to work.
Ralph Lugo
And I think we probably after a while, we probably take that for granted. And, you know, if you went to another school someplace else, you might say, oh, I think things a little bit differently. Yeah. So, you know, I've been to a number of schools around the country, and, things are different here again.
Michele Williams
Yeah. And I, I think that culture is very intentional. That's not, it it doesn't just accidentally work like.
Ralph Lugo
Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, it is definitely something you have to work at. It's got to it has to be something that's articulated from the leaders of the college initially. And, and it needs to be reinforced regularly. And it needs to not just be said you actually need to live the words walk the walk talk the talk.
Ralph Lugo
You know, do all of those sayings. Right. And, and eventually people start to embrace it and it becomes clear when somebody is operating outside of those cultural boundaries. And I think there is just this natural pressure towards in a good way towards this is how we are. I get, you know, this is the Gatton way. You know, people have said that before, right, that this is not the Gatton way or this is the other way.
Ralph Lugo
So it helps us and everybody knows what that means. You know, and probably I would say the students know what that means too. So it's something that that is cultivated, something that is repeated. And we even talk about it in our strategic plan, you know, in terms of environment. Yeah.
Michele Williams
This has been such an interesting and sort of far reaching conversation. I've enjoyed every minute of it. Are there any other things that that you would like to talk about or that we haven't asked you about?
Ralph Lugo
Well, you know, I think something just came to mind, that I think may be worth discussing and that's wellbeing and something that Gatton is all about to, and that's somewhat unique among colleges is we pay a lot of attention to the well-being of our students, the well-being of our faculty and staff. We're doing a survey this year for our staff, for wellbeing faculty and staff, for wellbeing.
Ralph Lugo
And of course, we surveyed the students and we have for a number of years now. So we're able to track their well-being in all of the domains that Gallup would promote. And we track that over time, and we can see where students will drop in their wellbeing scores. And that's a great time for us as a college to intervene and try to promote wellbeing during that time.
Ralph Lugo
So, with that as a background or a backdrop, I, the faculty advisor, one of the faculty advisors on the wellbeing Student Wellbeing committee. And one of the things that I'm working on with the research subcommittee of the Student Wellbeing Committee, that's a lot of work.
Stephen Woodward
That and also loves its committees.
Ralph Lugo
Yes. That's right. Yeah. Great committees. So that's the research subcommittee. We're working on ways that we can take the current research dealing with wellbeing and wellness and lifestyle medicine. As I mentioned earlier, this all fits together right. And yeah. And and draw on the research that is coming out relative to nutrition, relative to physical activity, relative to stress reduction, relative to social connection and, and encourage our students to promote their wellbeing through being aware of the research, adopting the research habits and patterns that are being developed.
Ralph Lugo
So for example, we're just we're working on our first push out. I think that's a word. We're working on pushing out our first, I'll call it publication. Our first, information from this student wellbeing subcommittee, research subcommittee. And we're trying to do it in ways where students will appreciate the the presentation. So we're thinking about maybe infographics.
Ralph Lugo
We're thinking about a short podcast of maybe, like 5 or 6 minutes with some graphics of a video podcast. We're thinking about a short written document. So just ways that we can encourage students to adopt some of the, contemporary research findings relative to wellbeing. And, and then at the same time, they learn about this to help their patients in the future.
Ralph Lugo
So it's not just about them, it's about helping their patients as well. So we're going to be coming out with our first, stuff publication, here in the next few weeks. I had a meeting with them this week, and we've prepared some materials. Which I would actually meant to bring down so you all can look at it and see it.
Ralph Lugo
I'd love to share that with you and get your thoughts on it before it gets pushed out. But, yeah, we're we're really excited about this aspect of, the Gatton culture, because that is really part of our culture too, is to try to enhance wellbeing.
Stephen Woodward
Yeah. That's great. Thanks for sharing. I think that's a wrap. Thank you for being here. I appreciate your time.
Ralph Lugo
Thank you for this podcast. And this podcast has been amazingly successful. So, kudos to both of you. And in creating this and keeping it going. And I think it does a great service to our students and faculty and staff, our community, and even across the country.
Stephen Woodward
So we appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Michele Williams
Thank you. All right.
Stephen Woodward
I'll get it off. Thanks. Awesome. Thanks for listening to White Coat Radio. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and leave this review wherever you listen to podcasts. To learn more about East Tennessee State University Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy, visit us at etsy.com, slash pharmacy or follow us on social media at Etsy Pharmacy. We'll see you next time.
What you're going to get here at Gatton is a great education, where you also have high impact opportunities and a wonderful culture, a community focused culture, a student centric culture with relatively small class sizes compared to many other schools where you're going to know your professors and they're going to know you, and you're going to develop lifelong relationships with your colleagues.
That doesn't always happen in all schools.
Michele Williams
Welcome to White Coat Radio, a podcast from East Tennessee State University Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy in Johnson City, Tennessee. Each episode, we cover a wide range of topics about the pharmacy school experience, from study tips to deep dives with faculty and student pharmacists. I'm one of your hosts, Doctor Michele Williams, assistant professor and director of academic success.
Stephen Woodward
And I'm Stephen Woodward, marketing and communications manager. On this episode, we talk with Doctor Ralph Lugo, senior associate dean and professor at ETSU Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy. He's been with the college since its founding, joining in 2006 as founding chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice and serving in that role for 17 years before being promoted to Senior Associate Dean.
Stephen Woodward
During this time, again, Doctor Lugo is primarily focused on administration, program development, and teaching. And before coming to Etsu, he served as vice chair of Pharmacotherapy at the University of Utah. Doctor Lugo’s practice experience and interest is in pediatrics, specifically in pediatric intensive care. His research interests include lifestyle medicine, pediatrics, neonatology, pediatric intensive care, analgesia, sedation, and his research has been supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Stephen Woodward
Well, Doctor Lugo, thanks for coming to Waco Radio today.
Ralph Lugo
Yeah. Thank you, Stephen, for having me. Doctor Williams, thank you for having me today. Look forward to our conversation.
Michele Williams
We're happy to have you here.
Stephen Woodward
So you came again as founding chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice. Can you talk about your long history here and what roles you currently serve in?
Ralph Lugo
Sure. I came to Gatton in 2006. I was hired in 2005, so I've been here 20 years now, which is just amazing to think that I've been here that long. And I was hired initially as the founding chair of the Department of Pharmacy Practice. As you all know, we have two academic departments Pharmaceutical Sciences and Practice. At the time, at the time, I was at the University of Utah as vice chair of Pharmacy practice and an associate professor in pediatrics.
Ralph Lugo
I think most people know that my specialty area had been pediatrics in my up but in the air quotes. Former life as a as a clinician in the pediatric intensive care unit. And I had always wanted to come back to the East coast. Was born on the East Coast. I trained in North Carolina, worked in North Carolina. I really enjoyed the South East a lot.
Ralph Lugo
So my wife and I, we started a family out in Utah, and we really had a desire to come back east and specifically the southeast. So I saw this position open up, and it was just a natural move for me to move from a vice chair position to a chair position. And I had been in academia long enough that 13 years at the time to be able to handle such a thing.
Ralph Lugo
Of course, it's always very challenging, but really look forward to the opportunity. But there were some things in particular, I think, that really attracted me to Gatton. Number one, we were starting a college of pharmacy from scratch. There's not a lot of opportunities that come up in the country to start a pharmacy school from scratch, to no avail.
Ralph Lugo
And and you know, there's as you go around the country and you train in different places, you realize that some things you know, I might do a little differently or the culture may not be as I would want it to be in certain places. And so here was this opportunity to start with a clean sheet of paper.
Ralph Lugo
And I thought, what a wonderful professional opportunity that really doesn't come around very often. And and then I interviewed the for the position and was just overwhelmed by the community support for this for this college of pharmacy. Nothing I've really seen before coming from Salt Lake City. City of 1 million plus College of Pharmacy doesn't get much airtime or press.
Ralph Lugo
And it seemed like here at the College of Pharmacy was in the newspaper towns, the city press constantly above the fold type of articles, on the news, on the marquees, on the bumper stickers. I mean, it was just all over and I was just amazed that the community support, so that really attracted me here, as well as meeting with Dean Calhoun at the time, really communicated a student centric focus to Gatton, which I really appreciated.
Ralph Lugo
So between all of those things, the stars just aligned the right way from a career standpoint for me and Gatton seemed real attractive in a place that I wanted to live. And then, you know, the place sort of got pushed off into the background somewhat in front and center was there's a great opportunity here in Johnson City to establish something really unique, and I want to be a part of it.
Ralph Lugo
So that's really what what got me here. And that's what's kept me here for 20 years.
Michele Williams
That's great. So what is your favorite part about your job?
Ralph Lugo
Well, I love working with students. I'm an administrator at least half my time, but I still teach a lot in the classroom. So depending on the semester, I may be teaching 30 or 40% of my time. In some semesters, I'm teaching 50% of my time. So I teach more than most administrators teach. And that's not something that I wish to give up.
Ralph Lugo
I really enjoy being in the classroom. I really enjoy being around the students. That's not unique to being a founding chair of the department, but that's a part that I really wanted to hang on to and have hang on to, you know, because I could have given that up in various ways over the years, but I intentionally retain that, especially since I, I no longer practice, and I love practicing, too.
Ralph Lugo
So I gave that up because there just wasn't enough time in the day to do all those things. So I gave that up, but did not want to give up teaching. So love teaching, love working with students, love working with the faculty. And that's the that was the hook for me about being a department chair is you really have an opportunity to work closely with the faculty and trying to create opportunities for faculty members, trying to promote them.
Ralph Lugo
I don't mean promote the necessarily from assistant to associate, but promote them in their career development, to promote them in their daily practice and just just helping them come along as faculty members. That was something that was very attractive to me, and I've enjoyed that ever since. And that's the one thing I actually miss, in being in my current position right now, is I don't work as closely with the faculty members, but I still do work with them.
Ralph Lugo
So, because I'm no longer department chair, I'm sure we'll get to that, soon, but, but those are the things I think that I really enjoy about my position.
Stephen Woodward
Can you talk about your transition from department chair to senior associate dean now?
Ralph Lugo
Right. So, so several years ago, after serving in that as a department chair for, for 17 years, Dean Byrd was, was provided with a wonderful opportunity to serve as interim dean of the College of nursing. And, in order to make that happen, we really needed to have somebody here that could assist, her to continue that leadership role.
Ralph Lugo
And so she asked me to serve as it was at that point, it was called executive associate dean, which has since transitioned, entitled Who's Senior Associate dean. But essentially it functions in the same way. So, a few years ago, that transition occurred when she took over that, that interim role in the College of Nursing. And then she served in that role for a period of time and is now back full time here in the College of Pharmacy.
Ralph Lugo
And I'm still in that position of senior associate dean. So that's how that transition occurred. That's what prompted that transition. I moved into the senior associate dean role, and then Sarah Thomas and moved into the department chair role. And it's been a wonderful transition, a wonderful new challenge for me as well. And I still do many of the same things I did before, even as a department chair, with the exception of working as closely with the faculty, as I mentioned earlier, earlier.
Michele Williams
So, what is something that people at Gatton might not know about you?
Ralph Lugo
I think.
Michele Williams
Ralph Lugo
I think many people, some people might know about my recent interests from a professional standpoint. As you all know, I trained in pediatrics, served in that capacity for a number of years, and still have an interest in that. But professionally, as the years went on, my interests sort of blossomed in other areas. And that particular area is lifestyle medicine.
Ralph Lugo
And so about 25 years ago, an organization was formed called the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, and it was formed by a number of physicians. And the primary goal and mission of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine is to try to address the root causes of disease and try to improve health through lifestyle interventions. As we all know, we have a very needy, sick population in this country and we have various epidemics that are unfolding as we speak.
Ralph Lugo
Certainly, diabetes would fall in the category Alzheimer's disease would fall under that category, and cardiovascular disease continues to be the number one killer worldwide and in the US, and of course, cancer as well. And all of these things absolutely need to be addressed. But there's not a lot of reimbursement opportunities to try to prevent disease and try to get at some of the root causes.
Ralph Lugo
So that that has been an area that's been somewhat ignored over the years. So this organization was created to try to address root causes and lifestyle modifications. And lifestyle modifications are in many of the guidelines that currently exist for treating various diseases. But the problem is that when physicians say you need to change your diet or you need to change your lifestyle, that's as far as they go in many cases in terms of describing that.
Ralph Lugo
And the patients don't necessarily know what that means. And if you ask ten patients what it means to change your diet, you're going to get 15 different answers. So so this organization is really about trying to prevent disease. So I really sort of latched on to that about ten years ago. And so I'm now working with a number of students, seven students actually to write four papers.
Ralph Lugo
No, it's actually more than that. It's 8 or 9 students to write four papers on the pharmacist's role in lifestyle intervention, the community pharmacist in particular. So things like preventing dementia, things like preventing anxiety and depression, that's what we're writing on. We're writing on we're we're considering just writing on the pharmacist role in lifestyle modifications in the community pharmacy, trying to educate pharmacists and give them the tools necessary to be able to address these issues in their patients.
Ralph Lugo
We have a captive audience here. We have patients coming to the pharmacy, and pharmacists are the most accessible health care workers. So there's a great opportunity for this intervention. But pharmacists need to be educated in this area of lifestyle medicine, and it's not currently in the curriculum. So I'm trying to champion more education about that. Part of the way I'm doing that is through scholarship, writing articles and engaging students.
Ralph Lugo
I hope to develop an elective in this area in the near future, and I think a number of students would probably be very interested in that.
Michele Williams
Definitely.
Ralph Lugo
So I think if you just bring this back to your question, Doctor Williams, I, I think probably many students don't know that some faculty might know it, but not all faculty might know. And so I'd say that's that's an area that, that's probably at least known about me.
Michele Williams
And they know it now. So yes, that's right. More requests for students to participate in that research. That's right. You're doing. Yeah.
Stephen Woodward
What? And I know everybody knows about you that you're a huge fan of AI and that the rise of AI over the past few years is just it seems like it's taken over, not quite in like, Terminator style yet, but maybe we're getting close to that. Can you talk about how you got interested in artificial intelligence and what do you find most useful about.
Ralph Lugo
Yeah, AI is is really interesting. I like to utilize technology as a tool, not just I, you know. Yeah, some of the faculty, they'll probably poke, poke fun at me because I'm always looking for a better app to do certain things. You know, whether it's project management and some faculty. I won't name any names, but some faculty may laugh at me in terms of, you know, the newest and the greatest project management tool, a doctor you logos using well, whether it's Trello or whether it's Clickup, which is which is what I'm using right now.
Ralph Lugo
So there's a little bit of fun there that folks have with me. So I've always been very interested in utilizing technology to improve efficiency. I'm very much about maximizing efficiency, whether it's.
Ralph Lugo
Driving a car that has good gas mileage or whether it's squeezing every dollar out of your budget or whether it's, trying to get the most work out of a work day. You know, that's just kind of like how I'm wired. And so technology has always been a part of that. So that got me interested. And then when I found out about I happened to be in a, I was in a, a faculty meeting on main campus, it was a it was a group of faculty members, that were addressing, it was actually a number of chairs that were meeting and we were addressing the charge to write a faculty handbook for new
Ralph Lugo
chairs. This was about four years ago. And the, the, person that was leading this, this committee said I used ChatGPT to give me an outline of what a faculty handbook would look like. And he showed it and I was like, wow, that is amazing. Now, meanwhile, I had heard of ChatGPT. I wasn't quite sure exactly what it did or what it was, but I was amazed at the output.
Ralph Lugo
So I started tinkering a little bit with it and then, you know, and then things began to snowball. And then we had a number of, faculty development sessions here at the college. I actually gave one of those sessions and, and we went to a number of national meetings where we had sessions on a all things I. So I learned a lot about it.
Ralph Lugo
And now I would consider myself. I'm certainly not an expert at it, but I'm probably an early adopter and I'm very enthusiastic about its potential. I'm not completely ignorant about the downside of using AI. It certainly does have downsides and limitations and disadvantages, but I think a lot of things do, you know, and people say the internet has downsides.
Ralph Lugo
Yeah. If you're in the wrong places at the wrong time, it can be very detrimental. Right? But it's got a huge upside to so it's just a matter of trying to balance that and learning when to best utilize and how to best utilize AI in order to help you in your productivity guardrails. So let me talk a little bit about guardrails with AI use, because that's what people will ask about is this like, how do we how do we put guardrails around its use so that it can be used wisely?
Ralph Lugo
So I would say, first and foremost, we need as a foundational issue, we need transparency. It needs to be clear when AI is being used. It's a, it's a, some measure of academic honesty and, being genuine is to declare when AI is used in order to assist with certain things. And that's coming from a professional standpoint, but from a student standpoint, too, academic honesty really depends on disclosing when I was used.
Ralph Lugo
And so we need to we need to set up guardrails about disclosure. And I think that needs to be in policies as we move forward. Things are changing so rapidly. Policies are being developed, guidelines are being developed. So I think those things will be important to include moving forward. The other part of guardrails is we need to be careful about not encouraging students to take shortcuts around critical thinking.
Ralph Lugo
We are trying to teach critical thinking here at the College of Pharmacy. That is an important outcome, and there are certain exercises that require critical thinking. It's not necessarily we're trying to get the answer as quickly as possible. We're trying to put you through that exercise of critical thinking and synthesizing and taking all this information that you're learning over the years and coming up with a cohesive, cogent answer.
Ralph Lugo
And that's the exercise. That's the benefit. You got to struggle a little bit with that. Well, we can assign that to AI and come up with an answer. And, a 10th of the time, perhaps, but the student will not have grown from that exercise of critical thinking, and they may not know how to critically think if they continue to take shortcuts.
Ralph Lugo
So we need to have mechanisms in place to protect those critical thinking opportunities. Also, clinical reasoning students need to be able to reason through certain questions, and they need that practice. They need also to, demonstrate competencies. You know, our skills, we have these skills here in the in the college. They have certain things like oral exams or direct observations or practice labs where you have to display certain competencies.
Ralph Lugo
You're able to do certain things. AI is not going to help you there. So so that's an important part of the guardrail as well. And then, faculty development from our faculty need to be, competent users themselves before they can be thoughtful regulators. So we as faculty need to create these guardrails. We need to create these policies.
Ralph Lugo
But we also need to be able to utilize them, utilize AI ourselves so that we know where the pitfalls are, where the landmines are, and where students can get into trouble. So, we're in the process of, in AI and I say we I mean, college pharmacy, Etsu, the academy, the profession. You know, we're in the process of developing these things as we go along.
Ralph Lugo
And in the meantime, we have people that are, like, totally embracing it. And we have people that are tepidly cautious. And then we have people that are naysayers. And so all the above, I, I'm, I'm enthusiastic, but not ignorantly, ignorantly. So in other words, I'm not just embracing everything. I, I think it needs to be within the context of guardrails.
Ralph Lugo
Michele Williams
I agree, I share some of your concerns about AI co-opting somebody's ability to think critically or to even just practice those skills of reasoning through a problem and problem solving. On their own. I know in the classroom they have opportunities to do that, but it, it does seem like it would be very tempting to get AI to do some of that.
Michele Williams
So I think, yeah. What you talk about with, with guardrails and, and not only guardrails, but sort of offering rationales and helping students look further down the road to why is it that you need to be the person doing this sort of reasoning and thinking?
Ralph Lugo
Yeah. And and how to use AI in the context of that reasoning? You know, I can be right. Appropriately, AI can be a tool in that reasoning process, maybe to provide them with some information as long as the information is double checked in terms of accuracy. But the reasoning is really important, and human judgment enters that reasoning very often.
Ralph Lugo
So things like empathy, things like, context of patient care, you know, understanding Mrs. Jones social situation and the fact, whatever her limitations are socially, you know, she doesn't get out of the house or she limited mobility or all these things go into helping to make decisions for patients that I can't necessarily reason through. And you have ethical decisions as well that come up.
Ralph Lugo
And I again, may not be able to help with that. I, we have to recognize that AI is trained on a data base that exists in the past. And so there may be some ethical situations that come up which are contemporary, which are not necessarily in the training data base that one needs to think through critically in order to come up with an answer to best fit that patient.
Ralph Lugo
It's kind of like evidence based medicine in a way. We can have all of the objective clinical trial data on a drug. We can say very clearly, this is the most efficacious drug for this disease. State, but if Mrs. Jones is not going to take it, or if it's too expensive for Mrs. Jones, or if there's three other reasons why it's not going to work and Mrs. Jones, then it may not be the best drug for Mrs. Jones, even though it has the most compelling data.
Ralph Lugo
So it's the same with I may gave you some very good objective information, but it needs to be contextualized so that you can determine what is best for this patient. That requires empathy, human reason, human judgment, contextualization and AI at this point doesn't do all of those things. Yeah.
Ralph Lugo
You know, I might I might mention another thing. And I know Doctor Williams, this kind of resonates with you with regard to professional identity formation. I know that's an area of interest for you. But, you know, one of the things as we're trying to develop professionals here at the Gatton College of Pharmacy is we want students to be able to wrestle with difficult questions and sometimes failure, sometimes critique, sometimes not having the right answer, sometimes struggling and being corrected helps with that professional identity formation so that it helps them become a better professional.
Ralph Lugo
And, you know, I can think we were just having a conversation just recently, another faculty member and I, about some of the students in the past that may have had some academic or behavioral challenges, shall we say. And I'm talking about the distant past. And I think in some cases, some of these some students may be young. They may they may not have that full maturity.
Ralph Lugo
Certainly they're not fully matured professionally, that professional identity formation. But they've they went through a process that helped to correct them, to guide them, to corral them and shepherd them. And in that process, they came out on the other end and have created wonderful careers for themselves through that process. And sometimes a few hard knocks along the way will help people correct course, correct along the way, and help them become more successful.
Ralph Lugo
So that's, you know, it's not always about having the right answer. That's true. And having all your eyes dotted and t's crossed, which I tends to do. Right. Great answer. I now let's put it in the context of training pharmacy students.
Michele Williams
I agree, I agree.
Stephen Woodward
It's got to be pretty satisfying to see a student from a long time ago struggle, but then come out on the other side and then go on to in a career.
Ralph Lugo
Yeah. Very much succeed. Right. Yeah. And and you don't appreciate it or recognize it immediately until years down the road and you kind of look back and you say, wow, this person's really made a name for herself or himself. And and it's not always about making a name for yourself, but that making a name for yourself is usually because you're a great pharmacist and you take care of patients in a in a great way.
Ralph Lugo
And, you do all the things necessary to be a wonderful practitioner. And so that's really what it's about, whether you make a name for yourself or not. Yeah.
Stephen Woodward
Well, so you talked about you came to Gatton, I think you were hired in 2005, which was at the time of the founding 20 years ago. We're celebrating our 20th anniversary this academic year. Talk about the importance of our 20th anniversary here at Gatton, how far you've seen us come and where you think we're going in the future.
Ralph Lugo
Yeah, that's a that's a great question. 20 years is a great milestone. So it's 25 and we'll probably have, you know, even a bigger celebration at 25. But it sort of represents similar milestones in some respects. And what I mean by that is that many of our founding faculty are still here, and we can look back at the early days and we can appreciate the struggles, and we can appreciate the challenges, and we can appreciate where we have come from and what we have built over the years.
Ralph Lugo
So in many respects, 20 years, 25 years represents as somewhat of an inflection point where you have enough people here that were here in the beginning that recognize that the first 20 years was like maybe chapter one, or maybe it's, you know, maybe it's one with various sub chapters, but really it's it was when we started, it was we were getting things off the ground, and we achieved a number of wonderful things in those first 20 years in not only accreditation and re accreditation, of course, but we also achieved great academic, achievements nationally.
Ralph Lugo
You know, winning a CCP clinical Challenge award twice, community service awards at the national level. Our operation study is an award winner. Now I think it's 12 years in a row, either national or regional. And it's just it's just amazing to think that a new school would achieve that level of national recognition and, national prowess, in the first two decades.
Ralph Lugo
I think as we look forward, not only oh and I'll, I'll mention one more thing about those first 20 years is that we grounded ourselves in an amazing and outstanding culture. And that's where Gatton really shines in many respects. There are a lot of good schools academically. There are a lot of good schools that do community service.
Ralph Lugo
When I tell applicants that that, applied to Gatton is you can get a pharm.d from many places where academically you're going to get a great education. What you're going to get here at Gatton is a great education, where you also have high impact opportunities and a wonderful culture, a community focused culture, a student centric culture with relatively small class sizes compared to many other schools, where you're going to know your professors and they're going to know you, and you're going to develop lifelong relationships with your colleagues, that doesn't always happen in all schools.
Ralph Lugo
And so in the beginning, that was our aspiration to create that culture. That was the vision of Larry Calhoun, our founding dean. And he did that very well. And he articulated that to the faculty and the students and to the leadership team. And we just have propagated that forward over the last 20 years. And now, of course, Dean Debbie Byrd is in place for the last ten years.
Ralph Lugo
And she of course, that's what she's about as well. So it was like we didn't even misstep when we changed deans. And so it's been this continuous progress of developing this amazing culture. Great place to work, great place to learn, student centric, people come first, you know, all bathed in academic excellence and, and community and student service.
Ralph Lugo
Right. So that's a great three legged stool, right? Service. Community service, academic excellence and culture. Now in the next 20 years, we're going to have people retire. We're going to have people that maybe weren't here in the beginning. So there's going to be a little bit of a different flavor. But I'm fully anticipating that the culture is here to stay because we have foundationally set it in concrete and then the concrete is dry.
Ralph Lugo
So I don't think it's going anywhere. And, you know, in the first three years or five years, maybe the concrete hadn't dried yet, but but now I think the concrete is dry. Everybody carries this culture, you know, inside of them. It's part of the fabric of who the faculty and students are. We talk about it a lot. We cultivated and and so I don't think it's going to change in the next 15, 20 years.
Ralph Lugo
So that's going to continue. But now we've added some other things, you know, now we're we're working on streamlining our curriculum to become the most relevant, essential curriculum for training pharmacists. So that's what we just recently did in our curricular revision. And and also we're looking out towards our research and trying to improve our scholarship and our productivity from a research perspective so that we can become better known for our scholarly output and our research productivity, especially in the context of Etsu use research strategic plan and their, desire to improve scholarship as headed up by Nick Haggar.
Ralph Lugo
Meyer, who's also one of us, here at the College of Pharmacy. So I think as we project out, it's a little bit of an inflection point. Just to summarize a little bit of an inflection point. And over the next 10 to 20 years, you're going to see people are not going to remember the beginning anymore. But I think we've wound this thing up sufficiently that there's enough momentum keeping it moving forward in the ways that are important, these high impact ways that it's not going to turn around anytime soon.
Ralph Lugo
And we can just build on our successes and make it even a better place next decade, next two decades. Good to great is kind of our motto.
Stephen Woodward
I love what you said about culture. I feel like, I mean, I've been here almost seven years. I don't think I realized how important culture is for just organizations in general. But hearing you articulated, kind of experiencing it here from a newer, newish organization like it's super important as the foundation and just helps lay the groundwork for everything else that is laid upon it as a like a good, solid structure.
Ralph Lugo
You know, I think that's the reason why we've been so successful in, attracting students. I mean, every, every year we sit down with the PS1 students. The dean has a lunch with subgroups of the P-1 class, 8 to 10 at a time. And we ask them why they came here and what are the things that attracted them about Gatton College of Pharmacy?
Ralph Lugo
And everybody talks about there are a number of things that attracted them. Of course, geographic location is always important, and there's a number of things that are important. But the culture and the receptivity and the warmth. Yeah. On their interview day is somewhat unmatched by other places. And so they felt at home here immediately, and that that's what attracts them.
Ralph Lugo
Also, I think that's what keeps people here, both staff and faculty. Is that it? For that reason, it's a good place to work. You don't you don't have the, some of the, problems that other universities have with, disgruntled employees and backstabbing and competitiveness, and it just doesn't exist here. So it's just from that standpoint is just a wonderful place to work.
Ralph Lugo
And I think we probably after a while, we probably take that for granted. And, you know, if you went to another school someplace else, you might say, oh, I think things a little bit differently. Yeah. So, you know, I've been to a number of schools around the country, and, things are different here again.
Michele Williams
Yeah. And I, I think that culture is very intentional. That's not, it it doesn't just accidentally work like.
Ralph Lugo
Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, it is definitely something you have to work at. It's got to it has to be something that's articulated from the leaders of the college initially. And, and it needs to be reinforced regularly. And it needs to not just be said you actually need to live the words walk the walk talk the talk.
Ralph Lugo
You know, do all of those sayings. Right. And, and eventually people start to embrace it and it becomes clear when somebody is operating outside of those cultural boundaries. And I think there is just this natural pressure towards in a good way towards this is how we are. I get, you know, this is the Gatton way. You know, people have said that before, right, that this is not the Gatton way or this is the other way.
Ralph Lugo
So it helps us and everybody knows what that means. You know, and probably I would say the students know what that means too. So it's something that that is cultivated, something that is repeated. And we even talk about it in our strategic plan, you know, in terms of environment. Yeah.
Michele Williams
This has been such an interesting and sort of far reaching conversation. I've enjoyed every minute of it. Are there any other things that that you would like to talk about or that we haven't asked you about?
Ralph Lugo
Well, you know, I think something just came to mind, that I think may be worth discussing and that's wellbeing and something that Gatton is all about to, and that's somewhat unique among colleges is we pay a lot of attention to the well-being of our students, the well-being of our faculty and staff. We're doing a survey this year for our staff, for wellbeing faculty and staff, for wellbeing.
Ralph Lugo
And of course, we surveyed the students and we have for a number of years now. So we're able to track their well-being in all of the domains that Gallup would promote. And we track that over time, and we can see where students will drop in their wellbeing scores. And that's a great time for us as a college to intervene and try to promote wellbeing during that time.
Ralph Lugo
So, with that as a background or a backdrop, I, the faculty advisor, one of the faculty advisors on the wellbeing Student Wellbeing committee. And one of the things that I'm working on with the research subcommittee of the Student Wellbeing Committee, that's a lot of work.
Stephen Woodward
That and also loves its committees.
Ralph Lugo
Yes. That's right. Yeah. Great committees. So that's the research subcommittee. We're working on ways that we can take the current research dealing with wellbeing and wellness and lifestyle medicine. As I mentioned earlier, this all fits together right. And yeah. And and draw on the research that is coming out relative to nutrition, relative to physical activity, relative to stress reduction, relative to social connection and, and encourage our students to promote their wellbeing through being aware of the research, adopting the research habits and patterns that are being developed.
Ralph Lugo
So for example, we're just we're working on our first push out. I think that's a word. We're working on pushing out our first, I'll call it publication. Our first, information from this student wellbeing subcommittee, research subcommittee. And we're trying to do it in ways where students will appreciate the the presentation. So we're thinking about maybe infographics.
Ralph Lugo
We're thinking about a short podcast of maybe, like 5 or 6 minutes with some graphics of a video podcast. We're thinking about a short written document. So just ways that we can encourage students to adopt some of the, contemporary research findings relative to wellbeing. And, and then at the same time, they learn about this to help their patients in the future.
Ralph Lugo
So it's not just about them, it's about helping their patients as well. So we're going to be coming out with our first, stuff publication, here in the next few weeks. I had a meeting with them this week, and we've prepared some materials. Which I would actually meant to bring down so you all can look at it and see it.
Ralph Lugo
I'd love to share that with you and get your thoughts on it before it gets pushed out. But, yeah, we're we're really excited about this aspect of, the Gatton culture, because that is really part of our culture too, is to try to enhance wellbeing.
Stephen Woodward
Yeah. That's great. Thanks for sharing. I think that's a wrap. Thank you for being here. I appreciate your time.
Ralph Lugo
Thank you for this podcast. And this podcast has been amazingly successful. So, kudos to both of you. And in creating this and keeping it going. And I think it does a great service to our students and faculty and staff, our community, and even across the country.
Stephen Woodward
So we appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Michele Williams
Thank you. All right.
Stephen Woodward
I'll get it off. Thanks. Awesome. Thanks for listening to White Coat Radio. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and leave this review wherever you listen to podcasts. To learn more about East Tennessee State University Bill Gatton College of Pharmacy, visit us at etsy.com, slash pharmacy or follow us on social media at Etsy Pharmacy. We'll see you next time.
