Group Teaching Excellence Award

UHCOP Faculty Members, Guest Instructors Honored by UH Provost's Office for Cardiovascular and Renal Pharmacology Graduate Course

A team of 14 faculty members and researchers from UH College of Pharmacy's Department of Pharmacological & Pharmaceutical Sciences and five external academic health institutions have been recognized with the Group Teaching Award for the Cardiovascular and Renal Pharmacology course in the Pharmacology & Pharmaceutics doctoral program by the UH Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs & Provost.

The award was presented to the group by UH Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Paula Myrick Short, Ph.D., at the Faculty Excellence Awards dinner April 26 at the UH Hilton.

"The goals in our approach to this course is to make the content as current or relevant as possible to the students, and to provide content and discussions that will propel them through their future careers, so we've emphasized critical thinking, analytical, writing and oral communication skills," said course coordinator and instructor Bradley K. McConnell, Ph.D., FAHA, FCVS, associate professor of Pharmacology in the PPS department.

In addition to McConnell, the other instructors in the course Anees Banday, Ph.D., Krishna Boini, Ph.D., Richard A. Bond, Ph.D., FBPhS, Tahir Hussain, Ph.D., Sai S. Koka, Ph.D., R.Ph., and Ke-He Ruan, M.D., Ph.D., all of UHCOP; Peter Doris, Institute of Molecular Medicine, Center for Human Genetics, UTHealth; Terry Kenakin, Ph.D., School of Medicine, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Na Li, Ph.D., and George Rodney, Ph.D., Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Baylor College of Medicine; Adebayo Oyekan, DVM, Ph.D., FAHA, College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Texas Southern University; and Regis Vollmer, Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh College of Pharmacy.

The class is structured with a different faculty member/researcher each week presenting a key topic of the course (such as "Cardiometabolic Disorders and Heart Disease," "Cardiac Pathology & Cell Repair of Heart Disease," and "Renal Transporters") and his or her specific field of research.

Students are required to read original research papers assigned by the topic's instructor, engage in tutorial style discussions between the students and instructor about the article and case studies, participate in class exercises such as performing a heart rate check on classmates, and submit a report each week on the presented material. The course culminates with each student presenting a critique of a journal article related to one of the topic areas. 

"Collaborative teaching integrates the strength of every instructor's background into one course, something that could not have been accomplished by one instructor alone," wrote Pharmacology Ph.D. student Elizabeth Gray in her nomination letter.   

Gray and fellow doctoral student Razia S. Mohammad also commented that they found the course to be "extremely beneficial in instilling logical thinking, critical analysis of data, expanding the knowledge and training the students as future scientists."