ATHENS, Ga. – Five new faculty members joined the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy this summer, with three on campus and two in Albany.
Pam Leffert, formerly a clinical pharmacy specialist at University Hospital in Augusta, became the nontraditional doctor of pharmacy and certificate program coordinator.
Leffert will manage and coordinate activities of the nontraditional Pharm.D. program for licensed Georgia pharmacists. She will develop and manage certificate programs, participate in coordinating continuing education offerings, and provide CE instruction to other health professionals as well as to the general public. She will be working on innovative outreach programs and on-site and distance instructional delivery.
Leffert earned a B.S. in management from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1993 and a Pharm. D. from Mercer University Southern School of Pharmacy in 1998. She completed an American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Residency in Pharmacy Practice at the Medical College of Georgia in 1999.
Michelle Berrong McElhannon, an 1995 alumna of the pharmacy college, has returned to UGA as a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Clinical and Administrative Pharmacy. After graduating with a Pharm. D., she completed a pharmacy practice residency at The Ohio State University Medical Center. She then worked for three years in clinical pharmacy with Owen Healthcare at the Methodist Medical Center in Oak Ridge, Tenn. For the last three years she has been clinical manager of the anticoagulation management service at Athens Regional Medical Center in Athens.
McElhannon will teach first-year pharmacy students in the Pharmacy Skills Laboratory. She will also work with the Wellness Clinic and its related activities, develop external practice sites and pursue a research program, specializing in the area of anticoagulation management.
Brian Cummings is an assistant professor in the Department of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Sciences. He had previously held postdoctoral fellowships at the Medical University of South Carolina and at University of Arkansas Medical Sciences.
His teaching expertise includes pharmacology courses in drug metabolism, pharmcokinetics and pharmacodynamics. His research will focus on the role of lipid signals in cell death, specifically signals that mediate apoptosis in normal and cancer cells derived from epithelial tissue.
Cummings earned his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry/toxicology in 1994 from Eastern Michigan University and a Ph.D. in pharmacology from Wayne State University in 1999.
Douglas Anderson and Brock Callison have joined the college’s new Southwest Georgia Pharmacy Program in Albany. As clinical assistant professors, they will help develop and maintain innovative clinical practice sites for clerkship training for pharmacy students, in addition to teaching didactic courses. They will also be involved in the college’s partnership with Albany State University to increase awareness of the pharmacy profession among minority students and to mentor them in prepharmacy courses.
Anderson received a B.S. in pharmacy at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center in 1988 and a Pharm.D. in 1992. He completed a pharmacy practice residency in 1989 and an internal medicine fellowship in 1994.
Anderson has held faculty positions at the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy and Southwestern Oklahoma State University School of Pharmacy. Other work experience includes hospital and retail pharmacy, home health care and hospital consulting. He is cofounder and editor of The Journal of Clinical Problem-Based Learning.
Callison earned a Pharm.D. at McWhorter School of Pharmacy in 1999 and completed a primary care pharmacy practice residency at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salisbury, N.C., in 2000. He then worked as a staff pharmacist at the Samuel Simonds Memorial Hospital in Barrow, Alaska.
