AUGUSTA, Ga. – Dr. Susan C. Fagan, assistant dean for the University of Georgia College of Pharmacy campus at Georgia Regents University, has been named founding director of the Center for Pharmacy and Experimental Therapeutics at the Medical College of Georgia at GRU.
Fagan, Jowdy Professor at the UGA College of Pharmacy, also has been named MCG’s assistant dean for pharmacy and experimental therapeutics. She will continue her leadership role at UGA.
The new center as well as the assistant dean position will build on the 40-year partnership of the UGA pharmacy program at GRU and strengthen both institutions’ acumen at the successful translation of laboratory findings to improved health as well as the inter-professional education of health care professionals, said MCG Dean Peter F. Buckley.
The center will include faculty from both Georgia research institutions. Current affiliations include about 30 of UGA’s doctor of pharmacy students spending the final two years of their studies at the GRU campus. A graduate program, post-doctor of pharmacy residency training program and an extramurally-funded program to facilitate treatment of transplant patients also are based at the Augusta campus. The program has ongoing collaborations with each of GRU’s nine colleges.
Svein Oie, dean of the UGA College of Pharmacy, noted that the Center for Pharmacy and Experimental Therapeutics will strengthen existing research and teaching collaborations between UGA and GRU that aim to improve the health of Georgians.
Plans include pursuing additional, dedicated space on the GRU campus for the center that can accommodate expansion on all fronts, Buckley said. Current facilities include about 5,000 square feet on the campus periphery as well as laboratory space at the Charlie Norwood Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
Fagan has been a UGA faculty member since 1999 and was named Distinguished Research Professor at UGA in April 2013. She has held adjunct status at MCG since 2000 and led the UGA/GRU pharmacy program since 2008. She served as chairwoman of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy Research Institute Board of Trustees from 2008-09 and currently is serving a term on the institute’s board of trustees. Fagan is on the editorial board of the journals Stroke, Pharmacotherapy and Translational Stroke Research as well as Clotcare.com, a non-profit providing patients and health care providers the latest insight on antithrombotic and anticoagulant therapy.
Fagan earned a doctor of pharmacy degree from the State University of New York and completed a Miles fellowship in neuropharmacology at the Dent Neurologic Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., before completing a presidential fellowship in pharmaceutics offered jointly by the two institutions.