Pharmacy Fika

The Fika Crew talks with Gloria Grice, PharmD - Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, St. Louis College of Pharmacy - about her years of work developing a faculty workload "estimator", a tool designed to spark conversation rather than produce a precise number. Our discussion is far-ranging, including how to capture teaching, service, and scholarship effort; why eq...

The Fika Crew talks with Frank Romanelli, PharmD - the Paul F. Parker Endowed Professor and Chief Academic Officer at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy - about oral examinations.  Frank and Kristin share their extensive experiences administering oral exams and talk about the many considerations and decisions that need to be made when designing an oral exam to desired goals and outcome...

The Fika Crew welcomes Jonathan Thigpen, PharmD, Professor and Assistant Dean at Samford University's McWhorter School of Pharmacy, to discuss First Amendment rights, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity.  Jonathan walks us through the 1915 American Association of University Professors (AAUP) declaration on academic freedom, which continues to anchor most faculty handbooks. We discuss the cur...

OSCEs—those beloved (and sometimes dreaded) Objective Structured Clinical Examinations—have become a cornerstone of pharmacy education. But are they always worth the enormous investment of time, money, and faculty energy? In this episode, the Fika Crew digs into a thought-provoking paper by Gortney, Meny, and Dunn that takes a critical eye to how and when OSCEs should be used. It’s the kind of ric...

The Fika Crew welcomes Zubin Austin, Ph. D. (University of Toronto), who recently completed his sabbatical, and Hayley Blackburn, Pharm. D. (University of Montana), who is right in the middle of hers, to explore the why, when, and how of academic sabbaticals. Co-host Kristin adds her own experience to the mix. Here's one takeaway: plan your sabbatical activities — then trim that list by 25%. 🌏 ✈️...

The Fika Crew welcomes David Steeb, PharmD, MPH - Founding Dean of the College of Global Population Health at the University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis - to talk about collaboration at the institutional and individual levels.  How and why are they created?  Why are some collaborations sustained and others never seem to get past the initial exploration stage?  In this epidose, we...

Just prior to cranberry season, the Fika Crew met with Lucinda Maine, PhD. - CEO Emerita, the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy - to chat about her preferment (aka retirement) journey.  Tina also shares her fascination with candied cranberry videos.  If you are curious, be sure to watch Thyme to Cook with Kristi. I Tried the Viral Candied Cranberry. November 20, 2025. [YouTube Video] Pr...

In this epidose, the Fika Crew welcomes Brooke Griffin, PharmD, BCACP , from Midwestern University College of Pharmacy, Downers Grove, to talk about the mid-career / midlife demands that can put you in a rut. Coaching is one approach that can help you regain perspective, clarify values, and move toward actions (tiny experiments!) that positively support the journey.   Intro and Fika Snack Sharing:...

The Fika Crew talks about the promise and peril of free open educational resources (OER) and how they might be used to support faculty and students.  OER grants permission to teachers to use teaching and learning materials freely and to adapt them as needed to their specific circumstances.  The team debates the incentives for faculty to create OER, the cost savings for students, and the challenge...

The Fika Crew invited Robin Zavod, PhD, Professor of Pharmaceutical Science at Midwestern University, Downers Grove Campus, and AACP President, to share her passion for recognizing and supporting the unique ways learners and colleagues perceive and process information.  It starts with caring and showing compassionate concern for the well-being and success of our students, colleagues, and patients....

The Fika Crew welcomes Carrie Vogler, PharmD, BCPS , Clinical Professor of Pharmacy Practice at the University of Southern Illinois Edwardsville, and Heather Folz, PharmD, BCACP , Associate Professor of Clinical and Administrative Pharmacy at Notre Dame of Maryland University, to talk about the online faculty journal club called "Not Your Mama's Journal Club."  At the AACP Annual Meeting, they des...

The Pharmacy Fika Crew brought their posh new microphones and their smartphones to the AACP Annual Meeting in Chicago.  We talk with a select few speakers about their presentations and the lessons learned experimenting with new frameworks, techniques, and technologies.  Kristin talks with Alex Isaacs (Purdue) about expectancy value theory and its application to assessments.  Stuart interviews Jenn...

The Fika Crew welcomes Vibhuti Arya, PharmD, MPH — Clinical Professor, St. John's University College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences — who shares her concerns about leadership, systemic tension, and cultivating new voices.  Are we so bogged down in administrative tasks that the system is taking away the time and space needed to think, invent, and be creative?  How might an appreciative inquiry app...

The Fika Crew has a wide-ranging conversation about viewing scholarly work beyond the narrow confines of end products but rather how to capture the people, processes, and products to express its full impact.  Use a framework. Consider using visuals.  Speak the language of your audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax and use more normal means of...

The Fika Crew contemplates the know-do gap ... the gap between what we know research has documented is a helpful improvement and what we actually do.  It's NOT a lack of knowledge or know-how, but rather a complex mix of factors that prevent us from translating what we know into practice.  We explore some of these factors, but there are likely more! Fika Beverage Snack Sharing: 0:00 - 2:51 Discuss...

Prompted by avid Fika fan Dr. Judith Deluca from Binghamton University (SUNY), the Fika Crew explores two concepts that have been widely discussed in higher education over the past few years but rarely together!  There is a tension between coddling young adults and employing trauma-informed teaching strategies. Jeff, Kristin, Tina, and Stuart discuss whether protecting students too much hinders th...

The Fika Crew talk about rusk bites and the AAC&U (American Association of Colleges and Universities) high-impact educational practices   —  learning experiences that have disproportionate long-term benefits for students. These high-touch, complex, longitudinal experiences are resource-intensive and challenging to implement in an already all-too-packed curriculum.   Measuring their effectivene...

The Fika Crew talk with Sophie Soklaridis, PhD and Holly Harris, MA from the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health affiliated with the University of Toronto and the Collaborative Learning College   about their work using "different knowledges" to co-produce instruction and a research agenda.  How might pharmacy education co-produce instruction drawing upon the "different knowledges" of our stud...

The Fika Crew invited (and she accepted!) Naomi Steenhof, BScPhm, PhD from the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto to talk about the nature of expertise.  She explains how pharmacists (and all health professionals) can develop adaptive expertise before cognitive entrenchment sets in. Productive failure, meaningful variation, and asking more "why" questions (rather than focu...

The Fika Crew talks about the science of learning. Neuroscience has uncovered a few evidence-based learning strategies that improve retention and skill acquisition. These simple strategies can be used alone or coupled together to create powerful learning experiences: Spaced Repetition / Distributed Learning Retrieval Practice Interleaving Elaboration Deliberate Practice with Feedback Sleep Resourc...

The Pharmacy Fika Crew talks with Conan MacDougall, PharmD, MAS, BCPS, BCIDP from the University of California San Francisco about the best uses of artificial intelligence (AI) to support learning.  There are lots of "cool tools" that can summarize content and generate ideas (efficiently and effortlessly), but the work of learning requires some degree of desirable difficulty. How do we find the ri...

The PharmacyFika crew critically examines educational trends, how fads develop, and why they fade.  In this episode, you'll discover: 1) Tina loves boiled peanuts but is circumspect about the nutritional value of fish sticks, 2) Jeff, the grittiest guy we know, is ironically skeptical about measuring and teaching grit, 3) Stuart thinks learning styles aren't something that should influence teachin...

The Fika Crew share their pharmacy educator meeting experiences at the Monash Pharmacy Education Symposium in Prato, Italy, and the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Annual Meeting in Boston, MA.  Kristin shares her travel misadventures, Tina wants to turn the "dark caves" of convention centers into "delightful" learning spaces, Jeff is positively effusive about the Aspiring Acad...

Critical reflection is an important part of our work as teachers. Kristin, Jeff, and Stuart discuss the four lenses through which teaching practices can be examined: the personal lens, the student lens, the colleague lens, and the theoretical lens.  Sadly, Tina had technical difficulties and couldn't join us for this discussion.  But don't feel too badly about her plight — she was in Prado, Italy....

The Fika Crew explores the things that boost and drain our mental and physical energy.  Energy management (personal and organizational energy, not national energy policy) seems like an appropriate topic as we head into the summer months.  Learning what generates positive energy and how to mitigate things that drain, sap, and siphon energy can enhance our satisfaction, persistence, and effectivenes...