June 2005

Buchanan County, Virginia

The University of Appalachia recently received word from the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE) that its college of pharmacy has been granted precandidate status. Precandidate status is the first of a three step process for full accreditation and is limited to allowing the college to seat students and proceed with instruction. Precandidate status does not confer any accreditation status to the college except to indicate that the program has met the required criteria to proceed with its planning and development.

"We are very happy to achieve this first step on our initial attempt" stated Frank Kilgore, chairman of the University of Appalachia board of trustees. "Our dean, Dr. Edgar Gonzalez, has put together a team of faculty and staff that has worked hard to make sure we meet our opening date goal of August 15th of this year." Kilgore pointed out that when the University's board of trustees organized just two years ago they projected 2008 as a reasonable opening date. "We are opening three years earlier than first projected" he said. "The ongoing support from the Buchanan County Board of Supervisors, state and federal legislators, the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority (VCEDA), the County's IDA and hospital, and many other private and public sources has made an early initiation possible. Dr. Gonzalez has literally worked around the clock on this and we also owe a lot of gratitude to our trustees, staff, faculty, consultants and especially the hard work of Dr. Sarah Melton of Lebanon, Virginia. "We started the project in our law office at St. Paul and our office manager, Jean Kilgore, worked with me daily to keep the project going, then we shifted the program to Buchanan County. Our registrar and office administrator, Vickie Keen, called upon all of her experience from seven years at the Appalachian School of Law and kept the momentum going while Dr. Gonzalez and I divided the tasks of fundraising, recruitment of students and faculty, procuring a building, filling out countless forms, and setting policies through our board of trustees, all the while knowing that opening day was looming. We still have lots of work to do and hurdles to overcome but this significant first step is very encouraging."

Dr. Gonzalez, who also serves as the University's president, echoed Kilgore's comments. "We are very proud to be located in far southwestern Virginia where the opportunities to make a difference in education and health care abound. Our goal is to not only help the local economy and provide higher education opportunities to the area's brightest and best students, but we intend to ultimately change, through education, the unhealthy lifestyles pursued by so many people in our rural area. Many diseases can be prevented if the right information is provided and if the local governments, schools, community leaders, and parents decide to make health a priority. Without good health, most other programs don't really have a chance to succeed."

Additional information and disclaimers about the exact nature of precandidate status and the requirements for achieving candidate and full accreditation status available at ACPE’s website at www.acpe-accredit.org.

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