Role and responsibilities of student affairs professionals in pharmacy education

While pharmacy programs, standards, and students have changed over time, caring for our students continues to be of the utmost importance. We are interested in learning how colleges and schools of pharmacy are meeting these needs. Therefore, our objective was to characterize the roles and responsibilities of student affairs professionals associated with colleges/schools of pharmacy.

All ACPE colleges/schools of pharmacy in the United States were contacted by email to identify the student affairs lead for the institution who was then sent a Qualtrics survey via email. The survey asked for college/school demographics and details of the number and responsibilities of student affairs faculty and staff. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the results.

The survey was sent to a total of 134 individuals and 78 survey responses were received after removing duplicate responses. Responding college/schools were similar in type (49% public, 51% private), size (59% entering cohort of <80 students compared to 55% nationally), and length of program (65% with program at least 4 years) compared to all accredited colleges/schools of pharmacy. The greatest number of programs had between one and three full-time equivalent (FTE) positions (39%) with between three and five FTEs close behind (31%). The team make up that occurred most frequently (N = 20) was zero to one FTE Dean/Associate/Assistant Dean and at least two non-faculty professional staff. Organizing student orientation, planning events such as hooding and white coat ceremonies, overseeing student organizations, and overseeing student wellbeing programs and student recruitment were most frequently reported to be responsibilities of student affairs offices.

Overall, our findings show that the most common student affairs offices are comprised of one Dean/Associate Dean/Assistant Dean and at least two non-faculty professional staff. A limitation of our investigation was the omission of a requirement for respondents to complete the college/school field in the survey.

The number and types of FTE positions devoted to student affairs and titles and responsibilities differed greatly among the responding colleges/schools.