Manchester Magazine manchester magazine fall 2019 for joomag | Page 12

MU | F e a t u r e s
Dr. Harry Keffer ’59 and Dr. Jan Keffer,
retired health care professionals who are
making possible the Keffer Simulation Lab. a medication. PGx students can earn their
degrees online or in person at the Fort Wayne
campus.
Parkview has been very supportive of
Manchester’s plans for nursing, says Johnson.
Hospital staff members are offering advice
on curriculum and skills that they need from
today’s nurses. Its regional hospitals and
clinics are interested in providing clinical
training sites. The interrelated disciplines merged in 2018
when Manchester launched the first and
only dual degree in the nation that graduates
students with both Doctor of Pharmacy
and Master of Pharmacogenomics degrees.
“It’s really a pairing of those two sciences
and two expertises that have a lot of natural
overlap with each other,” says Thomas Smith,
associate professor of pharmacy practice and
pharmacogenomics.
In addition to rural health, Johnson wants
an urban health component to the program,
noting that Manchester’s rural and urban
campuses are perfect locations for real-world
learning.
“People have needs everywhere. Health care is universal.”

– Lea Johnson
Moreover, the two retirement communities in
North Manchester are fertile opportunities for
students to study geriatric health.
While Johnson came to Manchester to expand
the health sciences, Manchester already boasts
a number of successes in that area, most
notably northern Indiana’s first doctoral-level
pharmacy program launched in 2012.
Pharmacy faculty built on their expertise
by starting a pioneering master’s degree in
pharmacogenomics (PGx) in 2016. Also
known as personalized or precision medicine,
PGx explores the relationship between an
individual’s genes and his or her response to
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