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Summer 2025

 

Happy summer to our preceptors, site coordinators and partners! This is a happy time of year for the OEE as we celebrate the past year’s accomplishments and welcome the next experiential year with enthusiasm for what lies ahead. 

In May, we graduated 66 students in the Class of 2025! Members of the class of 2025 are heading off to residencies (62%), fellowships (14%) and community or other practice settings (24%). We are immensely proud of our final ASHP PGY1 match rate of 85%. We thank each of our preceptors, clinical faculty, mentors and partners who have mentored our students on rotations, reviewed CVs and letters of intent, written recommendation letters and provided mock interviews for our students. We recognize that this represents a substantial time commitment, and the outcomes clearly reflect the value and impact of your efforts. 

First-year IPPE students have completed their spring quarter longitudinal community pharmacy IPPE rotations, and we extend our sincere gratitude to the dedicated pharmacy preceptors and sites hosting our students.  

Thank you for partnering with us to train the next generation of highly skilled, compassionate and caring pharmacists across IPPE and APPE settings. This spring, the OEE awarded several of our preceptors with excellence or special recognition awards. If you missed the awards ceremony (and preceding continuing education seminar on Fostering and Assessing Clinical Reasoning in Experiential Pharmacy Education), you can find it here. 

Our experiential education calendar is kicking off soon this summer, with IPPE block rotations and APPEs about to start! All incoming IPPE and APPE students have received updated orientations from our office on professionalism, expectations, receiving and providing feedback, and other areas necessary for starting rotations. Please let us know if and how we can support you and your team!

As the academic year wraps up, we proudly congratulate the Class of 2025! These future pharmacists have demonstrated resilience, dedication and excellence throughout their APPE journey.

Over the past year, students gained hands-on experience across community, hospital, industry and specialty settings. Their success would not have been possible without the guidance of our incredible preceptors, who helped bridge classroom learning with real-world practice.

To our preceptors: Thank you for being mentors and role models. Your support has made a lasting impact on our students and the future of pharmacy.

As you welcome new students, consider these strategies to start the rotation off right: 

✅ Set Clear Expectations 
Spend time during the first day reviewing rotation goals, daily schedules, documentation standards, and communication preferences. Be clear in expectations and outcomes for passing the rotation. Clarity now prevents confusion later.  

✅ Foster Psychological Safety 
Create an environment where trainees feel comfortable asking questions and making mistakes—this encourages growth and transparency. 

✅ Share Your “Why” 
Let learners know why you love your role and what you hope they’ll gain. Sharing your passion helps build rapport and engagement. 

✅ Assess Learning Styles Early 
Ask about how your trainee learns best. Are they visual? Do they like to read, discuss, or do? Tailoring your teaching approach from the start enhances their experience. 

✅ Model Reflective Practice 
Use real-time situations to demonstrate how you reflect on your own decisions. This shows learners that growth is ongoing—even for experienced clinicians.

💬 Preceptor Tip: End the first week with a quick check-in. Ask, “How’s it going so far, and what can I do to support your learning better?” Small adjustments now can make a big difference over the rotation. May need to be conducted earlier for IPPE students, i.e., after first 2-3 days given short rotation block. 

Tarek El-Ansary, Pharm.D., lives in Carmel Valley with his family. He felt passionate about bringing a family-owned pharmacy to provide top-notch customer service to the Carmel Valley community. He received his doctorate at University of Pacific. He continues to attend integrative medicine and compounding pharmacy seminars to ultimately provide better care for his patients through education. El-Ansary is an exemplary preceptor for our IPPE and APPE students at his compounding pharmacy. He enjoys spending time with his family, sport cars and traveling.

"I'm genuinely surprised by how exciting my job has become. I never expected to be so actively involved in developing patient therapies, educating both providers and patients, and much more. We often hear about the healthcare triad—pharmacists, physicians, and patients working together—but rarely see it in practice. Thanks to compounding, I now experience that collaboration firsthand.

The daily satisfaction I get from my work exceeds anything I ever imagined. I'm constantly learning—about rare disease states, unique drug mechanisms, and treatment approaches that aren't covered in traditional training because no commercial therapies exist. Every day presents new challenges, and my job feels far from monotonous."

Saturday, August 16, 9:00 - 11:00 a.m. PT

Preceptor Development Program 

Precepting on Empty: Recognize and Refuel  

Mary Douglass Smith, Pharm.D., Clinical Educator, Prisma Health 

Co-hosted by UC San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy, UCSF School of Pharmacy and UC Irvine School of Pharmacy via Zoom, including a Master Preceptor Panel 

During the 2024-2025 academic year, Jenny served as a student ambassador for the Skaggs School of Pharmacy, representing the program at multiple events and supporting prospective students on interview days. She also held the role of fighting diabetes initiative chair for the Student National Pharmaceutical Association (SNPhA) where she led outreach efforts focused on diabetes education and prevention in the community.

One of the meaningful events she organized this year was a screening event at the Women’s Health and Advocacy luncheon which focused on providing glucose readings and education to women living in southeast San Diego, an area with low Healthy Places Indexes®, empowering them to take charge of their own health. Jenny was also highly involved in the UC San Diego student run free clinic projects as a patient assistance program manager. She helped low or no-income patients apply to get essential brand-name medications at no cost from manufacturers, working closely with the medical team and the patients. She’s looking forward to next school year and continuing to serve the San Diego community which she calls home!

Our Spring Preceptor Conference and Annual Preceptor Excellence and Recognition Awards were held virtually on Saturday, April 19, 2025. Associate Professor Eliza Dy-Boarman from Drake University presented “Navigating the Clinical Puzzle,” focusing on the role of clinical reasoning in pharmacy practice and strategies to develop it through experiential education.

Congratulations to our preceptors who received Excellence in Precepting Awards for their outstanding dedication and mentorship.

Our Office of Experiential Education held a "just-in-time" webinar on Thursday, June 12, 2025, that provided key information for preceptors preparing for the upcoming IPPE and APPE rotations. The recording of this event is available in CORE-ELMS in the document library. If you need assistance finding it, please email Greg Marciel: gmarciel@health.ucsd.edu. 

Panteha Kelly, Pharm.D.

Bharat Mehta, Pharm.D.

We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Panteha (Pawny) Kelly, Pharm.D., and Bharat (Brad) Mehta, Pharm.D., on their well-deserved retirement. Both have made incredible contributions to the pharmacy profession through years of dedicated service, mentorship and patient care.

Their commitment to excellence, passion for teaching, and support of future pharmacists have left a lasting impact on colleagues and students alike. We are grateful for their leadership and the example they’ve set throughout their careers.

Wishing them both a joyful retirement filled with new adventures, relaxation, and well-earned celebration. Thank you for everything!

 

School Updates

Professor Ila Saunders was honored with the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pharmacy Special Interest Group, recognizing her outstanding contributions to the field through impactful publications, presentations, mentorship, and more.

Associate Professor Alex Luli received the UC San Diego Barbara and Paul Saltman Distinguished Teaching Award for Non-Senate Members, recognizing his outstanding teaching and marking our school's 11th award in the past 12 years.

It is with great pleasure that we announce the recipient of the 2024 Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Distinguished Alumni of the Year award:
Mary Moss Chandran ’08, Pharm.D. ’12.

Benefits of being an affiliate include:

For more information, please visit the Experiential Education section of our website.

Contact the OEE:

Christina Mnatzaganian, Pharm.D., Associate Dean, Experiential Education

cmnatzaganian@health.ucsd.edu

(858) 822-5642

Ila Saunders, Pharm.D., Director, APPEs

isaunders@ucsd.edu

(858) 822-6839

Alex Luli, Pharm.D., Director, IPPEs

aluli@health.ucsd.edu

(858) 534-5750

Jamie Kneebusch, Pharm.D., Coordinator VA San Diego Health System

jkneebusch@ucsd.edu

(858) 534-9486

Greg Marciel, IPPE Experiential Education Coordinator

gmarciel@health.ucsd.edu

(858) 822-7803

Karla Barranco-Marquez, APPE Experiential Education Coordinator

kbarrancomarquez@ucsd.edu

(858) 822-5503

Reminder: If your contact information changes, please update Greg Marciel at gmarciel@health.ucsd.edu