Ohio Northern University Rudolph H. Raabe College of Pharmacy

New Polar Bears! Discover the village of Ada during ONU's Ada Community Engagement (ACE) Day on Saturday, August 22. Sign up today to volunteer alongside other new Polar Bears: https://www.onu.edu/aceday

ACE Day is an opportunity to meet other new Polar Bears and to make a difference in your home away from home!

The College of Pharmacy proudly celebrates Aleda Chen, PharmD '06, Ph.D., FAPhA, on being named a 2026 AACP Distinguished Teaching Scholar by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy - AACP. This prestigious national honor recognizes faculty who demonstrate exceptional excellence in scholarly teaching and make lasting contributions to advancing pharmacy education.

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Chen on this outstanding achievement!

Aleda Chen, Pharm.D., Ph.D., Named AACP Distinguished Teaching Scholar - UAMS News The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) recently honored Aleda Chen, Pharm.D., Ph.D., as one of three nationally recognized Distinguished Teaching Scholars.

Pharmacy students Braden Harman and Liem Watkins earned a Top 10 finish in the 2026 Good Neighbor Pharmacy NCPA Pruitt-Schutte Student Business Plan Competition.

The national competition challenges pharmacy students to create a business plan for either purchasing an existing independent pharmacy or opening one from the ground up. Teams are evaluated by independent pharmacy owners, consultants, and other industry professionals.

Earning a spot in the Top 10 is a tremendous accomplishment and highlights the hard work, creativity, and dedication of these student pharmacists.

Congratulations to Braden, Liem, and everyone involved on this well-deserved recognition!

NCPA Announces Finalists for 2026 Good Neighbor Pharmacy NCPA Pruitt-Schutte Student Business Plan Competition ALEXANDRIA, Va. (July 20, 2026) – The National Community Pharmacists Association and the NCPA Foundation are pleased to announce that teams of pharmacy students from the University of Mississippi, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Washington have been named finalists in the ...

As many parts of the United States are experiencing extreme heat this summer, pharmacists and interns need to understand how this might affect their patients. ONU faculty members, Drs. Natalie DiPietro Mager, Manoranjan D’Souza, Kelly Kroustos, Jay Mager, and Kristen Sobota along with pharmacy student Riley Chu teamed up to write a series of articles in Drug Topics to raise awareness about this important topic.

Learn more about the impact of heat on human health, medications, pregnancy, and older patients, and apply this information to patient care!

https://www.drugtopics.com/view/heat-and-human-health-what-pharmacists-need-to-know

https://www.drugtopics.com/view/heat-and-medications-what-pharmacists-need-to-know

https://www.drugtopics.com/view/heat-and-pregnancy-what-pharmacists-need-to-know

https://www.drugtopics.com/view/heat-and-older-adults-what-pharmacists-need-to-know

The College of Pharmacy, in collaboration with the United Way of Hardin County and with support from the OhioHealth Hardin Memorial Hospital Community Foundation, hosted a powerful Cost of Poverty Experience for the ONU campus and Hardin County community last semester.

COPE is an immersive, hands-on experience designed to give participants a realistic glimpse into the challenges of living in poverty. The program was created with individuals who have lived experience and highlights how health disparities impact individuals and communities.

Participants stepped into real world scenarios that challenged them to navigate limited resources, make difficult decisions, and better understand the human and systemic effects of poverty. The experience encouraged empathy, deeper awareness, and meaningful conversation around how we can create change.

We are grateful to our partners and all who participated in this impactful event and helped bring greater understanding to an issue that affects so many.

Thank you to Brett Neff, BSCE ’93, and Jodi (Feasel) Neff, BSPh ’93, for their generous gift.

Our Polar Bear alumni continue to give back in amazing ways!

In track and field, individual effort is paramount, but the team provides momentum.

At Ohio Northern University, this sentiment plays out at every meet, and more recently on a grander scale, when committed alumni banded together to fully endow the University’s track and field fund and rename it after a beloved coach.

Bolstering the fund provided a way to not only honor the contributions of Jason Maus, but to support future generations of Polar Bear track and field athletes, said Brett Neff, BSCE ’93. He and his spouse, Jodi (Feasel) Neff, BSPh ’93, generously gave the lead gift to fully endow the fund, requesting its renaming to the Jason Maus Track and Field Endowment Fund.

Track and field director Maus has built a powerhouse program in the Ohio Athletic Conference and mentored hundreds of talented student-athletes during his 17 years at ONU. He is ONU’s all-time winningest coach in men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track and field, achieving an impressive 2,595-723-7 record for a winning percentage of .782.

📲 Read more about Coach Maus' achievements and what inspired the Neff family's generosity: https://bit.ly/4vJpkfo

Faculty, students, and alumni proudly represented Ohio Northern University this past weekend at the ASCP Midwest Regional Meeting in Columbus!

The conference featured presentations by Drs. Courtney Myers and Lauren Castle, while conference programming was led by ASCP Midwest Region C Director Dr. Drew Harmon and ASCP Ohio State Delegate Dr. Beth Husted.

We are proud to see our Polar Bears continuing to lead, learn, and make an impact in the profession!

Polar Bears continue to make a difference! We’re proud to share this spotlight on Kevin Haynes, PharmD ’01, highlighting the impact he is making through his leadership and commitment to patient care.

Ohio Northern University alumnus Kevin Haynes, PharmD '01, works to keep patients safe around the world. As director of epidemiology for Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine, he helps make sure the drugs patients take are safe and that they work.

Haynes works in pharmacoepidemiology, a field that joins pharmacy and epidemiology. The field explores how often drugs cause side effects and how widespread those effects are in populations.

He chose ONU, he said, because he wanted a small school focused on pharmacy that still gave him a taste of other fields like law, the humanities, and engineering.

📲 Read more about how he made his path in Pharmacy: https://bit.ly/4baNwjJ

Please join us in congratulating pharmacy student Katherine Cook on being selected as a recipient of the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education (AFPE) Gateway Research Award for the 2026–2027 academic year!

Katherine conducted her award-winning research under the mentorship of Dr. Dalia Abdelhamid. Her project, "Development of Novel Indole-Chalcone Hybrids as Potential Anticancer Agents: Design, Synthesis, and Anticancer Screening," highlights her dedication to advancing pharmaceutical research and innovation.

Katherine shares, "I am incredibly honored to have received the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education's Gateway to Research Award for the 2026-2027 academic year. This achievement would not have been possible without the mentorship of Dr. Abdelhamid, who has allowed me to learn medicinal chemistry techniques in her research lab for the past three years. Receiving this award will allow Dr. Abdelhamid and I to continue our work to develop new anticancer medications and present our findings with the scientific community over the next school year.”

The AFPE Gateway Research Award recognizes outstanding pharmacy students with a passion for research and provides support to help them gain valuable research experience while advancing the future of pharmacy.

Congratulations to Katherine and Dr. Abdelhamid on this outstanding achievement!

https://afpepharm.org/index.php/2026-2027-gateway-awardees/