Pharmacy Education & Innovation

Dr. Casper’s areas of focus include teaching nonprescription medications and foundational patient care concepts, post-graduate mentoring to prepare trainees for future teaching experiences, and faculty development with an emphasis on recognizing and rewarding teaching innovation and excellence. Her scholarly contributions and interests align with these areas of focus and are enhanced by her earlier work related to advancing patient care pharmacy services in community-based settings.

Dr. Cline’s areas of focus include wellness, integrated course design, instructor development, and curricular operations. She has a passion for teaching and learning and strives to create meaningful learning experiences using evidence-based teaching practices and individualized student support for PharmD students, graduate students, and post-graduate trainees. Her scholarship also focus on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning related to wellness, integrated course design, and curricular operations.

Dr. Coyle is a board-certified ambulatory care pharmacist and pharmacotherapy specialist, focused in the area of cardiac risk reduction and chronic disease prevention. In the College’s Doctor of Pharmacy program, she leads a course in the Concepts in Patient Care (CiPC) sequence and also teaches relevant topics in the Pharmacotherapy (IP) course sequence. She also precepts students in introductory and advanced experiential rotations for both clinical care and academic practice. Dr. Coyle has a passion for teaching and learning and strives to create excellent instructional outcomes by bringing together pedagogical expertise, innovative classroom practices, and student support for application of learning. Dr. Coyle’s scholarly interests align with these priorities: new faculty mentoring, postgraduate training for teaching, and professional learning strategies; also, advancing pharmacy services in specialty cardiovascular and primary care.

Dr. Denton's teaching includes various pharmaceutical science laboratory and research survey-based courses along with previous experience in writing courses. His teaching philosophy is that advancing inquiry-based and universally designed teaching is essential to prepare innovative and well-rounded research teams capable of addressing complex challenges in pharmacy practice.

Dr. Denton's research group investigations include professional identity formation, teamwork development, inquiry-based learning, metacognitive coaching, healthcare disparity elucidation, course-based undergraduate research experiences, community-based teaching, information/research literacy, social annotation, education technology practices, and various projects advancing discipline-based education research and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Dr. Denton’s primary service efforts include promoting undergraduate research, professional development in education research, and maintaining an equal opportunity environment for all learners through various committees and affiliation with the Michael V. Drake Institute for Teaching and Learning.

Dr. Downing’s professional interests include designing meaningful learning experiences that enhance a learner’s health and well-being. In the classroom, she evaluates the impact of using evidence-based instructional strategies during the course design process on college student well-being measures, such as safe medication practice behaviors and healthcare self-efficacy. Outside the classroom, Dr. Downing supports the design and development of prevention education resources that help teach safe medication practices across the lifespan.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a family of small nonprotein-coding RNAs that have emerged as important regulators in cardiac developmental and pathological processes. They are genomically encoded and are initially transcribed as part of much longer molecules that become processed into a mature ~22-nucleotide-long form. miRNAs are generally regarded as negative regulators of gene expression that inhibit translation and/or promote messenger RNA (mRNA) degradation by base-pairing to complementary sequences within protein-coding mRNA transcripts. Hundreds of human miRNA genes have been identified and bioinformatic analyses indicate that miRNAs might regulate the expression of more than a third of human protein-coding genes, highlighting the potential magnitude of their influence on gene expression. Given the increasingly important roles of miRNAs in heart development and function, the lab hypothesizes that aberrant regulation of miRNAs may play a role in mediating cardiovascular disease. Therefore, one major focus of Elton’s laboratory investigates miRNA expression and gene regulation in various cardiovascular diseases.

Kristy Jackson, PharmD, RPh received her B.S. from the University of Pittsburgh and her Doctor of Pharmacy degree from the Ohio State University College of Pharmacy. She is an associated track faculty member teaching in the Integrated Patient Care Lab at the Ohio State University College of Pharmacy. Prior to this she practiced as a clinical pharmacist at Ohio Health Rehabilitation Hospital, where she still holds a part time position. Dr. Jackson’s area of focus is on hospital skills for entry level pharmacist. Dr. Jackson’s service includes providing leadership for a number of college level committees including the PharmD Program Committee.

Dr. Kwiek’s work focuses on the use of pharmacology as a context to engage science learners of all ages. She co-leads the Pathways and Recruitment Opportunities for Pharmacy Exploration and Learning (PROPEL) program, which aims to elevate awareness of pharmacy careers among middle and high school students, increase enrollment in pharmacy training pathways, and provide professional training focused on caring for patients in urban and rural communities.

Dr. Matthews is passionate about developing innovative and effective teaching methods and measuring the impact of educational interventions through scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). His specific areas of interest within SoTL include interventions that promote metacognition and retention.

Dr. Mefford is interested in the use of active learning to promote student engagement with science and to foster deeper understanding of often controversial topics associated with drug use and addiction. She strives to instill good research techniques to help engrain learning as a lifelong process.

Dr. Newman is a pharmacologist with expertise in the neurobiology of substance use disorder (SUD) and Pharmacogenomics. In addition to developing courses and teaching in her areas of specialty in both the College’s Bachelor of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences (BSPS) and the Doctor of Pharmacy programs, Dr. Newman leads the College of Pharmacy’s undergraduate programming, including the Bachelor of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences (BSPS) program, the Pharmaceutical Science minor, and various General Education courses. In this role, she is actively involved with curricular development and implementation, program creation, and enhancement of the university student experience. Dr. Newman has focused her career on teaching and learning and is passionate about creatively enhancing the student experience to facilitate more student engagement and deeper, life-long learning. Dr. Newman has served as a Second-year Transformational Experience Program (STEP) mentor since 2018. Dr. Newman’s scholarly research efforts focus on evaluating how SUD is taught at the undergraduate and professional levels and on how understanding the neurobiology of SUD affects treatment and respect for individuals with SUD.

Katie Summers is interested in improving science education by utilizing active learning techniques in the classroom to help students develop critical thinking skills and apply what they learn to real world situations. At Ohio State, she has taught pharmacology, drug discovery and development and related courses to undergraduates in the Bachelor of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences program. She also teaches courses in the General Education program related to pharmacology and vaccinology. In addition to her teaching, Dr. Summers also directs two summer science and career exploration programs for high school students interested in the pharmaceutical sciences. She is the former Assistant Director of the Generation Rx Lab at the Center of Science and Industry, where she assisted with assessing the experiential impact of teaching the general public medication safety through conducting hands-on science experiments.

Dr. Winhoven’s professional interests include community pharmacy, innovative teaching and wellbeing. She strives to find creative ways to engage students in meaningful learning and support them in achieving their personal and professional goals.