College of Pharmacy to Host Annual White Coat Ceremony
LEXINGTON, Ky. (August 19, 2021) — The University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy (UKCOP) will host its annual White Coat Ceremony to recognize its incoming students. This year's ceremony will be held at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, August 20, 2021, at the University of Kentucky's Singletary Center for the Arts. The college welcomes 143 new pharmacy students and 15 new graduate students for the fall semester.
Speakers for the evening include two UKCOP alumni, Jessika Chilton, PharmD and Moses O. Oyewumi, Ph.D. Chilton is a clinical pharmacist with Midtown Pharmacy Express in Beaver Dam, Kentucky. She earned her PharmD from the University of Kentucky in 1999 and has over 22 years of experience as a pharmacist in both community and health system settings. Under Chilton’s leadership, the Owensboro Health Outpatient Pharmacy of Owensboro Health Regional Hospital opened in 2014. As the Clinical Pharmacy Manager of the transitions of care pharmacy, Chilton and her team began pharmacist-led interdisciplinary discharge rounds, discharge medication reconciliation, a concierge pharmacy service for discharge patients, and an ambulatory care rotation for the PGY1 residency program. She is a past president of the Kentucky Pharmacists Association and was named the 2009 UKCOP Preceptor of the Year.
Oyewumi is a pharmaceutical scientist and faculty member at Northeast Ohio Medical University (NEOMED) College of Pharmacy. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky and completed post-doctoral training at the University of Kentucky and the University of Iowa. Prior to his current position, Oyewumi was a formulation scientist and later became a formulation team leader at a pharmaceutical company. He is a recipient of many academic and industrial innovation awards, including Elsevier’s Top Ten Most Cited Paper and Technical Excellence Award. Oyewumi has authored or co-authored over 90 peer-reviewed publications, abstracts, presentations, and ten industrial technical papers and recently received the prestigious 2015-2016 NEOMED Faculty Award.
The time-honored tradition of the White Coat Ceremony will enable members of the pharmacy and scientific community to come together to welcome students into the profession. UKCOP faculty and staff, fellow pharmacy and graduate students, alumni, and many of Kentucky's professional organizations will join for a night of inspiration and encouragement for the college's newest members.
The event will be live-streamed online.
We wish to remember and honor those who inhabited this Commonwealth before the arrival of the Europeans. Briefly occupying these lands were the Osage, Wyndott tribe, and Miami peoples. The Adena and Hopewell peoples, who are recognized by the naming of the time period in which they resided here, were here more permanently. Some of their mounds remain in the Lexington area, including at UK’s Adena Park.
In more recent years, the Cherokee occupied southeast Kentucky, the Yuchi southwest Kentucky, the Chickasaw extreme western Kentucky and the Shawnee central Kentucky including what is now the city of Lexington. The Shawnee left when colonization pushed through the Appalachian Mountains. Lower Shawnee Town ceremonial grounds are still visible in Greenup County.
We honor the first inhabitants who were here, respect their culture, and acknowledge the presence of their descendants who are here today in all walks of life including fellow pharmacists and healthcare professionals.