Today’s rapidly changing healthcare environment not only means that pharmacists are more in demand than ever before, but also that more demands are being placed on their expertise. In response, students in both the Doctor of Pharmacy program as well as the PhD program are finding that USC Mann’s comprehensive dual-degree offerings prepare them to meet these challenges, fill the needs of an evolving medical marketplace and gain competitive advantages over peers from other institutions when they enter the job market.
Dual-degree options also enable students to pursue their interests across disciplines. PhD student Anna Naito calls this a major reason she applied to the school. “I wanted to work in neuroscience but also wanted to enhance my pharmacology degree with the master’s program in regulatory science,” she says.
Dean R. Pete Vanderveen, PhD, RPh, notes that the keys to the dual-degree programs’ success are versatility and variety. “The school encourages students to diversify their education by offering multiple dual degree programs, from law, business and gerontology to the leading-edge fields of regulatory science, global medicine and healthcare decision analysis,” he says. “As wide-ranging as these fields are, what they all share is the flexibility to meet students’ needs while maximizing their professional potential.”
Flexibility is also the watchword when it comes to working professionals looking to expand their career horizons. For them, the School’s programs are especially attractive, as they enable those already employed in a variety of related fields to pursue cutting-edge, career-advancing studies through distance learning, as well as on campus. The School’s online education opportunities offer the same rigor as classroom instruction, with the same field experience and taught by the same expert faculty.
Whether, online or on campus, students gain the ideal cross-disciplinary training to take the lead in driving medical care and the pharmacy profession forward to meet local, national and global needs.
For more information, visit our Dual Degree Programs page.
For information about the School’s specialized MS programs, visit MS in Healthcare Decision Analysis and the MS in Regulatory Science and the MS in Management of Drug Development.