Mann School student members of the Southern California Outreach for Pharmacy Education (SCOPE) developed SCOPE Saturday Academy in fall 2022 to provide high school students from underrepresented and/or marginalized backgrounds an introduction and pathway to pharmacy and pharmaceutical sciences as potential career options.
Fifteen students from four partner schools—Academy of Medical Arts at Carson High School, John C. Fremont High School, Bravo Medical Magnet High School and Woodrow Wilson High School—joined the six-week program as the inaugural class. Over the course of the program, the SCOPE scholars learned about various areas of pharmaceutical research, drug development and pharmacy practice while receiving mentoring and demonstrations in how to conduct health screenings. They also formed mock pharmaceutical companies to successfully bring a pharmaceutical product from early development to market and formulary by the end of the program.
“Creating the program was rigorous but enjoyable,” Luis Larios, PharmD Class of 2025, says. “The hardest part of this program was translating all the clinical, pharmaceutical sciences, regulatory and health economics topics down to the high school level. The content was pretty complex but our scholars are brilliant and caught on quickly. They were eager for more rigorous content.”
USC Mann student leaders in the program in addition to Larios were PharmD students Evans Pope III, Daniella Del Toro, Alexander Cantres, Faith Pogosyan, Siara Magee, Ileeshiah Otarola, Ginika Nwokeabia, Jasmine Gomez Lopez, Karina Huereca, Ilham Batar and Danielle Fletcher-Williams and PhD students Atham Ali and Michelle Kalu, PharmD ’22.
The program is expected to expand to at least 25 high school participants for fall 2023.
“It’s a real win-win,” says Allison Bryant, Mann School associate director of recruitment and outreach. “USC Mann students loved their volunteer experiences and the high school students benefited from
their mentorship.”
Two of the five SCOPE high school seniors, Wendi Li and Arizbel Gomez, have been accepted to USC for fall 2023 admission.
To get involved, contact Melissa Durham, associate dean of organizational success and well-being, at mdurham@usc.edu.