Eshelman School of Pharmacy

Eshelman School of Pharmacy

Eshelman School of Pharmacy is the only public school of pharmacy in North Carolina and one of the oldest in the nation. It began in 1897 with the hiring of Edward Vernon Howell as a professor of pharmacy. An earlier training program existed from 1880 as part of the first School of Medicine. The pharmacy school was in New West at first, moving to Person Hall in 1912 and to the old chemistry building, now named Howell Hall, in 1925. In 1960 the school opened Beard Hall, named for John Grover Beard, dean of the school from 1930 to 1946. The school added Kerr Hall in 2002, doubling its research and teaching space. A "building-inside-a-building" shared instrument facility was created to house and isolate nuclear magnetic resonance and advanced microscopy equipment. Along with the School of Medicine, the School of Pharmacy also occupies research space in the Genetic Medicine Building, which opened in 2008.

The school, which is one of the top ranked in the nation, has programs in pharmacy education, pharmacy practice, and pharmaceutical sciences. It maintains relationships with the other health affairs UNC—Chapel Hill schools, with international educational partners, and with pharmaceutical companies in Research Triangle Park.

The school became the Eshelman School of Pharmacy in 2008, in honor of alumnus Fred Eshelman, founder of the Wilmington-based contract research organization Pharmaceutical Product Development (PPD). A member of the class of 1972, Eshelman, who is also a dedicated philanthropist, has been a donor to the school's educational initiatives and cancer research. He made a $100 million commitment to the school in 2014, the largest gift to any pharmacy school in the United States.