A press release from Roosevelt University

Members of Roosevelt University’s first College of Pharmacy graduating class who took the North American Pharmacist Licensure Exam (NAPLEX) in 2014 did better as a group in passing the exam than the overall pool of candidates that took the NAPLEX last year.

Fifty four of 58 College of Pharmacy graduates passed the 185-question exam last year, giving the Roosevelt group a passing rate of 93.1 percent. The overall passing rate for those taking the NAPLEX in 2014 was 90.1 percent. In 2013, the national passing rate for all test administrations was 90.5 percent.

“The performance on this exam by members of our first graduating class is positive for our program and sets a high bar for our graduates going forward,” said George MacKinnon, vice provost of health sciences and dean of the College of Pharmacy, which opened in 2011 on Roosevelt’s Schaumburg Campus.

“The graduates’ performance is a recognition that the curriculum developed by the faculty and administration of the college is contemporary and well-grounded to national competency standards,” said MacKinnon.

Measuring one’s knowledge about the practice of pharmacy, the NAPLEX is used by state boards of pharmacy to assess a candidate’s competency for practicing pharmacy. The exam is just one component of the licensing process, as candidates also are required to take a second-year NAPLEX exam as well as the Multistate Pharmacy Jurisprudence Examination (MPJE), which measures a candidate’s knowledge about pharmacy law and regulation.

Graduates of Roosevelt’s inaugural pharmacy class who took the MPJE last year also had a higher passing rate as a group than the overall pool of candidates that took the test in 2014. While 91.3 percent of all candidates who took the exam in 2014 were successful, 95.1 percent of the Roosevelt group passed the MPJE last year.

“Our first class of graduates exceeded what we’d hoped we’d be able to achieve,” said Bud Beatty, associate dean for academic programs and accreditation in the the College of Pharmacy.

“These are students who didn’t have upperclassmen to lead by example. They didn’t have alumni to give them advice and guidance. Still, they did exactly what we wanted them to do, which is to obtain their credentials in order to practice in the field,” said Beatty.

Now accepting students for the Class of 2018, the College of Pharmacy is the only one of its kind in the Midwest to offer the PharmD doctoral degree in a three-year format. Stressing competence, commitment and compassion, the Roosevelt program currently has approximately 200 students who, in order to graduate, must complete three years of coursework and nearly 2,000 hours of internship in the field. Members of the program’s second Class of 2015 will graduate in May.