Posts Tagged ‘Jimmy Byun’

On Saturday, June 11, Joe and I attended the Doctoral Convocation Hooding and Awards Ceremony for The Ohio State University’s College of Pharmacy in Mershon Auditorium. We had four students who were graduating and receiving their pharmacy degrees, including our own Kelly, who has worked at Plain City Druggist since 2005.

Besides Kelly, we also had three students, Anna Gehres, Matt Byrdy, and Jimmy Byun, do rotations in the store this past year and they also received their PharmD degrees.

Matt and Kelly had asked Joe to place their hoods on them, officially making them Doctors of Pharmacy. This is a very big honor and Joe was a bit nervous about performing the task–especially for Matt, who is much taller than Joe. Even standing on a wooden box, Joe had a hard time getting Matt’s hood over his head and the whole audience was laughing by the time they were done. Kelly’s was a bit easier to do, since Joe didn’t have to reach so high!

Anna Gehres received the Stephen W. Birdwell Student Award, which is given to a student by the student class for their participation, interaction with class mates, professionalism, and general outgoing nature–Andy Hall, our former student, received the award last year. This award is given in honor of a former professor in the College of Pharmacy who died several years ago. Dr. Birdwell was well loved and very respected by the students and faculty in the pharmacy department. This award honors his spirit in a current graduating student–someone whose peers select them as also being well loved and respected, who will make a wonderful pharmacist, not only because of their brain power, but because of their ability to care and have compassion. That was Andy and that is definitely Anna.

Anna also received the Anne L. Burns Award (Anne Burns was the compounding instructor while Joe and I were in school and we learned all we know about compounding from her–she was a super teacher) and the College of Pharmacy Professionalism Award. Anna will be doing a year long residency at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Matt also will be in a residency for the next year at Mount Carmel West in Columbus, while Kelly is off to St. Louis to work for Walgreen’s as a floater pharmacist (meaning she will go to whichever store she is needed in).

Jimmy, as class president, had to give the “Response from the Class of 2011.” Not surprisingly, he did a nice job with his speech, even though he was very nervous and stalled so long at the beginning, we thought he was not going to do it.

An even greater surprise was the arrival at the very end of the ceremony by Dr. Gordon Gee. He came in flanked by security and since Joe and I were standing in the back of the room, we immediately saw his arrival. He sat down in a back row of seats out of the way and then greeted each of the pharmacy students as they left. Joe wanted to get a photo, but we weren’t allowed over by him. Joe did get a faraway photo of Anna and Dr. Gee. You can see that on our Facebook page.

Finally, we had a really nice dinner with Kelly, her parents, her brother, sister-in-law, and niece. We are really going to miss Kelly. She had a rough final year of pharmacy school, but we know the future is only going to bring her lots of happiness and opportunities.

Good luck and congratulations to Kelly, Anna, Matt, and Jimmy. We are very proud to have played a small part in your education and your journey to become Doctors of Pharmacy.

To see all the photos from the hooding ceremony, visit our Facebook page HERE.