Each PharmD class at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy selected their favorite instructors for this past year. The winners were presented with an instructor of the year award at the 2015 annual Awards Ceremony held April 19.
- The overall instructor of the year is Robert Dupuis, PharmD.
- The PY3 instructor of the year is Heidi Anksorus, PharmD.
- The PY2 instructor of the year is Qisheng Zhang, PhD.
- The PY1 instructor of the year is Michael Jay, PhD.
Overall Instructor of the Year
Robert Dupuis joined the School as an instructor in 1985. He was promoted to assistant professor in 1989, to clinical associate professor in 1995, and to clinical professor in 2013. In 2006, he was named director of clinical research fellowship programs in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics.
Dupuis teaches and coordinates courses in immunology, nephrology, pharmacotherapeutics, and clinical pharmacokinetics. He has been recognized as instructor or preceptor of the year nine times since 1987—including being named the 2013 PY2 instructor of the year—and received awards for excellence in teaching from the School in 2006 and 2007.
He has also played roles at UNC Hospitals, first as director of the clinical pharmacokinetics service and then as director of the solid-organ-transplant residency program.
Dupuis practices as a pharmacist and consultant at Durham Regional Hospital and the Orange County Public Health Department. He is a board certified pharmacotherapy specialist and the author of more than thirty-five peer-reviewed publications.
PY3 Instructor of the Year
Anksorus teaches in the School’s Pharmaceutical Care Lab sequence. She coordinates PHCY 402: Pharmaceutical Care Lab 2 in the spring for PY1s and PHCY 405: Pharmaceutical Care Lab 5 in the fall for PY3s. She also teaches PHCY 415: Pharmaceutical Calculations to PY1s in the spring.
After receiving her PharmD from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2007, Heidi Anksorus completed a PGY1 pharmacy practice residency at St. Joseph Regional Medical Center in South Bend, Indiana. Upon completion of the residency, she was offered a position with St. Joseph, where she continued developing as a new practitioner while working in the medical center’s inpatient and clinical pharmacy services, as well as working in the community pharmacy practice setting.
Anksorus came to the School in 2010 as a clinical assistant professor with the Pharmaceutical Care Labs in the School’s Division of Practice Advancement and Clinical Education. Anksorus also practices at the UNC Hospitals Drug Information Center and is a board certified pharmacotherapy specialist.
PY2 Instructor of the Year
Qisheng Zhang earned his MS in organic chemistry from the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry in Shanghai, China, in 1998 and went on to earn his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2003.
He came to the School in 2007 as an assistant professor in chemical biology and medicinal chemistry and was promoted to associate professor in 2013. Zhang teaches in the School’s medicinal chemistry sequence. He coordinates PHCY 424: Medicinal Chemistry 2 for PY2s in the spring and also teaches several lectures in PHCY 423: Medicinal Chemistry 1 for PY2s in the fall.
Zhang’s research focuses on identifying molecules from synthetic and endogenous chemical libraries and exploring how those molecules affect disease-signaling. His lab also develops new techniques for tag-based biosynthesis and enzyme profiling to facilitate research.
PY1 Instructor of the Year
Michael Jay moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2008, where he was named the Fred Eshelman Distinguished Professor of Molecular Pharmaceutics. He served as director of graduate admissions for the Division of Molecular Pharmaceutics until 2012, when he was named division chair.
For the PY1 class, Jay teaches PHCY 410: Basic Pharmaceutics 1 in fall and PHCY 411: Basic Pharmaceutics 2 in the spring.
Jay has received a number of awards, including the Berson-Yalow Award from the Society of Nuclear Medicine, the Mendell Award for Scientific Excellence in Pharmaceutical Sciences, and the Excellence in Pharmaceutical Graduate Education Award from the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Kentucky. He was also named a Fellow of the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists.
Jay is also the cofounder of Arcato Laboratories, Inc. and Capture Pharmaceuticals, Inc.