Jacqui McLaughlin, Ph.D., received her undergraduate degree in biological engineering from North Carolina State University, her master of science in biomedical engineering from the University of Memphis/University of Tennessee, and her doctorate in educational research and policy analysis from North Carolina State University. She spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow with the Office of Strategic Planning and Assessment (OSPA) at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy and currently serves the school as an associate professor in the division of Practice Advancement and Clinical Education and as the director of CIPhER (Center for Innovative Pharmacy Education and Research). Dr. McLaughlin has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles about higher education, is on the editorial board for the journals Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning and Education in the Health Professions, and serves as associate editor for BMC Medical Education. Her published research spans a wide range of education topics, including admissions, flipped classrooms, experiential education, student organizations, diversity, graduate training, cognitive apprenticeship, and design thinking.
Our Team
CIPhER Faculty Directors
CIPhER is led by two UNC Eshelman School faculty members, each with a half-time appointment to the center.
Kathryn Morbitzer
Kathryn Morbitzer, Pharm.D., M.S., is an associate professor in the Division of Practice Advancement and Clinical Education, assistant director of the Center for Innovative Pharmacy Education & Research (CIPhER), and assistant director of the MS in Pharmaceutical Sciences with a concentration in Health-System Pharmacy Administration program at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She earned her Doctor of Pharmacy degree at Wayne State University and her Master’s in biomedical and health informatics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also completed a PGY1 pharmacy practice residency at the Medical University of South Carolina and an academic research fellowship at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Currently, her research focuses on expanding pharmacy student opportunities for impact in health care through the study of non-direct patient care (nonclinical) experiences and career pathways and on improving teaching and student learning.
Other CIPhER members
Kyle Fassett, PhD
Kyle Fassett, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral research associate with CIPhER at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. He received a doctorate in higher education with a focus in educational psychology, measurement, and evaluation and a master’s in learning sciences from Indiana University Bloomington. He also holds a master’s in college student personnel from Bowling Green State University. His research focuses on teaching and learning inside and outside the classroom as well as the experiences of queer collegians.
Adam M Persky
Adam Persky is a professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics. He teaches physiology and pharmacokinetics. His research focuses on translating the science of learning and memory into practical application in the classroom and experiential settings.
Deborah Sturpe
Deborah Sturpe, PharmD, MA, BCPS is a clinical associate professor in the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics. Her primary responsibilities in the Eshelman School of Pharmacy include didactic teaching, ambulatory care practice, and investigating how to best teach and assess students. In particular, she is interested in PharmD curricular revision and curricular/program assessment planning as well as best practices in competency education and performance-based assessment. Dr. Sturpe also serves as Associate Editor for Manuscript Quality for the journal Currents in Pharmacy Teaching and Learning.
CIPhER Alumni
Thomas Anthony Angelo, Ed.D
Tom Angelo, EdD, is a clinical professor emeritus of educational innovation and research at the UNC Eshelman School – where he also served until 2018 as founding Director of CIPhER – the Center for Innovative Pharmacy Education & Research.
Prior to UNC, Dr. Angelo had worked as a faculty member, faculty developer, and academic administrator in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia at institutions including Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, Boston College, the University of Miami, Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, and La Trobe University in Australia. He also directed six university educational development centers — four of which he founded — and twice served as an associate provost. He has consulted on teaching, learning, assessment, and curriculum design for nearly 300 educational institutions and 80 educational organizations – and delivered more than 90 higher education conference keynote addresses – in all 50 U.S. states and 20 other countries.
Author or co-author of four books and more than three dozen articles and chapters, Dr. Angelo’s best-known publication, Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers, 2nd Edition, has over 100,000 copies in print. He is currently co-leading a tri-national research project to identify core concepts in pharmacy education.
Karen Chen
Karen Chen is an undergraduate student studying pre-pharmacy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She serves as a Center Assistant in CIPhER where she supports administrative functions for CIPhER programming.
Amber Frick, Pharm.D., Ph.D.
Amber Frick, Pharm.D., Ph.D., is a clinical assistant professor with the Division of Pharmacotherapy and Experimental Therapeutics. Frick’s main responsibilities at the School are to develop an expertise in the implementation and assessment of new approaches to and best practices in teaching while also taking part in collaborative teaching activities. Additionally, she is establishing a scholarship program in education and collaborating with course coordinators to develop and enhance the teaching and assessment activities in the clinical pharmacology sequence of courses in the new curriculum. To help reach these aspirations, Frick completed a faculty fellowship with the Center for Innovative Pharmacy Education and Research (CIPhER) to enrich her teaching and educational research skills.
Jessica Greene, Pharm.D.
Jessica Greene, Pharm.D. is a clinical assistant professor in the Division of Pharmacoengineering and Molecular Pharmaceutics at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She earned her Doctor of Pharmacy degree and completed an academic postdoctoral fellowship at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She is heavily engaged in the implementation of innovative, learner-centered instructional techniques and assessment methods. Currently, her research focuses on the scholarship of teaching and learning in the Doctor of Pharmacy curriculum, with an emphasis on learner experiences in active-learning classrooms, educational continuous quality improvement, and integration of basic and clinical science instruction.
Faustina Hahn
Faustina Hahn, PharmD, is a postdoctoral research associate with CIPhER at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She received her Doctor of Pharmacy from UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in 2019. Her research interests include diversity and inclusion, the intersection between diversity, inclusion, and mental health, and interprofessional education.
Nikki Lobczowski
Nikki Lobczowski is a fifth-year doctoral student in the Learning Sciences and Psychological Studies (LSPS) in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Before coming to UNC, she taught eight years of secondary mathematics. Her research focuses on how students collectively regulate their cognition, motivation, and emotions in collaborative groups. Thus far, her studies have led her and another LSPS student to create a collaborative app that faculty and students utilized the past two years at UNC’s School of Pharmacy. The app provides students working in groups with just-in-time strategies to help them regulate their learning as a group. In fall 2016, they won a grant from the School of Pharmacy’s Eshelman Institute for Innovation to continue their research. Nikki is currently working as a research assistant at the UNC School of Education. Upon completion of her doctoral program, she intends to obtain a tenure-track position at a Research 1 institution.
Kayley Lyons, Pharm.D., BCPS
Kayley Lyons was a doctoral student in the Learning Sciences and Psychological Studies program at UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education. She earned her Doctor of Philosophy at UNC – Chapel Hill School of Education, Doctorate of Pharmacy at South Dakota State University, Board Certification in Pharmacotherapy and a Masters in Health Systems Pharmacy Administration from UNC. Her research interests include student motivation and regulation, collaborative project-based learning, and design-based research.
Lana Minshew
Lana Minshew is a postdoctoral research associate with CIPhER at the UNC Eshelman School of
Pharmacy. She received her MEd in educational psychology from the University of Houston and earned
her PhD in education from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her research interests include
design-based research, science education, collaboration, student learning and student discourse in
science.
Amanda Olsen, Ph.D.
Amanda Olsen, PhD, is a postdoctoral research associate with CIPhER at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She received her MA in educational psychology and her PhD in statistics, measurement, and evaluation in education both from the University of Missouri at Columbia. Her main research interests include applied quantitative methodologies, the analysis of large scale datasets, and program evaluation.
Ami Patel, Pharm.D.
Ami Patel, PharmD, was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Center for Innovative Pharmacy Education & Research until June 2018. She received her Doctor of Pharmacy from the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in 2017. Her primary areas of research focused on pharmacy student time use and its impact on academic performance as well as self-efficacy, career goals, and pharmacy training amongst underrepresented minority students. Her teaching activities included lecturing at the UNC School of Dentistry, precepting students during Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE), and serving as a teaching assistant for Pharmacotherapy courses.
Carla Coste Sánchez, Ph.D
Carla Coste Sánchez, Ph.D., received her undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico –
Rio Piedras, and her Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Sciences (Pharmacoengineering and Molecular
Pharmaceutics) from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Her research interest include: best
practices in teaching, curriculum development and assessment practices and professional development
in graduate school education.
Amanda Savage
After receiving her Pharm.D. from the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy in 2003, Amanda Savage spent the first 13 years of her career as a community practice pharmacist in the beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina. She joined the School of Pharmacy as a part-time clinical instructor based on the Asheville campus in May 2014. In May 2015 she joined the faculty full-time. As a clinical assistant professor, her efforts have been focused on teaching within the patient care skills laboratory courses. Her interest includes course coordination and development, objective structured clinical exams (OSCEs), and small group facilitation. She is a faculty fellow in the Center for Innovative Pharmacy Education & Research (CIPhER).
Joe Yi
Joe Yi was a doctoral student in the biostatistics program at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health and currently serves as a Graduate Research Assistant in CIPhER. His responsibilities range from data visualization of pharmacy education data with Tableau to categorical and longitudinal statistical analysis in SAS.