UB Pharmacy/MBA Students Leverage Skills to Place in Competition

By Jacqueline Molik Ghosen

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Four University at Buffalo PharmD/MBA students have placed in the 2010 Good Neighbor Pharmacy NCPA Pruitt-Schutte Student Business Plan Competition.

Christopher Diehl, Mike Grota, Christopher Daly and Vikram Sundararaman placed fourth out of 35 teams for their business plan, which included the purchase, modification, expansion and modernization of a family-owned business, Forster’s Pharmacy in the Village of Blasdell.

The finalists were announced in July at the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy meeting in Seattle.

All four students are enrolled in UB’s joint PharmD/MBA program, a five-year program offered jointly by the School of Management and the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences leading to a Doctor of Pharmacy/Master of Business Administration degree.

The team spent more than 500 hours researching the information and constructing a 199-page plan.

“Participation in this competition has helped me discover one of many rewarding career paths a PharmD/MBA can pursue,” said Christopher Daly, PharmD/MBA Candidate, Class of 2012. “It was a great challenge to combine information we learned in both disciplines and apply it to real life applications.”

Daly is a third-generation legacy in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, following his grandfather Milner Forster, Class of 1953, and his parents Donald and Lynn Daly, both Class of 1979.

“These students fared very well in this highly competitive event and we are immensely proud of them,” said team advisor Karl D. Fiebelkorn, associate dean and associate professor in the UB School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences. “Since entering this competition in 2005, our teams have placed in the top-five every year,” he added.

“This is an excellent example of how students in our joint degree programs can leverage diverse skill sets to gain a real advantage,” said David Frasier, assistant dean of MBA, MS and PhD programs in the UB School of Management.

The National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) and the NCPA Foundation established the competition to promote interest in independent community pharmacy ownership. The goal of the competition is to motivate pharmacy students to create the blueprint necessary for buying an existing independent community pharmacy or to develop a new pharmacy.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB’s more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.