Business Plan Competition Winners Announced

Third-year student pharmacists Fred Sandefer, Lindsey Schobert and David Skinner took the top prize in this year’s UT College of Pharmacy Business Plan Competition held in December. The event, sponsored by the UT American Pharmacists Association-Academy of Student Pharmacists (APhA-ASP) Community Pharmacy Special Interest Group, and overseen by Drs. Justin Gatwood and Ken Hohmeier, assistant professors of Clinical Pharmacy.  The competition was launched to further encourage students to develop and present potential pharmacy-focused business plans. Drs. Gatwood and Hohmeier stated, “It is clear to us that many of our student pharmacists have entrepreneurial aspirations, and this competition is just the first step we hope to take to nurture those interests.” The winning team (pictured right) proposed an innovative tool to monitor and deter theft of controlled substances from community pharmacies. The team indicated that, “the first annual business competition gave us the opportunity to improve skills outside of the pharmacy curriculum, such as teamwork and creativity. We greatly appreciated the chance to pitch our idea to a team of established entrepreneurs and gain valuable feedback that we can use as we pursue our business.” James Barker, a fourth-year student pharmacist, was runner up in this year’s competition. His business plan proposed the building of an outpatient pediatric pharmacy with compounding laboratory. Both plans grew out of formal proposals submitted as part of a required project for the Pharmacy Practice Management and Pharmacoeconomics course. Assisting Drs. Gatwood and Hohmeier in judging the submissions were Dr. James Wheeler, assistant professor of Clinical Pharmacy, and Dr. Rick Sain (’89). The event was the first held by the College of Pharmacy and will be held annually to reinforce skills acquired during didactic instruction and motivate students with entrepreneurial ambitions.