Washington State University

eValue enhances productivity and efficiency within the Office of Experiential Services at Washington State University College of Pharmacy

The Office of Experiential Services helps ensure that students who graduate have acquired the knowledge, professional judgment, and skills required for responsible service in the pharmacy profession, and eValue plays a vital role in this process.

Capping a high-growth trajectory, Washington State University’s (WSU) College of Pharmacy enrollment in its four-year Doctor of Pharmacy program is nearing an average class size of 170, nearly doubling 94 from just a few years ago. eValue continues to be used in creative and unique ways to help address this expansion of students and programmatic requirements.

The Right Choice

Rice’s colleagues, Experiential Services Program Coordinator Jen Goodwin and Experiential Services Program Assistant Cris Mudd, are both quick to echo praise for the system the College chose to adopt in 2011 when eValue purchased and merged with the system they had used for the previous seven years. “It felt like a natural progression at the time,” says Rice.

“But eValue turned out to be unquestionably the right choice. It took our system to a whole new level, offering the ability to slice and dice data for reporting and creating comprehensive student portfolios for example. It has revolutionized the way we work, and we’ve been incredibly happy.”

One-Stop Shop

eValue has created a comprehensive repository for all student-related information and activities: immunizations, scheduling, tracking, preceptors, affiliation agreements, assessments and evaluations. Mudd, who is responsible for onboarding students and coordinating affiliation agreements with 325 practice sites, says, “I can’t imagine how anyone could do this job without eValue. The repository tracks and stores essential information and is simply indispensible.”

Goodwin, who handles scheduling, says, “eValue does the ‘heavy lifting’, which is an amazing time-saver. You can imagine how much information there is to juggle when scheduling students’ six six-week APPE (Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience) rotations, plus an optional seventh rotation: type of site, site availability and requirements. But all of it is in eValue at my fingertips in a single glance. I have everything I need to know in order to communicate with each students about their schedule, without having to go through each site, one at a time.”

Spreading Success

Rice’s enthusiasm about the efficiencies eValue drives has inspired other WSU programs to adopt the system, as well as pharmacy schools in the Northwest and across the country.

“It’s easy to be excited about eValue and the support team,” Luke admits. “They’re always willing to understand our needs. The system is becoming more and more flexible, so we often can customize it ourselves for our program, which is a big key to our success. However, we know we can count on their help if needed.

The Net-Net

Rice sums up the impact on students that eValue allows the Office of Experiential Services to provide. “eValue touches every piece of our world,” he says. “It’s an invaluable tool for managing the complexities of what we do—one that we almost take for granted. But, honestly, without it we would be hard-pressed to make our students as successful as we possibly can.”