Our coast-to-coast chapter
Sophia Saladino is a final-year PharmD candidate at the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM) School of Pharmacy, Bradenton.
I never knew the friendships that could develop over Zoom or the impact that could be made by collaborating via GroupMe chats. But with classmates dispersed across the country, we knew that our APhA Chapter would have an untraditional route to success. This year, as chapter president, it was my responsibility to foster collaboration, plan events, and build relationships with students in different time zones.
It’s exciting to have input from students in such diverse backgrounds with wide-ranging experiences, and while it seems like it may be hard for everyone to effectively work together, we all share a common ground: We love APhA. In order to run a successful chapter, we focused on inclusion, accessibility, and forming relationships.
Engaging the distance education students
One of the most attractive components of a LECOM pharmacy education is the ability to earn the degree nearly entirely online. However, that also makes it difficult to engage with organizations. Our distance education (DE) and Florida pathways share one APhA Chapter, which means general meetings are always via Zoom and sometimes we work with someone for years before meeting them for the very first time at the APhA Annual Meeting & Exposition—but we go to the same school!
As chapter president, I recognized that our DE members didn’t always receive the same benefits as Florida members despite paying the same chapter dues. Membership is particularly hard to garner from DE students, many of whom are working, have families, and feel isolated from typical college campus activities. They aren’t able to stop by our spring membership drive egg hunt or Operation Mental Health stress ball station. Instead, I worked with members of our executive board to create membership gift bags using lightweight items to alleviate shipping costs. The bags included an APhA pin, magnet, and pharmacy stickers.
One major hurdle we experience each year is preparing and executing membership drives. While we create a fun event on our Florida campus, we also focus on accessibility for our DE members. This year, our DE membership vice president created a recording for DE members to watch at their convenience to learn about the benefits of APhA membership.
Building relationships
The final aspect of balancing a hybrid chapter is focusing on building relationships, even with classmates we may only know via text and Zoom. We held monthly executive board meetings virtually, and I also frequently reached out to members of our board to hear their ideas and concerns. It was easy to catch up with a classmate in the lecture hall, but I also had to focus on reaching out to DE members. I was surprised at how many friends I made through APhA who live in different states.
This year culminated with our chapter winning the LECOM Kappa Psi–Epsilon Eta Outstanding Student Organization Award. This was a direct result of our board’s efforts to include all of our members in events, tweak aspects of membership to make them more accessible, and build relationships across the country. I am honored to have been a part of this journey.