A Decade of Difference

Ten years after making history as the Marshall University School of Pharmacy’s first graduating class, alumni from the Class of 2016 returned to campus in June to celebrate the milestone anniversary and to remember one of their classmates.

In 2012, approximately 80 students joined the School of Pharmacy’s inaugural class.  Hailing from dozens of states, including Hawaii, they were trailblazers for a school using concepts and teaching methods new to higher education, like the “flipped classroom” approach and high-tech initiatives. Marshall already had two professional schools, medicine and physical therapy, but the creation of a pharmacy school added a third tier of education that required intense collaboration among the university, the medical school, community and hospital pharmacies, among other governmental and local partners.

Grant Lim recalled his first days at the brand-new school in Huntington, West Virginia, a long way from his home in California, where he graduated from the University of California-Davis.

“There was uncertainty with a new school and things like accreditation,” Lim said. “However, meeting the strong faculty and staff, as well as being part of an established public university, gave me great confidence in my choice to come to Marshall.”

Current School of Pharmacy Dean Eric Blough, who served as a professor of pharmacology at the opening of the new school, recalls the eagerness, energy and even a bit of anxiety as those first few students arrived on campus. He joked it was a bit like building a plane while flying.

“When our first class walked through those doors, we were still building the curriculum that they were about to take,” Blough said. “We were still designing courses, writing assessments and ordering equipment. We were learning what worked and didn’t work in real time. Our first class weren’t just students — they were pioneers and trailblazers.”

Lim and his fellow students quickly settled into a routine in 2012, attending classes in the newly renovated Coon Education Building at the Huntington Veterans Affairs Hospital. Originally constructed in the 1970s for Marshall’s School of Medicine, the facility underwent an extensive $9 million renovation to create a modern learning environment for the new School of Pharmacy. It served as the school’s home until the program was relocated to the state-of-the-art Stephen J. Kopp Hall on Marshall University’s Health Sciences Campus on Hal Greer Boulevard.

“At the time, the flipped classroom and other teaching methods seemed idealistic to us as students,” Lim said. “However, 10 years later, we are actually delivering clinical services in the way we were instructed at the time.”

While earning his Doctor of Pharmacy degree in Huntington, Lim also found something unexpected — his future wife, a fellow pharmacy student from Kentucky. Together, he and wife Amber Crum Lim are practicing as pharmacists in North Carolina, where they are building a life with their 2-year-old daughter.

“It’s hard to believe a full decade has passed since graduation,” Amber Lim said.

The couple attended this year’s Summer Gala, reuniting them with their fellow graduates, faculty, staff, friends of the school and community partners for an evening celebrating the program’s first decade while raising funds to establish the Stephanie Walker Memorial Scholarship.  The scholarship honors inaugural class member Stephanie Walker, who passed away in 2023 from leukemia, and will support future Marshall pharmacy students.

In a video tribute to her classmate, MUSOP graduate Jennifer Allen said Walker would long be remembered for her kindness, keen intellect and professionalism, but most of all her ability to make others feel important. For more information about supporting the School of Pharmacy through the Stephanie Walker Memorial Scholarship, contact the Marshall University Foundation.