Go to any bookstore and you’ll find children’s books on professions such as nurse, doctor, even firefighter. But you’ll be hard pressed to find one on the pharmacy profession. Assistant Professor of Pharmacy Erin Albert wants to change that.
The author of five books herself, Albert solicited the help of College of Education Instructor Angela Lupton and Associate Professor of Art Gautam Rao, to bring students from the Jordan College of Fine Arts, College of Education and College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences together to write and illustrate a children’s book on the pharmacy profession.
Nine students (three from each college) willingly volunteered for the project that isn’t at all structured like a traditional class with assignments, lectures and a syllabus.
“It’s learning through uncertainty,” said Lupton. “The students don’t have a rubric in front of them that says you’ll get 10 points if your book looks like this, and they’re learning to be okay with this. It’s real life learning.”
What the students do know is that a final manuscript is due to the publisher by December 15 to meet a spring 2012 publish date. How they get to this point is for them to decide.
To stay on task, the students email regularly and hold a weekly hour-long conference call to review and assign tasks. The group’s current priority is finalizing the storyline of the book, which pharmacy student Stacey Scheidler ‘12 says will “focus on what a retail pharmacist does on a normal day through the use of a rhyming scheme. We’re targeting second and third graders so we want to keep the concept basic yet entertaining.”
Scheidler says that in addition to the reward that will come from knowing the book could encourage children to become future pharmacists, also rewarding is having the opportunity to work with her non-pharmacy peers.
“The nice thing about working on this project is knowing that I’ve helped to inform other Butler students about what a pharmacist does. Being able to do that is a great feeling; it makes me hope Butler will offer more opportunities for the colleges to work together.”
Media contact: Courtney Tuell
(317) 940-9807
ctuell@butler.edu
