(1090) Institutional and Individual Demographics and Distribution of AACP Walmart Scholars Program Participants

Objectives: The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP) Walmart Scholars Program was created in 2005 to support pharmacy students with an interest in academic pharmacy. Program recipients were provided with a financial scholarship to attend the AACP Annual Meeting, learn more about academic pharmacy through attendance at educational sessions, and begin to build networks to support progress toward this career path. This type of program is important for training the next generation of pharmacy educators because clinicians often do not receive training to be effective teachers. A past assessment of the program revealed positive feedback from participants. However, the program has not been assessed from an institutional or individual demographic perspective. The objectives of this study are to: 1) describe institutional and individual level demographics of participants (both students and faculty mentors) and compare this to the distribution of pharmacy programs nationally; 2) assess the level of gender concordance between students and their faculty mentors; 3) describe the number of participants who attained a faculty position at any point in their career; and 4) assess the relationship between attainment of a faculty position and institutional and individual level demographics.

Methods: A retrospective study design was used to characterize all student-faculty participants in the AACP Walmart Scholars Program (2005-2021). Listings of participants were available online on an AACP website. The following information was documented about the student-faculty’s institution: 1) institution type (public or private); 2) geographic location (Northeast, Midwest, South, or West); and 3) Carnegie classification. For each student and faculty, the following information was documented: 1) gender; 2) number of students each faculty participant mentored over the entirety of the program timeline; 3) number of student participants who became mentors; and 4) if the student ever obtained a faculty position. Descriptive statistics will be used to report out frequencies and percentages for each piece of information documented. Institutional and individual demographics will be descriptively compared to the distribution of pharmacy programs and graduates. Additionally, success in obtaining a faculty position will be analyzed by institutional and individual demographics. Finally, the number and percentage of gender concordant vs. discordant mentoring pairs will be reported and its impact on student outcomes assessed. As all analyses involve categorical variables, a chi-square test will be used with a significance level of p≤0.05.

Results: There were a total of 1,201 student and faculty participants in the AACP Walmart Scholars Program. Individual level data is still being collected. Institutional level data revealed that most students came from private institutions (n=819, 68.2%) compared to public institutions (n=382, 31.8%). Students were predominantly from institutions in the South (n=510, 42.5%), followed by the Midwest (n=317, 26.4%), Northeast (n=188, 15.7%) and West (n=186, 15.5%). The vast majority of students were from programs using a four-year structure (n=1,059, 88.2%) compared to a three-year structure (n=76, 6.3%), or five to seven-year structure (n=66, 5.5%). In terms of Carnegie classification, over 80% of students came from one of three classification types: doctoral universities – very high research activity (n=641, 53.4%), doctoral/professional universities (n=206, 17.2%), and doctoral universities – high research activity (n=135, 11.2%). All remaining data collection and analyses are expected to be completed in early 2024.

Conclusions: Initial examination of program participant demographics reveals potential disparities in institutional representation relative to the population of pharmacy programs, taking into account the increased number of pharmacy programs over the study period. Study findings are expected to have implications for future design of national efforts to train the next generation of pharmacy educators. Ensuring that students in a wide range of programs have opportunities to develop their skills as academicians is key for supporting a diverse workforce.