• Message from the Dean • Pharmacy home

Over the past 20 years, George E. MacKinnon III has held joint academic appointments in medicine and pharmacy at various educational institutions, engaging in clinical practice, research, teaching and academic administration. His previous appointments include being vice president of academic affairs with the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy in Alexandria, Va., and as director of Global Health Economics and Outcomes Research at Abbott Laboratories. Dr. MacKinnon received both his BS and MS in hospital pharmacy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He completed two years of post-graduate clinical pharmacy residency training at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics. He earned his PhD in educational leadership and policy studies from Loyola University Chicago.

He was involved in the establishment and subsequent accreditation of new schools of pharmacy in Chicago and Phoenix in the 1990s: as associate dean, founding chairman and professor, Department of Pharmacy Practice and Pharmacy Administration, Midwestern University College of Pharmacy in Glendale, Ariz., and as the assistant dean for Experiential and Post-Graduate Education at the Chicago College of Pharmacy of Midwestern University, Downers Grove, Ill. He has served as a consultant to several organizations conducting feasibility studies for the establishment of an academic pharmacy program. Dr. MacKinnon has engaged in significant curricular innovation (e.g, accelerated graduation and non-traditional pathways, integrated curriculum of biological, clinical and pharmaceutical sciences, and use of a student annual academic assessment) with respect to the professional doctor of pharmacy degree (PharmD) and taught one of the first required courses in health economics and outcomes assessment at an academic pharmacy program. He is presently serving as the editor of a new textbook on health outcomes and pharmacoeconomics.

Dr. MacKinnon has assisted in the development of numerous pharmacist-medical practice initiatives as well as several post-graduate residency training programs in various settings over the years. He lead the development of an academic partnership that has been modeled elsewhere with community pharmacies referred to as the "hub-and-spoke," whereby practitioners with the support of clinical faculty developed their practice sites into exemplary practices and administrative faculty helped assess the impact of such services. Dr. MacKinnon’s personal research interests relate to documenting the value of pharmacists and student encounters with patients and other health care providers and the overall clinical and economic impact of such encounters to stakeholders. He has secured extramural funding in excess of $1.2 million to support various educational programs and research projects.

He served as the founding editor of InetCE ^SM, one of the first Internet-based continuing education publications from 1996-2006. Dr. MacKinnon has delivered more than 200 presentations, written over 60 publications and has authored three book chapters in pharmacy and the health sciences arena. He received the Clinical Faculty Award for Teaching from the 1992 graduating PharmD Class of the St. Louis College of Pharmacy. In 2000 he was recognized by peers as a Fellow of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (FASHP) and in 2003 was the recipient of the Service to Pharmacy Award from the Arizona Pharmacists Association.

Pharmacy home