SPOKANE, Wash. – Kathryn E. Meier and Brian J. Gates will assume associate dean positions at the College of Pharmacy on June 17.
Meier has been on faculty at the College for 10 years and has served in other leadership positions, including chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences and most recently, director of the Program in Nutrition and Exercise Physiology.
She will replace Gary G. Meadows as associate dean for graduate education and scholarship, a position Meadows has held since its creation on Feb. 1, 2011. It is one of four associate dean positions at the College.
“Gary has provided the College with outstanding service in this role and has successfully led the reinvigoration of our graduate program,” said Gary M. Pollack, dean of pharmacy. Under Meadows, the number of Ph.D. students rose from eight to 26.
Meier has a Ph.D. in pharmacology from the University of Wisconsin. She worked in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Washington from 1984 to 1991, and was on faculty at Medical University of South Carolina from 1991 until January 2003, when she joined Washington State University. At the national level, she serves on the publication trustees board for the American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, the science policy committee for the American Physiological Society, and the publications committee for the Federation of American Societies of Experimental Biology.
Gates is assuming the position of associate dean for professional education from Linda Garrelts MacLean, who has held the position since it was created Feb. 1, 2011. MacLean was named to the new position of associate dean for advancement in November and has been holding both positions since that time. She will turn to advancement fulltime on June 17.
Gates will now oversee the four-year Doctor of Pharmacy professional degree program that educates new pharmacists. Gates is a 1999 graduate of the WSU Doctor of Pharmacy program and after three years of postgraduate training in geriatrics at WSU he joined the faculty. He maintains a rotation site for fourth-year students as a consultant pharmacist at the Providence Visiting Nurse Association in Spokane and provides classroom lectures in geriatrics. Gates was president of the Spokane Pharmacy Association in 2003, is currently president of the Washington state chapter of the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, and was named the Young Pharmacist of the Year by the Washington State Pharmacy Association in 2003.
With Meier leaving her post as director of the Program in Nutrition and Exercise Physiology, the faculty in that program will be reporting to John White, interim chair of the Department of Pharmacotherapy. “There are a variety of potential points of contact between nutrition/exercise and drug therapy,” Pollack said, “and this reorganization is intended to provide a framework for more regular interactions between these two important faculty groups.”