Robert L. Talbert, a professor of pharmacy in the College of Pharmacy at The University of Texas at Austin, has been named the 2014 recipient of the Robert K. Chalmers Distinguished Pharmacy Educator Award presented by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy (AACP).
The award, the highest recognition of outstanding contributions to pharmacy education awarded to a pharmacy academician, will be presented in July at the AACP’s annual meeting in Grapevine, Texas.
“It is rare that one finds a professor who truly challenges a student pharmacist to be the best possible pharmacist that she or he can possibly be. Bob possesses that rare ability,” said Lynn Crismon, dean of the College of Pharmacy and formerly one of Talbert’s students.
Talbert said he is honored to receive the award but that the greatest reward of his teaching career has been “seeing the accomplishments of former students, residents and fellows, many of whom have gone on to achieve national and international recognition.”
Talbert said his greatest challenge has been to remain competent in a highly sophisticated and rapidly changing area of pharmacotherapy management.
“My advice to young pharmacy educators is to become passionate about learning, teaching and helping others, whether those others include patients, other professionals, learners or colleagues,” he said.
Talbert holds the SmithKline Centennial Professor in Pharmacy within the college. He also holds an appointment as a professor of medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. He is responsible for didactic and clerkship teaching of baccalaureate and Pharm.D. students and supervises activities of these students on the medicine service at University Hospital in San Antonio. Talbert is a member of the Drug Usage Committee and the Cardiovascular Subcommittee of the Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee for University Hospital.
The author of more than 120 scientific and professional articles and book chapters, Talbert says his greatest legacy to pharmacy is his work as editor of “Pharmacotherapy: A Pathophysiology Approach,” soon to be released in its ninth edition. The book has been a required textbook in more than 90 percent of the schools of pharmacy in the United States and has been translated into several languages.
