Two Kansas Pharmacy faculty earn tenure and promotion

KU Chancellor Doug Girod recently approved the University Committee on Promotion and Tenure’s recommendation to award promotion to two School of Pharmacy faculty members. The academic milestone was earned by Jessica Bates, clinical associate professor of pharmacy practice and Adam Smith, associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology.

Bates serves as the assistant director of experiential education where she advises students and preceptors during the Introductory and Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experiences. She is a board-certified pharmacotherapy specialist with practice experience in ambulatory care and community pharmacy. As a member of the Pharmacy Practice Department, she teaches in the pharmacotherapy curriculum, performance assessment activities, and coordinates the drug information course.

Bates earned her Pharm.D. at KU and participated in a community pharmacy residency at the University of North Carolina Eshelman School of Pharmacy. She has been with the KU School of Pharmacy since 2015 following pharmacy roles at the University of Pittsburg Shadyside Hospital and Ball Foods Store Pharmacies.

Smith researches the neurobiological substrates of social behavior and stress. His laboratory in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology explores the emerging field of social neuroscience through the life history and neurobiology of the pair bond—the bond that is established between adult monogamous pairs—in the socially monogamous prairie vole as a model to discover the neurobiology that underlies how new social relationships are formed, how social relationships promote resiliency and recovery from traumatic life events (known as social buffering), and how social loss serves as a major risk factor for morbidity of several mental health disorders. The research seeks to expand our knowledge of social stress and discover novel therapeutics to improve the symptoms of mental health disorders associated with sociality.

Smith additionally was granted tenure. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha followed by a doctorate in neuroscience from Florida State University. His postdoctoral fellowship was at the National Institute of Mental Health. He has been at Kansas Pharmacy since 2016.