Pharmacy Dream Team: Get to Know the Barkers

Isabella Tobin:              You are listening to Living the PharmLife, the official podcast of Purdue University’s College of Pharmacy. I’m your host, Isabella Tobin, a PharmD candidate with a passion for telling the stories of our college’s phenomenal and loyal students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends who persistently pursue excellence in all they do.

               What an honor it is to be here with you both today. Dr. Eric Barker is the Jeannie and Jim Chaney Dean for the College of Pharmacy at Purdue. And his wife, Loretta Barker, is a licensed pharmacist at a hospital pharmacy. To get us started, could you both share a bit about yourself and how you came to love the field of pharmacy?

Loretta Barker:             Sure. I got interested in pharmacy when I was in eighth grade, a very long time ago. To start off, I grew up in Chicago. I was born and raised in Chicago. And my physician, our family physician, actually encouraged me, because he knew I loved science. And he would say, “Well, my son is a pharmacist.” And he would call downstairs to the pharmacy below, this is the old time pharmacy would have the physician on the top and the pharmacist down below in their independent pharmacy, and he would say, “I always call down to that pharmacist because they know a lot, and I really appreciate having them here.” And so I think just seeing that collaborative in the information that they exchanged with each other, and I just really enjoyed that. So that’s how I got to love pharmacy. At first I thought I was going to go into, I decided chemistry. I was all over. But then for reasons, I decided, I think pharmacy is where my heart was.

Eric Barker:     Yeah. Like a lot of folks, I think we all knew a pharmacist. It was maybe a family member, or it was the family pharmacist, that we saw working every day, serving and taking care of patients. And that was part of my story, too. We had a local community pharmacy in southern Illinois where I grew up. I grew up just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis on the Illinois side, in Edwardsville, Illinois. But the town next to us was Maryville, and Maryville Pharmacy started up in the early 1970s. Gary Soreto was the pharmacist there. I still remember him. He was known throughout the state of Illinois as a pharmacist leader. But Gary took care of my family all the time I was growing up.

               I too had an interest in chemistry and biology and science. I really didn’t want to go into clinical medicine, per se. And pharmacy really seemed to be the right fit for me as I was finishing up high school. And really the opportunity to get to work in a pharmacy, and serve those patients, and begin to learn about drugs, and how they worked in the body, was really interesting and really exciting to me. I went to pharmacy school thinking I was going to go into business or management of some sort, and ultimately ended up taking a different career path. But pharmacy has really been great to me.

Isabella Tobin:              Yeah, that’s really great. Thank you both so much for sharing. I know a lot of people have their own stories, and I’m sure they’ll be able to hear their own stories reflected back in yours. Now, speaking of similar stories, you both went to the same college of pharmacy. I recently found out from the Executive Director of Development that Purdue College of Pharmacy has over 400 alumni couples. Can you tell me more about how you met?

Eric Barker:     Well, I always say, she chased me. I don’t think she’s agreeing. We actually did go to the same college of pharmacy. We went to St. Louis College of Pharmacy, now known as University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis. But the St. Louis College of Pharmacy is still part of that university structure. We worked together at the hospital across the street from the College of Pharmacy there, as part of the Washington University Medical Center. It was what was at the time the old Jewish Hospital of St. Louis. And so we worked together in the hospital pharmacy. I was maybe a year or two older than her. But I only developed enough courage to ask her out, and she may have a different story of how this all played out, but nonetheless, it worked out for me, I think really well.

Loretta Barker:             Yes, I did not chase him.

Isabella Tobin:              The Barkers were friends before they started dating. Both served on the student council at their college. Dean Barker graduated two years ahead of Loretta, then headed off to Vanderbilt University for graduate school shortly after the two started dating. They maintained a long distance relationship for two years while she finished college.

Eric Barker:     Sometimes I think too, for me, having stopped practicing directly right after we got married, having her in practice really helped keep me grounded to the profession, too. And I think it really helps when we are having conversations with our many alumni, that both of us are pharmacists, and we understand where people are coming from. And I think that’s been helpful for both of us.

Isabella Tobin:              All right. So like we’ve mentioned, the two of you are both an excellent example of how there are so many different diverse career paths within the field of pharmacy. You both attended the same program, and yet you’re in two completely different areas. Dean Barker, you went into academia, while you, Loretta, went into hospital pharmacy. As you think about students who are trying to pursue these different career goals, what advice would you have for them, and how would you describe how you found your love for these areas?

Loretta Barker:             Well I believe that you should try everything, ask questions and never… If something’s offered to you, say, “Yes, I’ll try that.” Because originally I did not want to do hospital. I was a work study student, and the pharmacist encouraged me. He’s like, “We want you to stay with us. We want you to be one of our pharmacy students here working at the hospital.” We had 20 students working at the hospital. We had a lot of students there. So he encouraged me to work there. Originally I wanted to graduate, own my own pharmacy, and I wanted to make it like the old time pharmacy where you had a soda shop. Because I love making sodas and ice cream. And so that was my idea. Going back to that family physician we had, where the pharmacy was down below. That was my original thought when I was in college.

               But I’ve also, I’ve worked many different jobs. So I’ve done retail, I have worked retail, I’ve done home health. And through my practice here even, I’ve worked at Ambulatory Care, where I talk to a lot of patients at the Coumadin clinic, and I talk to patients about their congestive heart failure, their COPD. So I have been exposed to a lot of different things. Worked in the ER. It’s been great. Actually, we’ve been moving, we were moving up… And it was laughing. We were moving up and down 65 for a while there. We were in Atlanta, then back to Nashville. But I just love that exposure, and I never said no. If there was an opportunity that came up, I jumped on it. If it was something new coming up, we want someone to start an OR pharmacy. I’m like, “I’m there, I’ll interview for it.”

               And so I had great exposure and to a lot of different things, and got to see a lot of different practices. And worked with, collaborated with, a lot of different disciplines. So I would tell them, don’t take no for an answer. And when you’re saying I’m going to do retail or hospital, that’s not… There’s more to that. You can talk to the alums. Our alums here at Purdue, the pharmacy alums are wonderful. They’re willing to talk to you and tell you how they got to where they are, but it’s never been a straight line. It’s been different. When you graduate, you may not end up what you’re doing in two or three years. It may be something else. Something else may attract you. And I’d say just go for it.

Eric Barker:     Yeah, as I said, I went into pharmacy school thinking that I would go into the business side of pharmacy, particularly on the community pharmacy side. And I was working in a local community pharmacy, and I was sort of that sort of nerdy science pharmacy student who would take and rip the package inserts off the sides of the bottles sitting on the shelves and open them up. Because I wanted to know, even though I was a freshman, I wanted to know, how does this drug work in the body? And I got really interested in mechanisms of action, how drugs work. And so my interest really then circulated on pharmacology, which then, through our faculty mentors, one of whom actually was a Purdue alum, interestingly enough, Joe Haberly, who graduated with his PhD, his wife Marilyn also, they were a pharmacy couple who met at Purdue, interestingly enough, she was a hospital pharmacist. There’s some parallels here.

Loretta Barker:             Yeah.

Eric Barker:     I never thought about this. But Joe encouraged me and several other of our faculty mentors to look at going to graduate school. And when I went to graduate school, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what I wanted to do, but there was an opportunity, after finishing my degree and doing a postdoctoral fellowship, there was an opportunity to interview for a job here at Purdue in the College of Pharmacy. And it really made sense. It was the right fit. So what I would tell students is, you always want to think about what’s the right fit for you. There are a lot of opportunities, you can try a lot of different things, but think about what excites you, what interests you. Oftentimes when students would come to talk to me about doing research, for example, my first question will be, what subject matter in class do you find the easiest to study for?

               That’s usually a good indication of what interests you, versus something that if it’s painful to study. I hated infectious disease. A little bit ironic that I spent two years helping to navigate the Covid space here on campus, but I knew I loved drugs that impacted the brain. And so that was the area that I was able to go into. Coming to Purdue gave me that opportunity to teach, which I enjoy doing, but also running a research lab with graduate students at a very high level. And so there’s real opportunity when you follow your passion, know what you like doing. And when you do that, it doesn’t always seem like work most of the time. It can be really fun.

Isabella Tobin:              Yeah, that’s fantastic advice, especially the, it doesn’t really seem like work. I love that. I had worked in the nuclear pharmacy over the summer, didn’t feel like work at all to me. I had a lot of fun there.

Eric Barker:     So that’s probably a good point for me to ask you a question about what interests you in pharmacy. You’ve had some experiences already as a student, and you mentioned nuclear pharmacy, that, or what else have you found that really interests you, as you look at your career ahead of you?

Isabella Tobin:              Yeah. Well, I am really interested in nuclear pharmacy. I had an internship up in East Providence, Rhode Island at Cardinal Health. It was the most incredible experience. I really loved it there. But I’m also interested in academia, and I’ve been talking with a lot of professors here, professors at other universities, trying to figure out what that interest actually means.

Eric Barker:     Great. Well, if there’s anything we can do along the way, you know we’re here to help.

Isabella Tobin:              Yeah. And I’ve been very grateful for that, both with you and everybody else on this campus. One of the things the Purdue College of Pharmacy really emphasizes is student support. Not only financial support through scholarships, but academic support, as well. The Office of Student Services and Office of Experiential Learning set students up for career success. College faculty and staff, alongside the vast and engaged alumni network, serve as excellent resources as students navigate finding their passion within the industry, as well as balancing the rigors of pharmacy with personal life. So you’re both in very demanding positions. How have you navigated this?

Loretta Barker:             Well, I think you set up priorities, and then you just compartmentalize when you come home. It’s kind of nice that I could come home and he understands what I’m talking about, and he kind of has an idea. So that has helped. But I think it is just when the children… We have two children, and they’re grown adults now. But when they were smaller, yes, it can get a little hectic, but you just have to prioritize, I think. And then, like I said, compartmentalize when you come home. You could just be with your family, enjoy your friends, and don’t forget about family, and just don’t take work home. And I think that that goes for a lot of, not just pharmacy, but I think just life in general, where you just set your priorities. And we just communicated, as well, very well to make sure that we were kind of on the same track. But that’s how we did it.

Eric Barker:     I mean, it was a lot about teaming up, especially when the kids were in that phase of life where they had activities going on, and we would have to take turns. Or if she was working on the weekends as a hospital pharmacist, or evenings, I was on dad duty. And I mean, I look back and it was great to spend time with the kids in that light. But you do have to be deliberate. I mean, you can’t just let it be organic much of the time. If you let things just happen, oftentimes you’ll wake up and you’re like, I’m exhausted. And that’s why you have to be really deliberate about what you’re doing, when you’re doing it, thinking about scheduling things. And it doesn’t mean you’re necessarily super rigid about everything, but you know you’re going to be deliberate about carving out family time. You’re going to be deliberate about, and be sure that you’re taking vacation time, and doing things together, either as a family or as an individual, so that you get those breaks.

               But it requires intention, and you have to plan for that. And that becomes really, really important, I think. And I think that’s how you create work and life. I’m not necessarily a big fan of the term work-life balance, because it isn’t necessarily a balance all the time. Because you’re going to have to work, and you enjoy what you do for work, but you also want to be able to live, and have a family and do other things. And you’re going to do both those things in parallel. And it does require a little bit of juggling sometimes, and it doesn’t always work, but you try to work together to make it work for your family. And that’s what I think we were able to do effectively. And always, if the kids had a swim meet, or a golf meet for our daughter, or a swim meet for our son, we’re always there. Or if it was a music concert or whatnot. And ensuring that they had the experiences they needed to have. But God, we found enjoyment in that, too.

Isabella Tobin:              Yeah.

Eric Barker:     So let me ask you, what do you do to create a balance between studies and life?

Isabella Tobin:              Yeah. Well, I’m very much a type A person. I live off of my Google calendar. It’s multicolored, color coded. I have all my classes in there, but I also put in, when I’m hanging out with my friends, I block that time off. It has its own designated color. And me and my roommates often find ourselves all in our apartment at the same time, and we’ll just be watching a lot of movies, and that’s kind of our downtime too.

Eric Barker:     What’s the last movie you watched?

Isabella Tobin:              Last movie I watched was Elf.

Eric Barker:     Wow.

Isabella Tobin:              Yes, we started-

Eric Barker:     We’re into Christmas season.

Isabella Tobin:              We started Christmas early. I started playing Christmas music on October 30th, so I was very excited.

Eric Barker:     It’s a little early for me. Did notice over the weekend, I think I came in on either,

I think it was Sunday night, or was it last night? She had Hallmark on. The Hallmark channel, and there was a lot of Christmas stuff on. And so I know folks will be watching this in the spring at some point, or right after the holidays. But it does seem like the Hallmark channel is playing Christmas videos much earlier than ever before.

Isabella Tobin:              I went to a trip to Las Vegas a couple weeks ago, and I was playing Hallmark on the TV while I was there in my hotel room.

Eric Barker:     You do know there was other things going on in Vegas, right?

Isabella Tobin:              I do, I do. But it was like 9:00 AM. There’s not much you can do at 9:00 AM in Las Vegas.

Eric Barker:     Oh, I don’t know about that. It’s a city that never sleeps.

Isabella Tobin:              That’s true. That’s true.

Eric Barker:     Did you see any shows in Vegas?

Isabella Tobin:              I did not. We spent a lot of time walking around, though. We walked very far. One night we did maybe three miles one way, and then three miles back to the hotel, which is a lot for me. Especially lik three miles can get me to my apartment and back from campus. So that was a good night, though. It’s a common misconception that pharmacy students don’t do much outside of their studying, and that sometimes we’re a little bit boring. What fun or exciting things did you guys do in your college days?

Loretta Barker:             Like I had mentioned earlier, I was involved in student council. Eric was student council. And we had a lot of fun activities. Our college, it was St. Louis College of Pharmacy was just one, that was it. It was just pharmacy there. And it was half the size of my high school, so it was very small. We all kind of knew each other very well. So it was fun. I was involved in one of the professional fraternities, Lambda Kappa Sigma. And we have a Kappa Epsilon here, and Phi Delta Chi are the pharmacy professional fraternities. But we had a few more there because that was all of our Greek life. We didn’t have other Greek life there. So I was involved in that, and I worked a lot during… I don’t know if I have anything specific, but I do remember our senior trip. So we have a senior class trip. Our senior class trip was coming to Indianapolis to visit Lilly, which I thought was really fun. I don’t know. But anyway, so then here we are, years later, back in Indiana.

Eric Barker:     We’ve actually stayed at the hotel, the Hyatt in downtown Indianapolis. That hotel’s been there since the eighties, and that’s the hotel that Lilly put us up in when we came here for my senior trip in 1987. So we were back down there a few years after that. I was involved with a lot during my college years. Again, Loretta’s mentioned student council. Because we were a small college of pharmacy, it was sort of one size fits alls, which meant we had all the activities sort of compressed into this place. And one of those was a theater department. And so I was in a lot of theater during my time at St. Louis College of Pharmacy, and had a wonderful experience to perform in some of the great classic musicals of our time. And so theater was a big part of what I did.

               I also had an interest in music. My mom was a music teacher, and I had played in orchestras all through high school. And I was able to play in the St. Louis Philharmonic, which is the community orchestra in St. Louis. And I was a viola player. And one of the things I did, actually wherever we were, Nashville, Atlanta, I played in community orchestras, viola, in all of those places. And it was a really important diversion. And I always tell our students, you need to have some diversion. And I think there’s a lot of wisdom, particularly in doing something in the arts. I mean, pharmacy and the chemistry and the science is very left brain heavy, and the arts exercises that right brain. And I think that’s really important to create a whole person.

               Both our kids have done music. Our daughter loves musical theater, and we take trips to New York all the time to see shows on Broadway. Our son was a musician here when he was at Purdue, and all through high school participated in Purdue bands. And so there’s lots of things to be involved in, and that’s why I always tell our students, find something other than your studies in science and pharmacy, to do that you find enjoyable because it brings joy, I think, in life. And that helps you, too, in terms of overall wellness.

Isabella Tobin:              Yeah. What is your favorite musical?

Eric Barker:     My favorite musical changes from time to time, but my favorite classical musical is Camelot. It’s a great story. It’s not a traditional story, because it kind of ends on a sad note with the king and the queen going separate ways, and nobody wins. But to me, it’s a great, great musical. But there’s so many great musicals, especially modern musicals, probably Les Miserables is my most favorite of the more modern ones. So my understanding is, you are in band?

 Isabella Tobin:              Yes, I am. I play in one of the concert bands with the Purdue bands and orchestras, and I also play in the pep band for the volleyball team, the Boiler Box Band.

Eric Barker:     How many years have you played Box Band?

Isabella Tobin:              I’ve done Box Band three years now.

Eric Barker:     A year ago, our son Aaron was one of the drummers.

Isabella Tobin:              Oh, really?

Eric Barker:     Yeah. And he played Box Band, except for the Covid year, he played his three years. He played women’s basketball, too.

Isabella Tobin:              Oh, that’s fantastic.

Eric Barker:     Yep. The other thing is, in pharmacy school, you’re going to find a cohort of friends. And that adds fun. And in fact, we hosted a group of pharmacy students at the house, part of the Roki auction, a few weeks ago. And when they left, I said, “They remind me of my group of friends from pharmacy school, and I know they’re going to have lifelong friendships from this.” And it was really kind of special to see them interacting with each other, because I saw me and her in them. And that’s a pretty special thing, too. And I think that adds a lot of enjoyment and fun. Because you go through pharmacy school together, you appreciate what the challenges that each of you have. And then again, those friendships stay lifelong. And I stay in touch with my friends from pharmacy school all the time.

Isabella Tobin:              Yeah, I’ve met some of my best friends in pharmacy school, so it helps me to hear that you guys were able to stay in touch, even after going your separate ways.

Eric Barker:     So other than bands, what else do you do for fun?

Isabella Tobin:              Well, like I had mentioned, I do a lot of movies with my friends. That’s one of our favorite things to do. What else do I do? I write creatively. I do a lot of creative writing. I’ve gone to a couple of poetry readings on campus. That’s always a lot of fun, and I meet a lot of really interesting people through that, too.

Eric Barker:     Now I’m going to call you out, because I know something about you that is, in the last couple of months I think, you attended the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering, ISPE, their meeting, and you actually won their hackathon competition. So first of all, tell me what was the hackathon, and how did you win it?

 Isabella Tobin:              Well, the ironic part was, I almost didn’t go. I got the acceptance for the meeting. I was looking at it, I was like, Las Vegas is really far away. I don’t know if I want to travel. So I almost didn’t go to the conference at all. I looked at the hackathon, I said, I don’t know what a hackathon is. I thought it had something to do with computers. I am not the person you want if your computer breaks down. I was like, maybe I shouldn’t go to that either. But I talked about it with another girl who had received her acceptance and she said, “Just do it. It never hurts to just say yes.” So I said yes, and I get to Las Vegas, and our first day there was the day of the hackathon. So we had 24 hours with this group of strangers to come up with solutions for sustainability in single use technologies within the biopharma industry.

               And I remember sitting there and I was like, this is insane. I was like, I do patient care. I said, “Give me a list of medications and I am all set.” But sustainability and biopharma? I was out of my depth. But we had an amazing group of people that we were all randomly put with. My group was so amazing. They were so great. We’ve actually stayed in touch since then, which has been really incredible. And we all worked together to come up with our solution. We had to give this 15-minute presentation for the entire hackathon that was assembled there, and then we ended up winning it. So we had to give our presentation again for the entire conference, which was crazy, because there were over 2,800 people in attendance that day.

Eric Barker:     Well, congratulations.

Loretta Barker:             Yes.

Isabella Tobin:              Thank you.

Eric Barker:     I know that the Purdue College of Pharmacy and the Purdue Pharmacy family is very proud of you.

Isabella Tobin:              Thank you. It was an incredible opportunity. I couldn’t have done it without Purdue, and I probably wouldn’t have done it without Purdue, so I’m very grateful for that. Dean Barker has been at the helm of Purdue’s College of Pharmacy since 2017. Under his dynamic leadership, the college has continued to train world changing pharmacists, shattered the ceiling on fundraising, generated innovative research, and ushered in a new era of health sciences collaboration at Purdue University with the pending nursing and pharmacy education building. He also served as a leader of the Protect Purdue campaign during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Eric Barker:     Well, from the beginning, we had some pretty straightforward goals, and that was, one, we’re going to increase the impact of what we do through our scholarship and our research. We were going to become more visible and vocal leaders, both within the university, as well as in our respective disciplines, whether it be pharmacy or the pharmaceutical sciences. And lastly, we were going to really try to work on developing stronger and better partnerships to have a broader reach in what we do. So as we look to the future, I think right now there are three things that we want to focus on.

               One is the opportunity that is before us now with the build out of Purdue University in Indianapolis, the newer urban campus of Purdue University. And we’re really looking at three opportunities there. We are asking some questions about what it might look like for a small cohort of PharmD students to spend more time in Indianapolis in the medical center, and what that might look like, what the options might be for that. We have a lot of work to do on that. We’re several years away from acting on that, but we’re starting those conversations. We know that there’s a completely different kind of student that we could probably recruit into an urban academic health science center like down in Indianapolis. And so we want to take a look at that.

               Also, we’re looking at Radiopharmaceutical. You mentioned nuclear pharmacy.

Radiopharmaceuticals has exploded in Indianapolis. There’s now nearly 20 companies in and around Indianapolis. There’s a major workforce need there. We have the oldest and largest nuclear pharmacy program in the country, and they are coming to us for workforce development. And so we are moving forward with some very innovative approaches for a training center there in Radiopharmaceuticals in Indianapolis that would be part of the Purdue University in Indianapolis. Spectrum of things that we’re going to offer there.

               And lastly, we really are trying to build up the workforce development piece around advanced manufacturing of pharmaceuticals. This is done with the William Young Institute for Advanced Manufacturing of Pharmaceuticals, a collaboration between the College of Engineering, the College of Science, and the College of Pharmacy. There’s a tremendous need for building out workforce capacity for pharmaceutical manufacturing throughout the country, but particularly here in the Midwest. Eli Lilly has some very specific needs, and we have a very strong partnership with Lilly. So we’re building that out, both in Indianapolis, and up the hard tech corridor into Lebanon, into the LEAP District there where Lilly is doing some expansion as well. So we’re excited about the opportunities there for Purdue University in Indianapolis and all of the pieces that that’s going to allow us to do.

               In addition, we’re really thinking about ways that we can be global leaders, both in drug discovery and in drug development. We’re looking at our global partnerships, building out that partnership that we already have established with Columbia and several universities in Columbia, looking at what we’re doing in Kenya and in Africa. And then also more recently, we’re looking at the country of Ireland, and we’ve had some conversations there. Over half of the exports from Ireland are now biopharma related, and they’ve done many of the same kinds of things in country there in Ireland, that we want to do here in Indiana. So we’re creating those partnerships so that we’re global leaders in drug discovery and development.

 

               And then the other piece, from a global perspective, is global health. And that really ties to our health equity mission. And we’ve been building out our capacity in Indianapolis through the Center for Health Equity and Innovation, led by Dr. Jasmine Gonzalvo. And we were able to bring a former US Surgeon General, Jerome Adams, to our campus, and he’s leading campus level health equity initiatives, as well.

               The last thing that people can look forward to, we’ve already broken ground now on the new nursing and pharmacy education building. Super excited about bringing a modern clinical education space to the Purdue campus for our health professions, particularly for pharmacy and nursing. But the other piece that we have to build out, and we’re continuing conversations on, is our research space, our basic science research space, for our medicinal chemistry and molecular pharmacology department, as well as the industrial and molecular pharmaceuticals department.

               And so we are having active conversations about research space, and sometimes that doesn’t sound very exciting. Maybe it sounds a little boring. But space matters a lot. Having high quality space allows us to recruit the very best faculty here, to retain the very best faculty, and frankly, recruit the best students here. People like new and shiny things. But we also have to have the spaces where people can collaborate and can conduct their experiments, and do impactful research that then drives the industry and the discipline forward.

Isabella Tobin:              Yeah, I’m very excited about the new building. I think it’s going to be really great, and I’m really looking forward to it. And I love what you said about Ireland. I had been on a study abroad trip for chemical engineering and industrial pharmacy back in March, and it was just really incredible hearing about all the different things they have going on. I’m excited to see how we’ll be bringing that back to our campus.

Eric Barker:     Great.

Isabella Tobin:              In her role as the wife of the Dean, Loretta devotes countless hours to the College of Pharmacy, attending events, encouraging students, and spending time with alumni. She plays an integral role in alumni engagement.

Loretta Barker:             I think the Purdue Pharmacy family is so welcoming, and they’re so gracious. And I enjoy interacting, because I could talk pharmacy with the people, and I enjoy hearing their stories. I ask them, “How did you get here? What inspired you to become a pharmacist?” And they talk about how their work experience, and we compare notes sometimes. And it’s funny because pharmacy is really small, because they’ll say, “Well, I know so-and-so.” I’m like, “Well, I used to work with them.” And it’s just a welcoming community, and I just really enjoy getting to know our alums, getting to know the students that we had over. It’s just a great community.

 

Isabella Tobin:              Yeah. Well, that’s fantastic to hear. So I know, Dean Barker, you had mentioned all of these great things that are coming. What are some important ways that the pharmacy family can stay involved in those?

Eric Barker:     First and foremost, always take advantage of opportunities to volunteer. That’s the easiest thing to do. We put out a call through our alumni manager all through the year for opportunities to come and interact with our students. So first, volunteer when you can, come back for pharmacy orientation, and be part of the pharmacy round tables. The other way to be involved, especially for our clinical practicing pharmacists, is be a preceptor. Dr. Shepler in the experiential education office is always looking for great new preceptors. And we know that Purdue alumni, Purdue pharmacists, make phenomenal preceptors. And so those are some of the really easy things to do that just sort of fit into your normal, everyday life.

               Beyond that, certainly coming back to campus and staying engaged when we have events. We have local events sometimes, we have receptions in Indianapolis, we have homecoming tents and events here on the Purdue campus. Anytime we’re out and about, and at national meetings, when we’re at all of the major national meetings. Coming to our receptions and being engaged as an alum, those are part of staying connected as the Purdue Pharmacy family. And then of course, the last thing we always encourage folks to consider doing is financially supporting the college. And we always have opportunities to celebrate the extraordinary generosity of our alumni. Last spring, we again won the Purdue Day of Giving. The College of Pharmacy won the Purdue Day of Giving. And that’s, in full part, due to the extraordinary generosity of our alumni, who continue to support the college. But they understand they’re not just giving to a place, they’re giving to the people. They’re giving to support our students. They’re giving to support programs. They’re giving to support the new building that’s going to impact students for decades.

               And we are so blessed at Purdue, and in the College of Pharmacy, to have alumni who do that. And I hope that they know how grateful we are for that support. Because it is not like that at every college of Pharmacy in the country.

And that makes this a very, very special place.

Isabella Tobin:              Yeah, that’s really great to hear. I know I really love being a part of Purdue. It’s been one of the things that makes it easier, being an out-of-state student, just knowing that there’s a whole support of boilermakers across the world that I can rely on. It’s incredible. We often like to interject a little fun in our podcast conversations, to give listeners a glimpse at the lighter side of our guests. Today’s final question does just that. All right, and that brings us to our final question, arguably the most important question on this entire podcast. Who is the chef of your family?

Loretta Barker:             Well, it depends. I do a lot of the cooking in the house, I would say. Eric is the one that’s out there if it’s grilling, smoking meats, that is Eric. Whereas I enjoy the baking, especially around Christmas-time. I do a lot of my traditional Polish cookies that is highly sought after by my father-in-law. He’s like, “Did you make those yet? Did you make the kolaczkis yet?” Or whatever I make, he’s always like, “Did you make that yet?” Not only him, but also just our family in general. I do the traditional, some Polish cookies around Christmas-time, that I will mail out to family members as well.

Eric Barker:     I think it does sort of break down sometimes. First of all, I think we cook a lot together. But if there’s fire and smoke involved, usually I’m outside grilling or doing stuff with meat. I think when Covid first started and we were all sort of trapped in the house, we weren’t going out to eat, we started cooking even more. And we’ve just kind of gotten into that habit over the last few years, that we’d rather just stay home and cook. We enjoy doing that together. During Covid, early days, meat was not being sold to restaurants. And so you would go to the grocery store and there would be like whole beef tenderloins, wrapped, vacuum packed still. Restaurants weren’t buying them, and they were selling them for like $9 a pound, and now it’s like $30 a pound. So I go home and I’m watching YouTube videos on how to butcher and cut a whole beef tenderloin.

And so I got my butchering skills. But then we did Covid cakes.

Loretta Barker:             We did Covid cakes.

Eric Barker:     Did Covid cakes, and so we baked a lot together. So my joke, always-

Loretta Barker:             Our children got involved in baking cakes with us.

Eric Barker:     Yeah. So my joke was, I was a butcher and I was a baker, but the one thing I never got to do during Covid was, I never became a candlestick maker. But what I wanted to give you was, we actually have this pharmacy branded game day candle that our development team developed. And so I guess they are the candlestick makers in this. But Isabella, I’ll give this to you as a gift, and to thank you for taking on this role as our podcast host.

Isabella Tobin:              Well, thank you so much. I love candles. I’m very excited. My roommates are also very fond of candles. I’m going to put that right in our kitchen as soon as I get home. But again, thank you both so much for being here today. I know you had some amazing stories to share, and some incredible insights, and I’m sure our audience is going to love that.

Eric Barker:     Great.

Loretta Barker:             Thank you.

Isabella Tobin:              We’re so thrilled to have had Dean Eric Barker and his wife, esteemed pharmacist in her own right, Loretta Barker, on this episode. Head to our website to see the full interview video at pharmacy.purdue.edu/podcast. While you’re there, be sure to look for trailers from our upcoming episodes.