April 18th, 2013, was Honors Day at Presbyterian College. That afternoon Dr Sarah Sweitzer,  Associate Professor and Director of Research at PC School of Pharmacy was presented the Presbyterian College Scholar of the Year Award.  This prestigious award is presented to the PC faculty member who exemplifies outstanding research and scholarly activity. The award winner is selected by a committee of faculty members from all departments of Presbyterian College.

Dr Sweitzer has worked with many pharmacy and undergraduate students on research projects during the past year.  She has also been dedicated  in her efforts as Director of Research in developing policies, mentoring and assisting faculty  identify funding sources and evaluating their proposals. She has also been involved with the local middle school Science Olympiad program in Clinton, SC.

Dr. Sweitzer has probably traveled the most non-traditional career paths into Pharmacy Education and into the Southern United States.  She is originally from California and moved to Nevada to pursue her BS degree in (Physical) Chemistry from the University of Nevada, Reno.  From Nevada she went to Dartmouth College School of Medicine in New Hampshire to purse her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology with an emphasis in Neuroscience and Pain Research.  She then crossed back across the country and completed her post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University School of Medicine in California.  Then, for the third time, she crossed the country for faculty position at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine were she ran a government funded translational research laboratory exploring mechanisms of pain in sickle cell disease before joining the faculty at PCSP.  Over the course of her career she has had the pleasure of seeing one of her research compounds enter phase II human FDA studies and she has worked with undergraduates, graduate, physical therapy, genetic counseling, nurse anesthesia, medical and now pharmacy students.   Dr. Sweitzer says that the best part of her career is when she gets to work side-by-side with students at the research bench and share her love of science with the next generation of scientists and health care providers.  In all of her spare time, she takes science into her children’s classrooms and designs experiments for elementary school students.

Congratulations to Dr. Sarah Sweitzer for being named the Presbyterian College Scholar of the Year for 2013.