(295) Golden Bear Summer Camp as a Tool to Aid in Diverse Student Recruitment

Objective : By engaging local high school students in a free College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (CoPHS)-offered summer camp, we hope to increase enrollment of a diverse student body into our 0 – 6 Doctor of Pharmacy program.

Methods: The Golden Bear Summer Camp (GBSC) was first developed in 2016, is funded through sponsor grants, and facilitated by CoPHS faculty, staff, and students. The 5-day camp has been offered both in-person and remotely at no cost to high school students from diverse area schools. GBSC focuses on activities ranging from improving wellness (yoga/tai-chi), presenting compounding and DNA extraction labs, introducing clinical skills such as obtaining blood pressure/pulse, and working with our “simulation patient.” Students have sessions on applying for college and obtaining financial aid. This year, GBSC will be more clinically focused where students will follow a patient case through various areas of pharmacy to learn how to treat the patient in the different care settings. GBSC coordinators currently identify a gap in offering a youth mental health component in the camp curriculum.

Results: GBSC has hosted up to 50 students at a time per camp and the CoPHS has begun to institute a tracking procedure to capture PharmD enrollment data through GBSC. Future camp offerings hope to incorporate principles of youth mental health first aid training.

Conclusions: GBSC is a recruitment pathway to increase enrollment of students from our diverse, local community. GBSC has evolved to include more introductory clinical application skills with trends of clinical changes, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) needs, and continues to grow. Our hope is that students will go back into our community to serve local patients.