Southern California college looks at LV pharmacy school

Officials of Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona say Southern Nevada is a prime spot for the school.

"We are more enthusiastic now than we ever have been before," said Harry Rosenberg, pharmacy school dean at the college. "It's a growing area, and there's no pharmacy school in the state. The demand is there, without question."

A health care education report released this month by Nevada's public university system showed the state will have 110 job openings annually for pharmacists through at least 2006.

Yet the University and Community College System of Nevada has focused more energy on the possibility of building a dental school at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas to help the state meet its need to hire 40 dentists annually.

Although the governing board of Western University has beat Nevada's Board of Regents to the first step of directly addressing the demand for pharmacists in Nevada, the school's private trustees have not committed to opening a four-year pharmacy school.

Last summer, Western University opened a Las Vegas office to recruit Nevada students to its pharmacy school and physician's assistant program in Pomona. Those students would have the option of transferring to the Las Vegas campus, which could open as early as fall 2000.

Students would be charged more than $21,000 in annual tuition.

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