Section C · Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Monday, August 16, 1999
Dean of pharmacy fills technology prescription
By Carrie Petree
Special to the Kansan
The door to his office is always open. And it should remain open in the near future.
Jack Fincham, dean of the School of Pharmacy, was a finalist for the position of dean of the University of Georgia Pharmacy College. Fincham withdrew from consideration for the position in late July.
For Fincham the process was an opportunity to grow.
"I think that a lot of times you have to stretch yourselves and look at what you are doing, look at whether you are in the right place at the right time." Fincham said. "Just looking at other opportunities is one way to see whether I am doing that."
For now, Fincham is focusing on his career here. It is important, he said, that a university constantly strives to provide a better learning environment.
His past projects had been a lounge for pharmacy students in Malott Hall and the addition of six computers and pharmacy software to the lab where students learn how to dispense drugs. His current project involves incorporating more technology into the two major pharmacy classrooms in Malott Hall.
SCHOOL OF PHARMACY
"One of the goals that I have is that students can eventually plug a laptop computer into a port, which will allow a lot of good things to happen," Fincham said.
2056 Malott Hall
2006 Mahan Man
Office phone number: 864-3591
Office the number: 604-3591
380 students enrolled in school
The school was founded in 1885
Notable graduate: Jane Siebert, a KU graduate in the 1980s,
was the first woman in the United States to be director of pharmaceutical services of a pharmacy chain
G. R. Gordon-Ross, Lawrence second-year pharmacy student, said Fincham's professionalism and open-door policy has given him character and opportunities.
"He has given me a lot of confidence in my abilities and helped me in any way that I have asked him to," Gordon-Ross said. "He is very well-known in the profession, and that will help as well, just being able to say that I worked under Dean Fincham. Indirectly, that will help us all."
Finchah is a student's dean, according to Larry Davidow, dispensing lab facilitator.
"He spends an unbelievable amount of time working to benefit pharmacy students," Davidow said, "In not all schools do students benefit as they do here."
This student focus and student orientation is what Davidow said he has gained from Fincham.
"he serves by example," Davidow said. Fincham said 20 years of teaching had
given him a student-orientated philosophy. After he graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1975, he was a pharmacist for five years and a pharmacy teacher at three other institutions for 14 years. He came to KU in 1994 as dean and as a professor.
He said that he had always enjoyed teaching and working with students and that students are why the University was here.
"It is the university's and faculty's job to do everything that they can to make that experience the best possible." Fincham said.
Fincham has attempted to unite the pharmacy students within the university, but also to unite them with the rest of the pharmaceutical field. He said the field was a small community within the United States, and he told his students that they were about to begin a 40-year relationship with the KU pharmacy school and the rest of the field.
Gene Hotchkiss, assistant to the dean of the school of pharmacy, said he has seen that long-term relationship in the making.
"Dean Fincham has allocated resources and provided opportunities to all pharmacy student organizations within the School of Pharmacy," Hotchkiss said. "The availability of these opportunities is an integral and important facet in their education and professional development."
—Edited by Barak Bird
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Jack Fincham, dean of the school of pharmacy, has added technology to the school's programs. The dean recently turned down a job in Georgia to remain at the University of Kansas. Photo by Roger Nomer/Kansan
Star light, star bright, closer look at Lindley Hall tonight
Torry Crass, a Phelps, Wis., sophomore and president of the Astronomy Associates of lawrence, adjusts a telescope atop Lindley Hall. Students and the general public can use the telescopes. Photo by Jamie Roper/Kansan
By John Franey
Kansan staff writer
Although most observatories are located in desolate places on mountaintops far from the light pollution of the city, KU students and the public need journey no farther than Lindley Hall to view celestial bodies at the Tombaugh Observatory.
Named after Clyde Tombaugh, an early 20th-century astronomer who discovered Pluto, the observatory houses a collection of telescopes that are available to the public after dark on the second and fourth Sundays of each month.
"Saturn is quite spectacular through the six-inch refractor telescope," said Torry Crass, a Phelps, Wis., sophomore and president of The Astronomy Associates of Lawrence.
The array of telescopes includes five eight-inch reflector telescopes, a 14-inch and a 27-inch reflector telescopes, and a six-inch refractor telescope manufactured in 1885.
"Even though this is the oldest telescope we use, it's the best for planetary viewing because of the quality of the optics." Crass said.
Two of the eight-inch telescopes are linked to computers that are programmed to track particular objects in the night sky.
The 27-inch telescope, which was built in the 1930s and is no longer in use, is housed in a wooden dome that stands nearly three stories tall.
"With the computerized telescopes that we use for our open house, we can easily see over 100 objects in a night of viewing." Crass said.
Among those objects are the moon, planets, star clusters, nebulae, galaxies and any comets if they happen to be passing by.
tions were probably the most frequently asked by amateur stargazers surveying the moon's surface.
Crass said that, unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to see anything the Apollo 11 astronauts left on the moon. He said Apollo 11 ques-
"The moon is a big object," he said. "Looking for a flag on its surface is like looking for a pin." But Crass said that most people were amazed by the clear view of the moon or the rings of Saturn on a clear night.
Most people who show up to stargaze are usually members of the associates, but Crass said that the public also can use the telescopes.
Steve Shawl, professor of physics and astronomy and director of the Tombaugh Observatory, expressed a desire to have more of the community use the observatory.
"The department is working hard to move the observatory to a better site," Shawl said. He added that a better site would be one with less light pollution, but he did not say where it might be located.
- Edited by Mike Miller
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