Honoring Faculty Excellence

UHCOP's Bond, Marwaha and Thornton Recognized with Teaching, Service and Research Awards

May 17 — UH College of Pharmacy faculty members Richard A. Bond, Ph.D., Aditi Marwaha, Ph.D., and J. Douglas Thornton, Ph.D., Pharm.D., BCPS, have been recognized with the college's 2018-19 Faculty Excellence Awards. 

Bond, who completed his Ph.D. in Pharmacology in 1988 and his B.S. in Pharmacy in 1983, was recognized with the Faculty Excellence Award in Service. A full Professor in the Department of Pharmacological & Pharmaceutical Sciences (PPS), Bond was honored for his exemplary service as University Ombudsperson under the UH Office of the Provost since 2017. 

The Ombudsperson's role is to provide a mechanism for both faculty and staff members to discuss their concerns confidentially with a respected senior colleague who will provide an objective, third-party perspective on their particular situation. Bond's nominator observed that the parties involved in these consultations appreciated his "ability to actively engage in a fashion that is perceived as fair, honest and non-biased, and the universal perception that he is genuinely invested in reaching a fair and equitable resolution for all parties involved."     

Marwaha, an instructional assistant professor in the PPS department and a 2005 UHCOP Pharmacology Ph.D. alumna, was honored with the college's Faculty Excellence Award in Teaching. In fall 2018, Marwaha was a recipient of the Alternative Textbook Incentive Program (ATIP) grant program from the UH Provost's Office and UH Libraries. The grant provided support for Marwaha to develop and launch an online "Pharmacy Calculations" textbook, which allowed students to avoid paying for a physical, hardbound textbook – at a savings of about $80 each – while still receiving the essential course content.

In addition,Marwaha also has mentored Pharm.D. and graduate students and junior faculty; embraced active learning styles and tools to better engage students in her courses; and attended or presented at several workshops and symposia focused on new pedagogies and instructional technologies. Her teaching techniques have been praised by students, who've offered such feedback as: "After your lectures, I am confident that I can apply the concepts you taught me and explain it to others – perhaps something that is most important to us as future pharmacists" and "Her labs were very effective at helping to solidify the material we learned in class as well as see how it might be used in the real world."

Thornton, who joined the college in late 2017, was recognized with the Faculty Excellence Award in Research. Thornton was recently awarded a one-year, $3.34 million grant from the Texas Commission of Health and Human Services for the "Texas Improved Dissemination and Evaluation of Single-use Disposal Pouches (TIDES)" project to reduce and prevent misuse and accidental ingestion of controlled substance prescriptions, especially opioids. The initiative is designed to develop and assess best practices for distribution of the special dissolution packs via county and regional community substance abuse entities.

Thornton also serves as co-director of The PREscription Drug MIsuse Education and Research Center (PREMIER Center), which was established at the college in December 2018. The center's mission is "improve patient outcomes by providing education on safe and effective controlled substance prescription use and to serve as a catalyst for collaborative research efforts to optimize pharmacotherapy used to manage pain and substance use disorders."