Students Meet in Lansing to Plan 2010 Convention Activities

On July 20, 13 Student MPA volunteers met with MPA Chief Executive Officer Larry Wagenknecht, Chief Operations Officer Dianne Miller and other MPA staff members to offer suggestions and insights into the planning for the student programming for the 2010 MPA Annual Convention & Exposition, being held at the Detroit Marriot at the Renaissance Center Feb. 26-28.

Working their way through a packed agenda were Danielle Brownlee, Shawn Depcinski, Dan Hedgcock, Emily Jacobs, Lindsey Simonetti, Jennifer Cena, Jody Gembarski, Steve Hsueh, Rachael Ng, Claire Lee and Cathryn Poll.

Adopt-a-Student Brainstorm
The group identified three main goals of this program.

• MPA Goal of Program = Establish a system where students are able to go to banquet at no cost as benefit of SMPA membership
• Parent Goal of Participation = Support student as an alumni, network, recruit and establish an ongoing relationship
• Student Goal of Participation = networking with pharmacists

Discussion then followed providing suggestions for improving the process next year.

Student Reception
The students suggested making the student reception even more casual with little structure so people could come and go. Other ideas included staying at the hotel, a Euchre tournament, placing one person from each school in charge of an activity, a hotel bar package, DJ, karaoke and others.

MSHP Student Luncheon
Last year, there was an overflow in the MSHP Student Luncheon attendance, with more than 100 compared with the 60 or so from previous years. The group suggested that it needs to be communicated to students if their RSVP is not accepted, remove the online registration link when the luncheon is full, advertise that it is focused on health-system/residency and clarify who gets into the student luncheon in advance.

Student Challenge
MPA staff discussed a new Student Program that they would like to offer at the Annaul Convention: the National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations (NASPA) and the Nonprescription Medicines Academy (NMA) Student Pharmacist Self-care Championship. MPA would become the 29th state association to offer this program to students. The game is based on the popular format of Jeopardy featuring teams from the colleges of pharmacy. Each school competes against each other with the winning team moving on to compete against the winning teams from the other colleges. At the end of this round, the team with the highest score will win the traveling trophy and bragging rights for a year.

The group also brainstormed other options for student programming at the Annual Convention and how MPA could meet the needs of students.

Following the meeting, many of the students and staff joined MPA President Jim Vander Linde for a Lansing Lugnuts baseball game.

Thanks to all the students for volunteering their time to make the 2010 MPA Annual Convention & Exposition a success.

Do you have suggestions on activities at the 2010 Annual Convention? Share it with Student MPA liaison La Vone Swanson.