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Third-year pharmacy student Shira Hendrix (at left) and Bryant High School junior Addison Taylor (at right) examine their choices of dye to make soap.
Image by Evan Lewis
2025 Pharmacy Camp Opens Young Minds to New Possibilities
| Just about everyone has visited a pharmacy, but it’s a rare experience to get a peek behind the curtain. For three days in June, 39 high school students from Arkansas, Missouri and Arizona got to do just that, learning about the profession and potentially sparking their interest in pharmacy careers.
Held June 2-4 at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ (UAMS) Little Rock campus, the camp was packed with labs, campus tours and other group activities. It was the first in-depth look at the profession for many of the campers, and they arrived each morning with enthusiasm and a bevy of questions for College of Pharmacy faculty.
The EDII ninth floor labs were a hub of activity for the campers, who donned colorful smocks and plastic gloves before making such everyday compounds such as soaps, lip balms and ointments. A selection of various flavors and scents allowed campers to personalize their creations, often in colors ranging from muted reds and blues to neon green.
Thirty-nine students from across three states took part in the annual summer pharmacy camp this year.Evan Lewis
Lexi Browning, 17, a sophomore at Camden Fairview High School, mixed vanilla and sugar scents into melted glycerin cubes to make soap. She said the hands-on labs were her favorite part of the camp, and that it was helping open her mind to pharmacy career options.
“The more I’ve been here, the more I’m kind of getting interested [in pharmacy],” she said. “I know I want to do something in the medical field, like maybe anesthesiology. I’m just keeping an open mind to see what I want to do.”
Melanie Reinhardt, Pharm.D., an associate professor of pharmacy practice who has led the pharmacy camp labs for several years, said she’s always surprised by the amount of knowledge that campers already have, as well as their ability to pick things up quickly.
As she walked through rows of lab tables filled with students, Reinhardt explained the process of how to properly heat, mix, pour and cool creations like lip balm, lollipops and glycerin soap. Campers also learned how to clean equipment and print labels as a pharmacist would.
“As pharmacists, we’re real picky about how things are done,” Reinhardt told the campers. “That’s good when we’re working with patients’ medicine, which is very important, but I want y’all to have fun. If you mess up, that’s okay. That’s what labs are for: you’re practicing.”
Lexi Browning (at left), a sophomore at Camden Fairview High School, types instructions into a computer to make a label while second-year pharmacy student Emily Sanabria (at right) supervises.Evan Lewis
Although Reinhardt supervises the labs, several College of Pharmacy student ambassadors work with the campers. She steps in when they need help, but the ambassadors are mostly fine on their own, she said.
“It’s so fun for me to see our students teaching,” she said. “Hopefully it’s confidence-building for them — like ‘Hey, I did those labs before. I can do this.’”
That was exactly the case for Emily Sanabria, a second-year pharmacy student who was one of the ambassadors helping guide campers during labs. She said serving as a student ambassador has helped give her confidence as a pharmacy student.
“It’s definitely eye-opening because a lot of times, I don’t realize how much I’ve learned,” she said. “Going through this and being able to explain why we do certain things, it really reminds me that yes, you know how to do this Emily — you’re becoming an expert.”
Sanabria said that the camp is a great option for young students looking at pharmacy as a career.
“When I was in high school, my goal was to be a physician, so even when I was in undergrad, I was on the pre-med track,” she said. “It wasn’t until I did an internship with UAMS that I was like ‘Oh, I really do like this.’ If I would’ve known that I wanted to be a pharmacist, I would’ve definitely taken advantage of an opportunity like this.”
Henry Palfrey, Ph.D. (at right), a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of John D. Imig, Ph.D., explains some of his research.Benjamin Waldrum
Campers also embarked on multiple tours of different parts of campus, including the UAMS Outpatient Pharmacy and real, working labs in the Biomedical Sciences buildings. Splitting off into small groups allowed for more one-on-one time as the campers asked researchers and their team members questions about the scope of their work.
There were also presentations on various pharmacy careers, including the College of Pharmacy-run Arkansas Poison and Drug Information Center. Meghan Breckling, Pharm.D., an assistant professor in the college’s Center for Implementation Research, offered training on how to use naloxone to prevent death from opioid overdose, with campers taking free naloxone kits home with them.
Reinhardt, who has been a pharmacist since 1981, has helped with many pharmacy camps and worked with campers who eventually became College of Pharmacy students themselves. She said it’s still exciting being able to help open young minds to the profession.
“This is always fun, having a whole group up here to learn about pharmacy and just seeing their interest,” she said. “It’s always enjoyable to think that, looking around at this group, that possibly we’ll see one or two of them in a few years at pharmacy school.”