Faculty of Pharmacy Accreditation

Aspiring to reach the highest standards of education and as an integral part of Egypt's education system, Faculty of Pharmacy (pharmacy) at Future University in Egypt, worked over four years to develop a complete internal quality assurance system and succeeded in receiving accreditation from the National Authority for Quality Assurance and Accreditation of Education (NAQAAE) by the decree No 185 on 29th of September 2016, after its first application. pharmacy at FUE is the only private faculty to be accredited from the first round.

Accreditation of the pharmacy was only possible after fulfilling the 14 standards set by NAQAAE summing up the two main axes guaranteeing the delivery of good quality education namely, the institutional capacity and the educational effectiveness. In brief speech those fulfilled standards are:

1. Strategic Planning
2. Organizational Structure:
3. Leadership and Governance.
4. Credibility and ethics.
5. Administrative body.
6. Resources
7. Community service and environmental development
8. Students and graduates
9. Academic standards & educational programs.
10. Teaching and learning and their supporting facilities.
11. Staff members.
12. Scientific research and other scientific activities.
13. Institutional evaluation and quality management systems
14. Continuous assessment for educational effectiveness.

To achieve the above mentioned standards the faculty has performed the following activities and/or reached the following goals:

- Designed a five year strategic plan, 2012-2017 with four goals and fifteen strategic objectives where all stakeholders from the faculty and the society have been involved in the design one way or another and an executive plan with continuous follow up proved the achievement of the goals one after another.

- A hierarchical structure of the faculty with complete jobs descriptions were developed determining the qualifications, the responsibilities and the flow of orders and the control process in addition to a Quality Assurance Unit having its own skeleton which monitors the quality of all tasks in the faculty that are directly and indirectly affecting the educational process in the faculty.

- Establishing criteria for choosing academic leaders and those leaders adopted a democratic system in management and solving problems as reflected by making decisions after gathering opinions of staff members, teaching assistants, technicians, administrative employees and students.

- Developing and establishing an index for credibility and ethics, including rules of working, intellectual property-rights, fair practices and commitment to the ethics of profession.

- Developing the nstitutional, financial and human resources, both quantitatively and qualitatively to agree with the norms set by NAQAAE.

- pharmacy provided distinctive community services including organizing the biggest scientific gathering represented by the FUE-International conference of Pharmaceutical Sciences and establishing an International Pharmaceutical Journal with an international publisher, Elsevier to serve the Pharmacy society besides serving the community through several medical convoys for blood donations, providing brochures for awareness of different diseases and distributing medication to the needy peoples in collaboration with charity foundation …etc.

- Developing and implementing a new curriculum in collaboration with University Collage Cork (UCC) after analyzing the market needs and adopting the National Academic Reference Standards (NARS), where students are now receiving more courses in the field of Pharmacy Practice and Clinical Pharmacy.

- Developing an education strategy based on interactive learning and modernized evaluation methods and establishing the program description to guarantee the development of the students’ skills in accordance with the market needs to increase the competency of the program and improve the graduate competition in the market.

- Developing students’ advising system and preparing advising guidance book and students’ handbook to supported students with all necessary information during their years of study at pharmacy.

- Upgrading the teaching facilities including the lecture halls, students' labs and the faculty factory with new scientific, presentation and electronic equipment, to facilitate teaching and learning besides introducing the concept of E-learning through establishing Moodle as a tool of communication between staff members and students.

- Recruiting qualified and experienced staff members and assistant staff besides working on continuous training for developing extra skills both in the field of education and quality of education as well as in the field of research development.

- Developing a research plan where different faculty departments were involved aiming to conduct multidisciplinary researches that could be applicable and useful to the society.

- Fully equipping the research laboratories with advanced research equipment to support the enthusiastic research plan with a full support from the university with the required materials and encouraging the researchers trough distribution of research awards.

- Developing and establishing post-graduate MSc. programs with SCHE approved By-Low in two Pharmaceutical specialties, namely Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technologies. However this standard was not applicable during NAQAAE's visit, five students started the post graduate Pharmaceutical Technologies program in the academic year 2016/2017.

- Continuous self-evaluation for the faculty was performed periodically during the past four years to assure compliance with the developed quality system by the Quality Assurance Unit, under the leadership of the dean and with a full support from the University.

- Periodic assessment for the educational process through the Quality Assurance Unit to assure complaints with the specified program and courses and corrective actions were taken to improve the performance based on evaluation by students and skillful evaluators from inside and outside the institution.

For applying to NAQAAE seeking accreditation a self- assessment report for faculty was sent to NAQAAE in December 2015, in addition to supporting documents. An inspection committee was nominated by NAQAAE to review the faculty to make sure that pharmacy fulfilled the criteria set by NAQAAE. In April 2016, the faculty welcomed NAQAAE’s selected review team. Over a period of three full days, the review team held meetings with various pharmacy members including staff members, teaching assistants, students, administration members and other stakeholders representing society as well as faculty graduates. They also visited different faculty’s facilities, including lecture halls, labs, offices, library, factory, food court as well as students’ activities facilities. They also checked supporting documents.

On September 29, 2016, pharmacy received the decision of accreditation by NAQAAE’s council. A formal celebration was arranged by NAQAAE to award the institutions which obtained the accreditation in the year 2015/2016, where the President of Future University in Egypt, Prof. Ebada Sarhan and the Dean of pharmacy, Prof. Seham Elkheshen were awarded the accreditation-armor and received the certificate.