You often can find her upstairs, in one of the cozy red chairs by the windows. It’s a perfect place to study.
It’s a perfect place to dream.
“The chairs look kind of weird, like half an egg, but they’re really comfortable,” said Patricia Malinowski, a third-year student in the College of Pharmacy at UNMC. “And the windows all around make it so light. Sometimes, I review my notes and then look out the windows, trying to remember what I read.
“And sometimes I just stare out those windows and daydream.” That study area is one of her favorite places in the college’s new building – the UNMC Center for Drug Discovery and the Lozier Center for Pharmacy Sciences and Education – which opened its doors for students this past August.
This building gives students like Malinowski the high-tech environment necessary to become better pharmacists for Nebraskans and people across the nation. But this building, she said, also seems to go way beyond its blueprint in a way that’s hard to explain.
“It probably sounds cheesy, but a building like this inspires us to care more – to dream big – about what we can do within the profession.
“I think some really big ideas are going to come out of this building.”
“It probably sounds cheesy, but a building like this inspires us to care more – to dream big – about what we can do within the profession.”
Patricia Malinowski
Malinowski is a people person. She’s president of her third-year College of Pharmacy class at UNMC.
Once the building opened, she soon discovered those cozy red chairs, and that area on the second level became her favorite place to study with friends.
“There’s so many group study areas here,” Malinowski said.
“I love that. I’m a big ‘group’ person, and I would not have come this far without my friends. In our old building, we didn’t have anything like this.”
For this interview she sat in another cozy space in the new building, a quiet nook on the ground floor right under the stairs. Nearby is another favorite space, the patient simulation rooms. She recently had a lab there in which she got to “mock counsel” a patient with type II diabetes and then a kid with type I diabetes.
“This place is just gorgeous,” Malinowski said, “and it’s a lot more conducive to learning. We have more space and more resources, like the patient simulation rooms. We didn’t get a lot of practice with patient interaction before, despite that it is such a large part of our job.”
Malinowski is from St. Louis, the daughter of two engineers. Their neighbors and close family friends were from Nebraska and, as it happens, were pharmacists who had graduated from UNMC. She decided to follow their path, graduating from UNL with a degree in biochemistry and then came to UNMC.
She loves the field of pharmacy. It’s a perfect fit, she said, because she loves interacting with people and helping them in practical and intangible ways. Lifesaving ways.
“I love the relationships you build. I like that accessibility and being able to explain medications in ways that don’t scare people.”
The three-floor, $35 million building – built entirely through private donations – is the length of a football field. Malinowski was present at the dedication last August and spoke to donors and other dignitaries at dinner.
She told them how the resources and advances in technology will help students move the field of pharmacy forward and help them become health care leaders. She talked about the patient simulation rooms and the building’s homey feel and some of the building’s other amazing features:
- A model pharmacy and the sterile preparation rooms.
- The two state-of-the-art Joseph D. & Millie E. Williams Auditoriums with tiered seating and recording capabilities, which may not sound that impressive, she said, “but trust me. It is something that is greatly appreciated among students.”
- Labs in the Center for Drug Discovery on the third level, where emerging infectious diseases will be studied for groundbreaking cures, and student researchers will hone their scientific techniques.
The opening of the new building, she told them, reminded her of how she felt as a kid on Christmas morning unwrapping a big gift. “My classmates and professors dreamed about how this new building would not only improve our learning, but the practice of pharmacy as a whole.”
And she thanked the crowd, on behalf of all students, for making their dreams come true.
“Big dreams turn into ideas then into outcomes.”