Sharks RX Spring 2015 Magazine

18 r NOVA SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY Alumni Pablo L. Aponte’s parents are both pharmacists, but they advised their son not to follow in their footsteps. “They told me not to go into pharmacy because they both worked too much,” said Aponte, Pharm.D., about what his father, Luis, and his mother, Ana, told him. Both were graduates of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Puerto Rico, class of 1981. In 1985, the couple opened Farmacia Villa Carmen in Caguas, Puerto Rico, about 20 miles south of the capital city, San Juan. “They have opened the doors of the pharmacy every single day for 28 years,” said Aponte with pride. When he was 16, Aponte said that he had an accident while driving his father’s new car. He went to work in the family pharmacy to help pay for the damaged car. “I started working in the front of the store, getting the supplies from the storage area. I began to like it. Then I moved into the dispensing area, where I would gather supplies for that area,” he said. After high school graduation, Aponte was accepted to Purdue University’s pre-pharmacy program in Indiana, so he moved to the United States and graduated from the school in 2004. “I began looking into pharmacy schools and NSU came up in my search. And when I started looking into the origins, I realized that NSU had professors who had Purdue backgrounds.” He cites Andres Malavé, Ph.D., the executive director of NSU’s Puerto Rico Regional Campus and former dean of the College of Pharmacy, who received Ph.D. degrees in pharmacology and toxicology from Purdue University. “I discovered a [research] paper that Dr. Malavé had written—and there were other connections to Purdue and NSU through this paper,” Aponte said. He also discovered that Appu Rathinavelu, Ph.D., former chairman of the Department of Pharmaceutical and Adminis- trative Sciences at NSU’s College of Pharmacy, had conducted his postdoctoral training at Purdue. Rathinavelu is currently the associate dean for institutional planning and development at the College of Pharmacy and executive director of NSU’s Rumbaugh-Goodwin Institute for Cancer Research. For Aponte, the Purdue-NSU connection was like a seal of approval. But what was most appealing was that he could study at NSU’s Puerto Rico location, which, at the time, was located on the campus of Pontifical Catholic University in Ponce, Puerto Rico’s second largest city. NSU’s Puerto Rico Regional Campus moved to San Juan in spring 2014. “That I could get the same degree in my home country as studying in the United States was so beneficial for me. It would give me the opportunity to be not too far from home,” said Aponte, who adds that the Ponce location was about an hour from his hometown and his parents’ pharmacy. “It was about my commitment to be back home. I had friends who studied in the United States and stayed there, but I really wanted to come back here.” While he was at the school, Aponte immersed himself not only in his studies, but in student organizations. Because NSU’s College of Pharmacy programwas quite new in Puerto Rico, he wanted to be active and participate. He was the Ponce, Puerto Rico, site representative for the NSU College of Pharmacy Student Gov- ernment Association for two years and became the NSU-COP Class of 2008 Ponce, Puerto Rico, site president. “We had a lot of projects, and I was very involved,” he said. As part of his education, Aponte came to the United States to do pharmacy practice experience at the Cleveland Clinic Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, working in administration. He also worked in internal medicine at Broward General Medical Center. In 2007, he did a pharmacy practice experience at Compounding Docs, Inc., in Boca Raton and worked in ambu- latory care at Coral Springs Medical Center. He returned to Caguas, Puerto Rico, where he worked in pediatrics at Hospital Interamericano de Medicina Avanzado (HIMA) and at NSU’s Drug Information Center in Ponce. He graduated fromNova Southeastern University’s College of Pharmacy in Ponce, Puerto Rico, in May of 2008, receiving his Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) degree. But he didn’t enter the family business right away. He came back to the United PABLO L. APONTE: FAMILY MATTERS A MAJOR PART OF PHARMACY BY MICHELLE F. SOLOMON