Hospital pharmacist receives UM's Outstanding Young Alumni Award

Jillian Foster

uring Homecoming 2012, Jillian Foster of Oxford received the Outstanding Young Alumni Award, one of the University of Mississippi Alumni Association's highest annual honors, and was recognized at a campus reception and dinner.

Recipients of the award demonstrate exemplary leadership in their careers and dedication to the university during the first 15 years of their alumni status.

Foster (PharmD 04, MBA 08) said she felt both humble and proud to receive the award.

"Any service I am involved with is because I genuinely enjoy doing it," she said. "From my first semester at Ole Miss, I have been inspired to serve in ways that magnify the strengths of the university and School of Pharmacy and provide constructive feedback on how [they] can continue to improve."

Foster is director of pharmacy at Baptist Memorial Hospital-North Mississippi in Oxford, where she leads a team of 38 employees in maintaining quality care for patients. She is a preceptor for UM's pharmacy students and recently received one of 16 national grants to establish a pharmacy residency training program.

Besides earning her Pharm.D. and MBA, Foster completed a Health Policy Fellowship with U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran in 2005. She also completed pharmacy practice and specialty residencies with an emphasis in pharmacy management and administration at North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo, where she once oversaw the hospital's pharmacy insurance benefit plan and managed the employee pharmacy.

"There is no one more deserving of UM's Outstanding Young Alumni Award than Jillian," said David D. Allen, dean of the pharmacy school. "Since her graduation, she has accumulated many outstanding accomplishments and given back so much to the university and the School of Pharmacy."

Foster has chaired the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists' Council on Public Policy and served terms on ASHP's New Practitioner's Leadership advisory committee. She was president of the Mississippi Society of Health-System Pharmacists and is on the Mississippi Pharmacist Association's executive committee.

Named both MSHP's and MPhA's Outstanding Young Pharmacist of the Year, Foster is president of the Ole Miss Pharmacy Alumni Chapter, a member of the Oxford Rotary Club and Delta Gamma Alumnae Chapter, a volunteer at the Oxford Medical Ministries Clinic and teaches kindergarten choir at North Oxford Baptist Church.

Foster said that it is an honor to be asked to serve.

"If [people] value my work, then I am thrilled to continue to help out in any way I can," she said. "There is nothing outstanding about me, but I have been given outstanding opportunities and took advantage of many of them."