At the end of each spring and fall semester, UI College of Pharmacy Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) students identify faculty members who have encouraged, mentored, listened, and been stellar educators as their choice for Class Teachers of the Year. The annual award was established to acknowledge the importance of student opinion and ensure the recognition has meaning for students.
We are honored to announce Class Teachers of the Year award recipients for the 2023-2024 academic year. Congratulations to these outstanding educators!
Nicole Brogden
Class of 2027 (P1) Teacher of the Year
Nicole Brogden, the Ting-Fong and Nei-Jia Chin professor in Pharmaceutics, is a clinical pharmacist and pharmaceutical scientist with a translational research program centered around topical and transdermal drug delivery. Besides instructing PharmD students, Brogden teaches and runs a clinically focused lab in the College’s Pharmaceutical Sciences and Experimental Therapeutics Department.
Brogden earned her bachelor’s in biology and PharmD from Iowa and then completed a PGY1 residency at the University of Kentucky (UK). She subsequently worked as a pharmacist and achieved her PhD at UK. After graduation, Brogden returned to the UI College of Pharmacy and established her lab. Her most recent grant, titled “A translational approach to predicting small molecule drug permeation through microneedle-treated skin,” is a five-year National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant totaling $1.3 million. It is funded through NIH’s National Institute for General Medical Sciences.
Student comments included:
“Dr. Brogden is passionate about clinical research, and this comes across in every step of her teaching. The way that she summarizes and organizes her lecture content facilitates student learning. Dr. Brogden manages to explain complex processes in a simple way for everyone to understand, and I appreciate that she gives feedback on assignments. She provides a welcoming environment and is accessible to her students.”
Michelle Fravel
Class of 2026 (P2) Teacher of the Year
She came to the UI as a student and never left. Michelle Fravel, clinical professor in the Pharmacy Practice & Science Department (PPS), received her PharmD at the UI College of Pharmacy followed by PGY1 and PGY2 Ambulatory Care residencies at UI Health Care. She still maintains a clinical practice there in the same specialty area and also has worked in Anticoagulation Case Management. Fravel immediately joined the College’s faculty and today serves as assistant head of the PPS Division of Applied Clinical Sciences (ACS). She has been widely published and named a fellow of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy.
Student comments included:
“I loved Dr. Fravel’s teaching style. Her expectations, tasks, and day to day activities were clearly defined and aided in helping me understand what academia is really like. She provided us with many tips and tricks she uses in everyday practice that we can translate into our own experiences. I appreciate her caring attitude, and I have become a better pharmacist due to her assistance. Dr. Fravel is a role model as a pharmacist and professor.”
Jim Hoehns
Class of 2025 (P3) Teacher of the Year
Jim Hoehns is a stalwart of pharmacy in the state of Iowa. He currently is president of the Iowa Pharmacy Association (IPA) and has long been involved in IPA activities. As a PPS clinical professor and head of the Division of ACS, he passes this commitment to his students. Hoehns has won awards for posters, papers, and more.
Hoehns is research director at Cedar Valley Clinical Research, part of Cedar Valley Medical Specialists. He holds his clinical practice at Cedar Valley Primary Care in Waterloo, Iowa. For 28 years, Hoehns was involved with family medicine physician resident training at MercyOne Northeast Iowa Family Medicine residency. During this time, he was the research director and participated in more than 100 phase 2 or 3 clinical drug trials as a co-investigator or sub-investigator.
Student comments included:
“Dr. Hoehns had a lot of good information on the slides and stated the main takeaways, especially for the studies. I really appreciated all the practice problems and examples he went over in class following lecture content. I thought it drove home major concepts and prepared me for the exam. I also liked how we were able to work on problems with our peers and then discuss them all together in class. I thought this helped facilitate my learning.”