Wanat Earns Excellence in Service Award for Education from Society of Critical Care Medicine Texas Chapter

UH College of Pharmacy's Matthew A. Wanat, Pharm.D., BCPS, BCCCP, was honored with the 2015 Excellence in Service Award for Education by the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) Texas Chapter.

A clinical assistant professor at the college, Wanat also was installed as the chapter's president-elect at the organization's March 16 meeting in Houston. In addition to his UHCOP post, Wanat serves as a clinical pharmacy specialist in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit at Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center (MEDVAMC) and a clinical instructor at Baylor College of Medicine.

At UHCOP, Wanat teaches and coordinates the Critical Care Pharmacotherapy elective course and teaches Cardiology/Critical Care topics in the Advanced Therapeutics course in addition to literature evaluation and drug information. He also teaches pharmacy students and pharmacy residents on a Cardiac ICU rotation at MEDVAMC.

"I was very lucky to have trained under some excellent faculty and clinical pharmacists that shaped the educator that I am today," Wanat said. "Along the way, I have tried to take the most effective teaching and precepting strategies from my past mentors and use them as the foundations of the preceptor I’ve become.

"My teaching philosophy is guided by two main principles: A balanced responsibility for learning between the educator and learner, and a passion for what you teach or do that sparks the energy and motivation in students to do great things."

Wanat received the Rho Chi Teaching Excellence Award from the UHCOP chapter of the Rho Chi Honor Society in 2013 and in 2015, and was inducted into the Phi Lambda Sigma Pharmacy Leadership Society in 2014. Wanat was also recognized by the UH College of Pharmacy Faculty Affairs Committee with the Teaching Excellence Award in 2014. In 2015, Wanat received the 2014 Excellence in Leadership Award from the SCCM Texas Chapter as well as a 2015 Presidential Citation from the SCCM's national office.

Following his arrival at UHCOP, Wanat was part of a team that restructured the critical care elective course into a flipped classroom approach with online lecture and in-class active learning. Highly regarded by students, this teaching approach is the basis of a publication recently accepted for publication in the American Journal of Pharmacy Education.

Wanat is the recipient of UH-awarded $25,000 Teaching Innovation Program (TIP) Grant for a project to survey knowledge-based critical thinking skills, and is a co-recipient/collaborator on several other grants to enhance teaching and learning at the college.

In addition to starting his three-year leadership term (president-elect, president and immediate past president) for the SCCM Texas Chapter, Wanat has served on the organization's board of directors and several committees. A faculty advisor for the UH Chapter of Student Society of Health-System Pharmacists, Wanat also has served on the education planning committee for the Texas Society of Health-System Pharmacists and on the editorial board of the TSHP Journal.