Pre-Pharmacy Track Star

Kayla Cash ’23 was a first-generation college student who did not like to waste her time when she entered Washington College. She had earned an associate degree in business administration during high school while working as a pharmacy technician in Richmond, Virginia. And she had researched the extracurricular options at Washington before arriving on campus.

She wanted to pursue medicine, and Washington's pre-health program helped her realize the variety of fields where she could make a difference, including by diving deeper into the pharmacy discipline she already knew.  

“It helped me see that it was an option for me and I could take it on,” Cash said. 

Cash worked at the independent Chester River Pharmacy while completing her Washington degree—in just three years—and served as president for both Cleopatra’s Sisters and the Health Occupations Student Association (HOSA).  

“I like making connections, and I liked the advocacy part of it. With HOSA, we catered to all health professions so it was nice to learn about fields outside pharmacy and medicine,” she said. “Being president of the organization, I learned some more organizational, structural things: hosting meetings, communicating with faculty and external speakers for events. I am definitely more comfortable talking to higher-ups because of it.” 

When it was time to enroll in a doctoral program in pharmacy, all of her planning and activities served Cash well, and she approached finding a graduate school with her usual zeal, researching programs and student organizations. She is now in her first year at the University of Florida’s pharmacy school, which is ranked fourth in the nation and offers an optional fifth year for a master’s degree in public health, an opportunity Cash wants to have after discovering the field, and the role pharmacists can play in it, through the public health minor at Washington. 

“That was full-on the curriculum. It didn’t click until I had those classes Dr. Yost taught,” Cash said of the public health-pharmacy opportunities. “There are definitely structural systems that inhibit people from having the best health they can.” 

— Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven