News @ VCU School of Pharmacy

McFarlanes give back … again

To read the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s story about the McFarlanes’ new endowed professorship, please click here.

Nancy and Ron McFarlane, both of whom earned their B.S. degrees from the School of Pharmacy in 1980, have donated $250,000 to the school for an endowed professorship in pharmacy practice.

Just over a year ago, the couple also established the Phi Delta Chi Scholarship and the Nancy L. and Ronald H. McFarlane Scholarship.

“The school is doing a lot of great things,” says Ron McFarlane. “We are happy to be able to help them achieve and grow their mission.”

Current first-year students might recognize the McFarlane name because the couple visited campus in October to talk about independent pharmacy, particularly specialty pharmacies.

The McFarlanes’ own business, the Raleigh, N.C.-based MedProRx Inc., is an accredited specialty infusion pharmacy that focuses on treatments for people with bleeding, autoimmune neuromuscular and rheumatologic disorders and other complex medical conditions. Ron says MedProRx, which opened in 2002, is one of few such pharmacies left on the East Coast.

Ron is chief operating officer and Nancy is president of their company, which last year earned the top spot in Triangle Business Journal’s 2008 Fast 50 Award. The award recognizes the fastest growing privately held companies in the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle area. (For details on MedProRx, click here.)

“I am thrilled that we are in a position to help the school that helped us,” says Nancy.

Speaking specifically of the endowed professorship, Ron says, “The dean [Victor Yanchick] and development director [Ellen Leverich] talked about the need, and Dr. [Tom] Reinders was a big influence.”

Laughing, he adds that he and Nancy also have C. Eugene White (B.S. ’56), former dean of admissions, to thank. “He let us both in!”

Part of the reason the McFarlanes have such a strong connection with the School of Pharmacy is that they met here … in the library, to be exact, where Ron, tongue-in-cheek, says he was helping Nancy with “hyper alimentation calculations.”

The couple will have been married 29 years in November. And though they moved to North Carolina in the mid-1980s, Nancy McFarlane says the school has always been “an anchor for us back in Virginia.”

She grew up in Arlington, and Ron grew up in Roanoke.

Another family connection to the school is that Ron’s father, Raymond C. McFarlane, graduated from MCV School of Pharmacy in 1954. Ron says the school had a huge impact on his father, who grew up in Pocohontas, a southwestern Virginia coal-mining town.

In December 2007, the couple created the Nancy L. and Ronald H. McFarlane Scholarship as a tribute to the years they spent on the MCV Campus, as well as to family members. Paul Hansen (P4) is the current recipient of this scholarship.

At the same time, the McFarlanes established the Phi Delta Chi Scholarship in memory of Daniel A. Herbert, a 1966 graduate of MCV School of Pharmacy.

Both members of Phi Delta Chi, the McFarlanes did not meet Herbert before he died in September 2004. But, Ron says, “He was a legend on the pharmacy side. He was the big guy when I was a kid. I respected him from afar.”

Herbert founded Richmond Apothecaries. He was president of the American Pharmacists Association when he died and a past president of the American College of Apothecaries.

Herbert’s daughter, Catherine Cary, a 1989 graduate of the school, says, “My father truly loved his profession and was very grateful to the School of Pharmacy for providing him with the education he needed to pursue his dreams.

“I hope that this scholarship will enable its recipients to pursue their vision of pharmacy as well.”

The School of Pharmacy’s Alpha Delta chapter of Phi Delta Chi will recognize Laurie Oldiges (P4) as the first recipient of the scholarship in a private on-campus event March 29. The McFarlanes are expected to attend.

Meanwhile, back in Raleigh, Nancy now serves on city council. She says it has been hectic but that she enjoys it and hopes to help make positive changes in the city.

She and Ron have three children: Katherine (Katie), who graduated from Appalachian State University and attends nursing school in Raleigh; Emily, who graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and works for a New York ad agency; and Reynolds, a freshman at Appalachian State.

Submitted By:
Cynthia McMullen
3/9/2009