Former School of Pharmacy Dean Knapp Honored with Portrait

Dean of the School from 1989 to 2007 presided over the planning of a $67 million addition.

By Steve Berberich
May 13, 2009

The man often credited with leading the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy to a top 10 ranking, David A. Knapp, PhD, was honored on May 11 with a life-sized oil portrait to be hung in the new Pharmacy Hall Addition in 2010.

Knapp was dean of the School from 1989 to 2007 and presided over the planning of the $67 million Addition, which is being built largely in response to a nationwide workforce shortage of pharmacists and the profession’s increasingly critical role in administering pharmacogenomic-guided drugs.

University of Maryland, Baltimore President David J. Ramsay, DM, DPhil, said, “Dr. Knapp was superb in thinking of the campus as a whole,” while working with the deans of the six other schools of the University. Ramsay said, “You did a remarkable job for a long period of time. It has been a marvelous career, and I always enjoyed working with you all these years.”

Natalie D. Eddington, PhD, the current dean of the School of Pharmacy, said, “This portrait is a tribute to Dr. Knapp’s 18 years of service to the School. Among his many accomplishments was that he initiated our all PharmD curriculum, created a non-traditional PharmD program for practicing pharmacists, and increased the School’s extramural funding and philanthropic giving. And he led the School to a top 10 ranking.”

Knapp is a professor of pharmaceutical health services research, still on the School faculty at its Shady Grove campus. “What a blast it has been to work with the School of Pharmacy and to continue to work with the School of Pharmacy today,” he said.

Knapp earned his BS in pharmacy, and his MS and PhD degrees at Purdue, served on the faculty at The Ohio State University, and joined Maryland in 1971 after a sabbatical year at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. He has published over 165 papers and presented his work in many forums. Knapp’s teaching emphasis has been on the organization and financing of health care services in the U.S. market economy and pluralistic health care system. His research interests include drugs and public policy, quality of drug prescribing and use, organization and financing of care, and pharmacy workforce and education issues. Knapp has been a pioneer in the development of criteria of ambulatory drug use review.

The Knapp portrait was painted by Lisa Egeli of Churchton, Maryland. Knapp was the sixth dean of the School. Portraits of all six previous deans will be featured in the Pharmacy Hall Addition when it opens in the fall of 2010.