Melanie A. Dodd, Pharm.D., Ph.C., BCPS, FASHP is Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs and Professor in Geriatrics at The University of New Mexico (UNM) College of Pharmacy in Albuquerque, NM. She is also currently serving as the President of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP). She completed her B.S. in Pharmacy at Purdue University (1994), Doctor of Pharmacy at The University of New Mexico (1997) and a pharmacy practice residency at Presbyterian Healthcare Services in Albuquerque, NM (1998). She has been a faculty member at the UNM College of Pharmacy for 27 years, where she began with the NM Medicaid DUR Program. She now practices as a pharmacist clinician in geriatric primary care with broad prescriptive authority at the UNM Hospitals Senior Health Clinic and is a consultant pharmacist for 340B-eligible and other ambulatory clinics. She also oversees innovative clinical models and faculty clinical services, including credentialing, contracting, billing and reimbursement, providing key pharmacy professional advocacy, and serving on academic and health-system leadership committees. She is responsible for extensive didactic and clinical teaching activities in the Pharm.D. program and Health Sciences Center, including geriatric syndromes, pharmacy law, and interprofessional education, and serves as a pharmacy residency preceptor. Her research includes geriatric syndromes, advanced practice pharmacist models, and scholarship of teaching.
Dr. Dodd has been actively involved with pharmacy professional organizations and an active advocate for advancing the pharmacy profession at the state and national level throughout her career. She is past-chair of the ASHP House of Delegates, the Council on Public Policy, and Section of Ambulatory Care Practitioners. She is past-president of the New Mexico Society of Health-System Pharmacists (NMSHP) and the faculty advisor for the UNM College of Pharmacy Student Society of Health-System Pharmacy.
2021: Michael Raburn, Class of 1987
2022: Ronald Marotto, Class of 1966
2023: Katrina Mealey, Class of 1986
2024: Jennifer Ortega, Class of 2001
2025: Charles Vandiver, Class of 1981
Kelsea Gallegos Aragon is an Associate Professor of Pharmacy Practice and Administrative Sciences at the University of New Mexico (UNM) College of Pharmacy. She is a pharmacist clinician at UNM Truman Health Services where she provides cardiovascular risk reduction to people with HIV and gender affirming care to transgender and gender diverse people. She has represented the profession of pharmacy at the White House ¡Adelante! Summit: A White House Convening to Accelerate Our Nation's HIV Response in Hispanic/Latino Communities in 2024. She is very engaged in the American Pharmacists Association where she has served in multiple national positions and serves as Chapter Advisor for the UNM APhA-ASP Chapter who won National Chapter of the Year in 2023.
She has a passion for student pharmacist and pharmacy resident wellbeing and professional development and serves as the UNM COP Director of Student Pharmacist Career Planning. She teaches the Intro and Advanced Self-Care Integrated Pharmacotherapeutics and in the Professional Development series throughout the didactic curriculum. She finds joy in watching student pharmacists grow throughout the curriculum and takes many APPE students in both Ambulatory Care and Academia rotations.
2021: Davena Norris, Class of 2012
2022: Monique Dodd, Class of 2014
2023: Keenan Ryan, Class of 2014
2024: Rose Pavlakos, Class of 2014
2025: Adam Henrie, Class of 2016
Dr. Marcus A. Garcia was born and raised in Las Vegas, New Mexico. He earned his Doctor of Pharmacy in 2020 from the University of New Mexico College of Pharmacy. Following graduation, he pursued advanced research training through a clinical research fellowship with the Rhodes Group and TriCore Reference Laboratories, where he contributed to translational and clinical laboratory research. Dr. Garcia later joined the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the ASERT-IRACDA Program, a National Institutes of Health supported initiative designed to train the next generation of research scientists and educators. During this time, he was also selected as a PhRMA Foundation Fellow, a nationally competitive award supporting innovative clinical and translational research. Through these fellowships, Dr. Garcia developed a research program focused on environmental toxicology, particularly the human health impacts of exposure to micro- and nanoplastics.
Dr. Garcia has become an internationally recognized expert in micro- and nanoplastic exposure and its potential effects on human health. He is a co-first author on the landmark study "Bioaccumulation of Microplastics in Decedent Human Brains," published in Nature Medicine, which demonstrated the presence of micro- and nanoplastics in human brain, liver, and kidney tissues. This study also identified increasing concentrations of these particles in human tissues over time, drawing significant global scientific attention and helping establish new methodologies for detecting and quantifying plastic particles in human biological samples. Additionally, Dr. Garcia has publications, including studies on microplastics in human placental tissue and research exploring metabolic and neurological effects of plastic exposure, contributing to a rapidly growing field examining how environmental plastic pollution may affect human health. Through his research, numerous publications, and international collaborations, Dr. Garcia has established himself as a leader in the emerging field of micro- and nanoplastics research, advancing the understanding of their impact on human health and shaping the global scientific response to this critical environmental and public health challenge.
2020: C. Frank Bennett, Class of 1980
2021: Brian Werth, Class of 2010
2022: Hengameh Raissy, Class of 1999
2023: Katrina Mealey, Class of 1986
2024: Todd Conner, Class of 2005
Nawarskas is Associate Professor of Pharmacy at the UNM College of Pharmacy (COP) and Associate Professor of Medicine at the UNM School of Medicine, Division of Cardiology. Dr. Nawarskas provides didactic and experiential teaching in several courses at the UNM College of Pharmacy focusing on cardiovascular medicine and also provides clinical pharmacy services at UNM Hospital with the Division of Cardiology. He was recently named Director of Professional Curriculum Assessment and Quality Improvement at the COP and is actively engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning.
Feng is an expert in biochemistry and biophysics of metalloproteins and oxidoreductases. He has authored more than 96 scientific manuscripts and has been continually funded by the NIH. He is an active grant reviewer for NIH, NSF and French National Research Agency. His lab focuses on the central question of how Nature has optimized protein dynamics to promote electron transfer. This question forms his life’s work and is a source of endless fascination for him. The Feng laboratory is active in an innovative combination of cutting-edge approaches, including laser flash photolysis, pulsed EPR, ultrafast 2D IR, genetic code expansion and computational chemistry.
The goal is to understand what the function of a biological relevant metal site is, how it achieves its function, and what factors dictate its function. Feng’s recent studies of the NOS proteins demonstrate that functional domain motions and interdomain docking play a central role in NOS isoform function by modulating key electron transfer processes. Molecular mechanisms of NOS regulation are potentially key targets for development of direct, selective new pharmaceuticals for treating several diseases that currently lack effective treatments.