Pharmacy Professor Eddie L. Boyd Retires after a Distinguished 30-Year Career at U-M

On September 1, Associate Professor of Pharmacy Eddie L. Boyd said goodbye to the world of neatly pressed, starched, white pharmacist jackets and set a course for retirement life in Destrehan, La., thus ending a 30-year career as a faculty member in the University of Michigan College of Pharmacy.

“Just for the heck of it, I may even sleep late,” jokes Boyd, who had a habit of being the first faculty member at work each day.

In fact, he has been phasing into retirement since September 2001: teaching at the College half of the year and residing in Destrehan with his wife, Carolyn, the other half. Among other things, he used the transition to wrap up a final research project showing that oxymetazoline — an active ingredient in a long-acting, non-prescription nasal spray — appears to be an effective, lower-risk alternative to epinephrine to control gum bleeding during dental surgery.

Except for a two-year hiatus as associate dean and director of research at Xavier University in New Orleans in the early 1990s, Boyd had been a significant presence at the College since he arrived in 1971.

Recruited to U-M from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) by the late Pharmacy Dean Tom D. Rowe, Boyd was hired to fill two critical needs: 1) to buttress the College’s clinical faculty, which, at that time, included only two other members; and 2) to spearhead a minority recruitment and retention effort, an area in which Boyd had already distinguished himself while a pharmacy student at UCSF.

Boyd’s contributions to the College were significant in many areas — including his leadership in helping the College make the transition from a five-year, BS degree program to an all-PharmD professional degree program — but his legacy at the College will forever be linked to his ongoing commitment to making the College more inclusive of minorities.

Soon after arriving in July 1971, Boyd drafted a minority recruitment and retention plan and then met individually with every faculty member to discuss and fine-tune it. He and Rowe then collaborated on two federal grant proposals to finance the College’s first minority recruitment and retention program. Both proposals were funded, although one was returned as the government had a one-grant-per-institution limit.

By the fall of 1972, Boyd and the College’s then-general recruiter and counselor had signed up 11 new minority students. In 1972, Assistant Dean for Student Services Valener L. Perry was hired through the U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare grant to build upon the program’s initial success. Within a few years, she became the chief recruiter and counselor for all Pharmacy students.

“Tom Rowe was a traditionalist, but he was also a pragmatist,” Boyd explains. “He knew that in order for our College to grow, improve, and remain relevant to society at large, it had to reach out to new constituents. He saw the need for change and used his position as dean to help bring it about.”

Even when Boyd no longer had direct administrative responsibility over minority recruitment and retention, he always remained involved in some way.

On the topic of minority recruitment, Boyd offers insights gained over a lifetime of experience and observation.

“We’ve had success attracting more minority students to the College, but not as much success as we originally hoped for,” explains Boyd. “There are reasons for this. First, as a precondition of admission, students must have an aptitude for and a background in math and science, coupled with an interest in health care. That automatically limits the universe of potential candidates independent of a student’s race. Because minorities, by definition, are fewer in number, the pool of qualified candidates is correspondingly smaller.

“Secondly, we are competing with medicine, dentistry, and other health disciplines for a relatively small number of qualified students. Our challenge is to make a strong case for pharmacy, and then work hard to remove the barriers, which often come down to financial support.

“In the short term, I don’t expect the number of minorities at the College to get much higher than they are now. One immediate strategy to tip the balance more in our favor is through increased scholarship support. A longer-term solution is to expand the talent pool, which means interesting more minority students in science and health careers earlier in their education: at the middle school level where they begin math and science course sequencing. But this type of enterprise is beyond the scope of a single college or a single university. It requires a national initiative, at minimum a state initiative, and I don’t see the political will for that at this time.”

While Boyd’s passion for minority recruitment was a defining element of his career at the College, it was, in fact, only one part of the total package. Boyd also established himself as a first-rate clinician, a capable researcher, and an inspirational teacher whose door was always open to students, whether they were looking for informed academic guidance, career advice, or just a sympathetic ear.

“I have mixed feelings about leaving the College,” Boyd reflects. “I will miss the daily interaction with students, faculty, and staff; and I will miss the excitement and intellectual challenges of being a professor at a renowned university. I will not miss the snow and the cold,” he laughs.

“We’ve always had high-quality students,” Boyd observes. “Now, so many more come to the College with four-year degrees already in hand. They are older, generally more serious and mature, and more certain of what they want from their education. Their expectations of faculty are correspondingly high. That’s one of the more challenging aspects of being a faculty member here. Our students are strong, and they expect faculty to be on their game every class. They will settle for nothing less.”

Technology has contributed to the higher expectations for all concerned, Boyd says.

“Years ago, a faculty member, or a student, might be excused for being uninformed, at least temporarily, because they lacked immediate access to the most current journals or data. Today, with the Internet and online access to leading journals, faculty and students have no excuse for ever being uninformed.”

Constitutionally unable to sit idle for long — or be content merely polishing his golf game, a sport he relishes — Boyd has already put his considerable clinical knowledge to work as a docent at Destrehan Plantation, about 20 miles southwest of New Orleans. For the past two summers, Boyd participated in a plantation festival where he displays and discusses remedies used by plantation slaves.

“About 1,800 school kids came through my exhibit,” Boyd says. “I was overwhelmed with the number of questions and requests for information, not just from kids, but teachers and other visitors. The kids especially want to know the truth: what life was like for the slaves, how they were treated. When you tell them the truth, the kids, regardless of race, say: ‘Well, if that’s the case, I would have rioted, too,’ just like the slaves did at nearby Ormound Plantation, where they rose up and killed the plantation owner.”

(In an irony of history, the Boyds’ home is in a subdivision built on the site of that same plantation.)

Professor Boyd has recently been recruited into an acting career by his wife who is active in the River Road Historical Society in St. Charles Parish, the county in which the Boyds live. Last January, Boyd appeared in period costume in a skit in which he played Morgan Morgan, a black man elected sheriff of St. Charles Parish in 1863. The skit, co-written by Carolyn, was well received and raised a tidy sum of money for the historical society.

Next on his agenda? Boyd plans to write his autobiography.

“My son, Erik, 36, already finds it hard to fathom that I lived the way I did, growing up in rural Mississippi,” Boyd says. “I need to get the family history down on paper so that I can pass the details on to my grandchildren. They need to know just how far we’ve come, and never forget, never take for granted, the price people paid to get us to this point.”.