UC Irvine Student Pharmacist Michael Stevens Aims to Serve Patients and Support His Neighbors as a Community Pharmacist

For UC Irvine PY1 student pharmacist, Michael Stevens, his plans for the future are inspired by pharmacy’s past.

Growing up in the town of Visalia in California’s Central Valley, Stevens began his undergraduate education at the College of the Sequoias before moving on to California State University, Bakersfield, where he completed his bachelor’s degree in chemistry. Then, he earned his master’s degree in chemistry from Fresno State. While his interest in chemistry remained, he felt that he wasn’t thriving in the lab environment.

“I realized that I didn’t really like working in a lab by myself doing research,” he said. “I wanted to do something where I was working with people and talking to people, and that’s when I made the decision that pharmacy school was what I wanted to do.”

After researching pharmacy schools and discovering the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program at the UCI School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, Stevens made the decision to become an Anteater. 

Stevens’ interest in pharmacy and impressions of the industry arose while he was younger, as he was often responsible for picking up medications for his father. He shared that during these visits to his local pharmacy, he felt comfortable discussing his questions with pharmacists, often seeing community pharmacists as more accessible than other healthcare professionals who could only be seen by appointment.

“I saw that they were helping people in a community setting, and they were easily approachable, and you could talk to them. They were helping my dad. I got the idea that empathy was really important and that caring about patients was really important. And access was super important — I could go in and talk to them about medications and could even talk to them about health conditions,” he said. “Community pharmacists are one of the reasons why I wanted to go to pharmacy school.”

After earning his PharmD degree, he envisions owning an independent pharmacy where he can use his education and people skills to give back to the community, not only by serving as an accessible medication expert, but also by truly being a neighbor to his patients and customers.

Stevens emphasized the value that community pharmacies hold as educational resources for aspiring pharmacists. While his initial insight into a career as a pharmacist was due to frequent visits to pick up medications, he shared that many of his fellow student pharmacists at UCI were able to intern at local pharmacies or work in retail pharmacy settings before receiving any formal pharmacy education. He feels that this experience, combined with a strong science background, is essential for success in pharmacy school.

He champions the merits of an aspect of the industry that inspired him to someday support patients in the same way that community pharmacists did for his family.

“In one of my classes, we had a guest speaker that was in a 1950s PharmD class at USC. He was in one of their first classes of PharmD students, and he had a retail pharmacy for 40 or 50 years. He talked about how nice it was to be a part of the community, building up a clientele base, working with the hospitals, and being able to sponsor things — like being part of the parades in town, things like that,” Stevens shared. “[Working in a] community pharmacy or owning my own independent pharmacy is something that I think I would really enjoy because you have the business aspect, you have the healthcare aspect, and you have the social aspect. You’re part of the community.”