Pharmacogenomics: Manchester's Fort Wayne first

2012 — 2016

The nation's first degree in a new science: Manchester University opened its Fort Wayne campus in 2012 with a Doctor of Pharmacy program — northern Indiana's pharmacy school, seeded by a $35 million Lilly Endowment grant whose gift record is the Donations record's — and graduated its first class in May 2016. That same month Manchester launched, in its own history's words, the nation's first dedicated master's degree in pharmacogenomics: the science of using a patient's genetic markers to choose and dose medication, then new enough that no university had yet built a degree on it. A dual PharmD/pharmacogenomics degree followed in 2018. The Fort Wayne campus's research standing rests on that program and its field — the clinical implementation of pharmacogenomics, the work of its faculty in getting genetic prescribing guidance into ordinary practice — together with the health-sciences programs since gathered around it on the Parkview campus corridor. It is a documented national first in medical education, claimed by the university and repeated in the independent record, and it is printed at that scope: a first degree program, out of Fort Wayne, in a branch of medicine that has since become standard vocabulary.

Sources:

1. Manchester University institutional history (Founder's Day account, 2025) — Manchester College became Manchester University in July 2012 and enrolled its first doctoral class in pharmacy that fall at the Fort Wayne campus; "in May 2016, Manchester launched the nation's first dedicated master's degree in pharmacogenomics."
2. Building Indiana Business (January 2023) — the Fort Wayne health-science hub built on a $35 million Lilly Endowment grant; the pharmacy program of 2012; "the first pharmacogenomics master's degree program in the nation in 2016," and the 2018 dual degree in pharmacy and pharmacogenomics.
3. Major Donations section of this history — the Lilly Endowment grant of $35 million (2010) to Manchester's Fort Wayne pharmacy college, cross-referenced in one line.