College celebrates campus couples

It must be something in the water. The MUSC College of Pharmacy seems to foster a little romance along with its lectures and labs. On February 14, many couples celebrating Valentine’s Day look back fondly on the days they first met at the College.

The College is celebrating the occasion by highlighting some of these love-links in a light-hearted “It’s a Match!” campaign on the College’s Facebook and Instagram pages.

One of those couples is still at MUSC. Jason Haney ’07 is associate professor of clinical pharmacy and outcomes sciences at the College of Pharmacy and Lauren Haney ’07 is a pediatric clinical specialist and director of the post-graduate year two pediatric pharmacy residency program at MUSC.

They met on the first day of pharmacy class at MUSC. They were both South Carolina natives, slightly older non-traditional students, enjoyed the outdoors, and soon found they shared another unusual connection – Jason’s father and Lauren’s mother knew each other in grade school.

Jason wanted their first date to be special, so he surreptitiously got two tickets to a sold-out Hootie and the Blowfish concert on Daniel Island. He planned for it to be a surprise.

“I wasn’t really familiar with Charleston and Lauren was, so I asked her if she knew a good place to eat on Daniel Island before the big surprise,” he said. “I didn’t realize that was a dead giveaway. A big surprise on Friday night on Daniel Island? There wasn’t a whole lot else it could’ve been.”

She must not have minded. Three years later they got married and honeymooned in Hawaii, right before starting rotations. They also cleverly lined up experiential education at the Straub Medical Center in Honolulu, thus each knocking out a critical care rotation, an internal medicine rotation, and any need to come back for nine weeks.

Getting married while still in school does add one difficulty – you need two pharmacy positions wherever you go. The Haneys went through the couples residency match, which links pairs of program choices and matches only if both partners match to their individual program. Fortunately, MUSC wanted them both. Two years later they both found positions at Indiana University Health and The Indiana Heart Hospital.

They returned to MUSC in 2010, in part thanks to another MUSC pharmacy couple – Walt and Lynn Uber (both ’88 R ’89). Walt Uber was handling both adult and pediatric cardiac surgery and decided to focus on adult, paving the way for Lauren to take the pediatric spot. Jason was hired as a faculty member in the College.

“I’ve been able to give a few pointers to student couples, like about joint matches for pharmacy residencies,” Jason said. “But I’m no matchmaker.”

He can leave that to the water.

Check out the stories of other MUSC pharmacy couples in the week-long “It’s a Match” campaign.

Tony ’21 and Lindsay ’21

Seth ’08 and Amy ’08

Zachary ’20 and Austyn ’20

Luke ’12 and Courtney ’12