College celebrates 140th anniversary

They’re going to need an awfully big cake to fit the candles. The MUSC College of Pharmacy celebrates its 140th anniversary in 2021 and 2022, and the venerable program will say goodbye to a venerable building when the year comes to a close.

How venerable is the college? When the pharmacy program began at the Medical College of South Carolina:

• Colorado had just become the 38th state in the United States. The entire middle third of the continental U.S. was made of territories.
• Most sovereign states were run by kings or emperors. The Ottoman Empire still extended to the Adriatric Sea, on the border of Italy.
• Most people traveled by horse and lit their houses with kerosene lamps or candles.
• Baseball’s National League was 5 years old and basketball had not yet been invented. Neither had the Coca-Cola Company. Nor Hershey’s, Walgreens, Xerox, or General Motors.

The college plans to celebrate the august occasion throughout the year, and its conclusion should be a series wrap on the pharmacy program’s occupation of the historic Michael P. Araneo Building on 280 Calhoun Street. Construction has already begun on a new pharmacy facility located in the heart of campus, and the facility is scheduled to open for the academic year beginning in the fall of 2022.

“We couldn’t have planned a better way to celebrate our 140th anniversary than to have students in our 141st year walk into the beautiful Michael P. Araneo Lobby in a brand new facility,” said Philip D. Hall, dean of the MUSC College of Pharmacy. “According to our list of anniversary themes, the 40th is supposed to be ruby and the 41st is office or desk décor. I guess the 141st is a whole new building.”