Upon visiting an olive grove nestled in the rolling Spanish countryside, one University of Florida pharmacy student discovered striking similarities between the chemistry techniques he’s learning in school and the skills employed in olive oil production.
“It was so cool to taste olive oil and witness how it’s made. Chemistry is a huge part of the process. They have a massive centrifuge just like we use in our labs,” said Derrick Markovic, a rising third-year student on the Orlando campus. “After pharmacy school, I’m looking at doing a dual degree in chemistry and going into research. This experience showed me that pharmacy applies to more areas than I thought. I could even utilize it working in an olive grove, operating the machinery or finding ways to better purify the oil.”
This aha moment came to Markovic during PharmSpain, a short study abroad trip taken by nine students from all three campuses to Madrid, Granada and Málaga, Spain, from May 16-31, 2026. These two-week, elective courses, open to Pharm.D. students in their first three years, pair health care and pharmacy-specific activities with visits to culturally significant sites.
Education and adventure
Teresa Cavanaugh, Pharm.D., associate dean for student affairs and a clinical associate professor of pharmacy education and practice in the UF College of Pharmacy, served as a faculty leader for PharmSpain. She accompanied students along every step of the journey, even joining them for an impromptu six-mile hike in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. She said programs like this help students build empathy and open their minds to fresh perspectives.
“The students were very adventurous in terms of exposing themselves to Spanish culture and food. Our goal is that they carry that sense of curiosity into all their interactions with their future patients,” Cavanaugh said. “I hope this experience fosters a thirst for lifelong learning and continual exploration of people and places as they go through their lives.”
It was precisely this sense of curiosity and wanderlust that led Gainesville-based rising third-year student Julianna Schulz to apply for PharmSpain.
“I’ve always loved to travel, and this program offered the perfect blend of adventure and professional growth. The chance to not only experience a new place and culture, but also learn about another country’s pharmacy and health care system, was incredibly intriguing to me,” Schulz said.
A visit to a Spanish community pharmacy left Schulz in awe as she discovered new methods for increasing efficiency in medication dispensation, while touring the Alhambra and watching a flamenco performance in Grenada’s Sacromonte Caves count among her most unforgettable memories. Overall, the trip gave Schulz a deeper sense of confidence in her own growing repository of clinical knowledge.
“This experience broadened my understanding of pharmacy and exposed me to new cultural perspectives. For example, we learned a lot about the Mediterranean diet and its role in disease prevention, something we’re taught to recommend to patients, but now I feel like I have a much deeper understanding of it. I’m confident I’ll be able to explain it to patients more clearly and effectively in the future.”
Reflection and learning
Students participating in the college’s study abroad programs hear presentations from health care professionals in their host countries, and in return, they offer their own insights into American pharmacy practices to their hosts. After students return home to the United States, it’s time to complete self-assessments, create videos explaining what they learned and make presentations to the International Pharmaceutical Students Federation or to local community groups. Cavanaugh says post-travel reflection is a critical component of the study abroad experience.
“It really helps students understand the importance of the experience and think about what they learned. Knowing how pharmacy works in other countries highlights the great things we do in the practice of pharmacy in the U.S., but it also demonstrates that there are things other countries do better to support their patients, and we have things to learn from others,” Cavanaugh said. “It’s good to get outside of your comfort zone and realize that there are different and potentially better ways to practice pharmacy. I’m hopeful this trip will lead to students always wanting to advocate for the advancement of the profession and the betterment of patient care.”
For Markovic, keeping a digital journal throughout his travels helped him process all the novel sights and sounds he experienced while giving him an outlet for brainstorming his own solutions to the issues affecting pharmacy practice.
“Distilling everything that we saw and experienced into my journal was a great way for me to more clearly explore the uses of pharmacy and chemistry outside the medical route,” he said. “It also helped me gather my own ideas on how we can make pharmacies a lot more functional and better for patients in the future.”
