Executive Snapshot: Renee Coffman Dean, college of pharmacy, Roseman University of Health Sciences

I am very proud of my grand niece and her accomplishments. She and her husband saw a need in our education system and successfully filled it.

Excerpt: Imagine walking into a university every day and seeing your name on its walls. The letterhead, degrees and pens all bear your personal moniker.

This is Renee Coffman's life, and she seems to take it all in stride.

As dean of the college of pharmacy at the Roseman University of Health Sciences, Coffman manages the Southern Nevada and South Jordan, Utah, campuses. She co-founded the university in 1999 with her husband, Harry Rosenberg, who is campus president.

"We moved here specifically to start a pharmacy school, because there was no pharmacy school in Nevada at the time," Coffman said.

Since its opening, the college has graduated between 800 and 900 pharmacists.

The school was founded as the Nevada College of Pharmacy until it added nursing to its academic offerings and was renamed as the University of Southern Nevada, a moniker it held until July when it was renamed again as the Roseman University of Health Sciences, for its founders.

"I put the man in Roseman," Coffman joked.

The duo moved to Las Vegas from Southern California. They previously worked at the Western University School of Health Sciences in Pomona, Calif., which is also where they met and fell in love.

"He actually hired me," Coffman said. "We are a really good team. He is the visionary and the dreamer part of the team and my skill is taking the dream and interpreting it, to see it through."

Since opening, the university has fared well in Southern Nevada. The school usually has a ratio of 10-to-1, applicants to seats. Also, the administration has been able to give pay raises every year, in the range of 3 percent to 5 percent.

"We've never run a deficit in our budget," Coffman said.


Read full Las Vegas Business Press article here.