GRANITE CITY HIGH SCHOOL
CLASS OF 1967

Barbara Fifield Brandt has served as the Associate Vice President for Education and Professor, Pharmaceutical Care and Health Systems at the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center since 2000. In 2002, she became the Director of the Minnesota Area Health Education Center statewide system, a workforce development program for rural and underserved Minnesota. In 2009, she also became the Director of the Education, Training and Career Development of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute. In all of these roles, she works with the health professions schools (allied health, dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and veterinary medicine). Her career expertise is in the areas of interprofessional education in the health professions, curricular innovations in higher education, and access to care for medically underserved populations. She has written extensively and given presentations in these areas nationally and internationally.

Dr. Brandt was born and raised in Granite City, Illinois and attended the public school system for her kindergarten through 12th grade education. She is the daughter of Norman Fifield and the late Margaret Fifield, who were both well-known for their service to the Granite City schools she attended, notably the Girl Scouts, Niedringhaus PTA and GCHS band. For three years, Dr. Brandt attended the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where she was a James Scholar, elected to several honorary societies, and a member of Alpha Delta Pi social sorority. She completed her baccalaureate degree at the University of Illinois, Chicago in history with a certification in education in 1971. For six years, she worked as a medical assistant and office manager for a health maintenance organization and several academic physicians at Rush Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Hospital in Chicago, Illinois and Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her early grounding in the academic health care system shaped her advanced degree preparation.

Dr. Brandt earned a Master of Education and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in adult and continuing education, specializing in the health professions, from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received a Letitia Walsh Fellowship for excellence for women in doctoral education in the College of Education and completed a two-year Kellogg Foundation-funded post-doctoral fellowship in continuing education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 1977-1990, she held a variety of positions at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign as research assistant, program coordinator, and visiting assistant professor in education.

From 1990 to 2000, Dr. Brandt became a tenured faculty member at the University of Kentucky College of Pharmacy where she worked with pharmacy faculty to implement the Doctor of Pharmacy degree and educational innovations across health professions. During that time, she served as an educational consultant to a number of programs in the United States Department of Health and Human Services, notably to the National Health Service Corps and in launching a federal Office of Pharmacy Affairs, a program that makes pharmaceuticals available to millions of U.S. citizens who cannot afford health care. In 1999, she was made an honorary alumna of the NHSC for her work. She was instrumental in the establishment of a national organization, the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved, to support health professionals who work with medically underserved populations. In 2000, she was selected to participate in the Health Services and Resources Administration Fellowship for Primary Care as one of the only non-health professional participants.

In 2000, Dr. Brandt became a senior administrator of the University of Minnesota and has led the development of a number of system-wide programs, including a Health Careers Center, Center for Allied Health Programs, Office of eLearning, Academy of Excellence in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, among others. From 2000-2006, she served on the board of directors of the national pharmacy accreditation council, the American Council of Pharmacy Education.

Barbara and her husband, Larry, live in Oakdale, Minnesota and own a small business, Knit’n From the Heart in Woodbury. They are the parents of Jim and Jeff Brandt and Valerie and Todd LeGrand, and grandparents of Paris. Her father, Norman, who just turned 89, lives in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.