Mercer University's Ted Matthews given Braden Meritorious Service Award

Hewitt W. "Ted" Matthews, longtime dean of Mercer University's College of Pharmacy, was recently presented with the Larry L. Braden Meritorious Service Award from the Georgia Pharmacy Association (GPhA).

The award, handed out during the organization's annual convention earlier this month in Amelia Island, Florida, recognizes the Georgia pharmacist who has made extraordinary, invaluable contributions throughout their career to both the GPhA and to the practice of pharmacy in the state of Georgia.

In his introduction, GPhA President Bobby Moody described Matthews as "a force for good, a force for progress in our profession … simply an original in Georgia pharmacy."

Moody acknowledged several of Matthews' impacts on the pharmaceutical profession in Georgia, including his leadership at Mercer, his mentoring of student pharmacists and his service to GPhA, as well as chairing the committee that rewrote the Pharmacy Practice Act in Georgia.

Matthews graduated from Mercer's pharmacy school and received his master's and doctrate in pharmaceutical biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he was a National Institutes of Health Pre-Doctoral Fellow and a Fellow of the American Foundation for Pharmaceutical Education. He began work at the Mercer School of Pharmacy in 1973, was appointed the Hood-Meyer Professor of Pharmacy in 1982 and was named dean of the College of Pharmacy in 1990.

He was appointed senior vice president for health sciences at Mercer in 2012 and now oversees the Mercer Health Sciences Center, which enrolls more than 2,000 students on Mercer's campuses in Macon, Atlanta, Savannah and Columbus.