‘Powerhouse’ pharmacy student set to receive three degrees on Friday

by Chuck Gordon

If any student starting a collegiate degree program - undergrad, master's, doctoral - is looking for tips on how to manage the heavy course load and the flood of information they'll be asked to process, they could do worse than to consult Brenda Rodriguez.

Rodriguez is an expert at juggling responsibilities, shifting from one course of study to the next rapidly, sometimes in the same day, all while being a wife and mother. When she walks across the stage at graduate commencement on Friday alongside her fellow fourth-year School of Pharmacy colleagues, she'll account for three of the 150 degrees being conferred that morning: Rodriguez is receiving doctor of pharmacy (Pharm.D.), master of business administration (MBA) and master of public health (MPH) diplomas.

She won't receive a master of education, but that's what she's become. You can't freestyle it when you're going for three advanced degrees at the same time while also raising a child.

"I have two different agendas: one that is my personal, family agenda that has birthdays and my child's soccer and any type of event, and then I have my school one, color-coded," Rodriguez says. "MBA is blue, MPH is pink, Pharm.D. is purple. You kind of align yourself with those, and you force yourself to not be a procrastinator."

"She's a freaking powerhouse," says Dr. Shawn Taylor, associate professor of pharmacy and Rodriguez's advisor. "We don't know how she does all this stuff. Whatever needs to get done, she makes it happen."

Brenda Rodriguez poses with her parents, holding scholarships she received.

Rodriguez's fascination with the pharmacy profession started early. She grew up interpreting for her Mexican-immigrant parents at medical and dental appointments, at the bank and at the pharmacy. "As I got older, I realized I was doing less of that at the doctor's office, the dentist, the banks, but never the pharmacy," she says. "I saw a rise in bilingual dentists, bilingual doctors and nurses, but you never saw that increase in bilingual pharmacists."

In high school, Rodriguez had an eight-year plan to get undergraduate and pharmacy degrees, but life intervened. She got pregnant and decided to enter the workforce, working at a CVS in Hendersonville, her hometown, simply because she would at least be spending time around the pharmacy profession. She got an associate degree in Spanish interpreting and wound up working at a health center and eventually the local health department (which sparked her interest in public health).

But Rodriguez never forgot about pharmacy school. One time when she had to miss dinner with her family in order to put in a shift at CVS, her husband asked her why she still worked there. "I told him it was my little piece of should-have-been could-have-been," she says. When he asked her if one day she'd regret not going to pharmacy school, Rodriguez, then in her mid-20s, grumbled that if she did enroll she'd be 30 by the time she finished.

"Well, you're going to be 30 regardless," he told her. "Do you want to be 30 with a degree or without a degree?"

Rodriguez took the plunge, hoping to become the first in her family to get an advanced degree (her brother earned a bachelor's in nursing from UNC Charlotte; her father and mother left school after the third and sixth grades, respectively, to work). Along the way, she decided to pursue an MBA in case she wanted to put her CVS experience to use in retail. When Wingate started the master of public health program, Rodriguez thought, Well, that sounds interesting too.

"A lot of people were like, 'Oh, you can't do that. It'll be too hard. It can't be done,'" she says. "I was like, 'Why not?' I'm the kind of person who thrives when people tell me I can't do something.

"I figured I'd try one semester of doing the Pharm.D., the MBA and the MPH all at once and see how it goes. I did it. I barely survived that, but I figured it was doable."

Weathering storms

Getting to a three-degree graduation certainly hasn't been without its difficulties. Rodriguez missed a few social engagements with her family along the way in order to study or complete a paper. When her husband would take her son to get ice cream, often she'd have to stay behind.

Rodriguez got logistical, emotional and financial assistance from her husband, parents and other family members, and she leaned on Taylor and Wingate success coach Deana Hailey to help her power through the toughest academic times. As a release valve for her overwhelmed emotional system, she scheduled time to have a good cry (because, in her world, everything had to go on the agenda).

"I always tell my peers that scheduling a mini, five-minute crying session is the way to go," she says. "Every third Thursday, five minutes in your car. That's all you need."

Being so immersed in school helped Rodriguez bond with her son, who's now 9. "I'll wake him up in the morning, and he'll go, 'I don't want to go to school,'" she says. "I'll say, 'Me neither, buddy.'"

Dr. Shawn Taylor affixes a pin to Rodriguez during the pinning ceremony, which marks students' transition to clinical rotations.

But she'd go, come hell or high water, both of which Hendersonville received in large quantities last fall. The Rodriguezes did not suffer much damage to their house during Hurricane Helene - "We had a couple of pieces of siding fall off, and our patio furniture disappeared into the wild" - but they were of course without power for several days. And Rodriguez, then in her fourth year of pharmacy school, still had to do her clinical rotations.

At the time, she was starting a rotation at a Walgreens in Asheville. With no refrigeration, the store's stock of insulin would have gone bad, so Rodriguez and her fellow employees handed it out to muddy and disheveled customers. "It was one of the most humbling experiences I've ever had, and it made me realize we are truly needed in the community," she says. "A lot of people don't want to do retail anymore, but I tell you, for the first time I felt like I was truly doing a service for people.

"I had moments when I cried, because people would tell you their stories of losing their homes and coming home to nothing. I think it was the most eye-opening experience I had as a student."

Now it's on to Mission Hospital in Asheville, where Rodriguez will start a residency program next month. She'll be acclimated in a matter of minutes, Taylor says.

"She just drops into places and is immediately jovial with everyone and part of the team," she says. "If I know Brenda, she'll take on leading a committee or some new initiative where she sees a need."

There might not be a pharmacy grad more prepared to tackle a residency.

"I've completed countless credits, and I've done the hard work for the past four years," she says. "I think I can do one more year of strictly pharmacy. It's not that it's going to be less pressure, but it's going to be a breath of relief, because I'm going to be focusing on only one thing for the next year.

"The last four years have been different brains thinking through different situations. It's made me a more well-rounded pharmacist. I don't think just about medications. I think about social drivers of health. I think about how this affects the numbers. I've done a 360 of the profession of pharmacy, from the business aspect to the administration to the research to the why's to the clinical surveys. It has been a real eye-opening experience to see it all from all different angles, and to see how it all connects from one point to another."

Graduate commencement begins at 9 a.m. under the oak trees on the Academic Quad. Undergraduate commencement is Saturday, also at 9 a.m. on the Academic Quad.

Learn more about commencement.

May 14, 2025