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The end of course project (TCC - Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso) is a mandatory activity. The student must produce a piece of work, guided by a professor at UPM, on a pharmaceutical subject, undertaking scientific research. It is regarded as an important stage in professional training, and is designed to make the student aware of vocational opportunities, encourage potential scientific talent, and foster curiosity and an inquisitive attitude. The TCC should be student-centered with support from their supervisor as a facilitator and mentor in the process of the development of a research project, helping to increase the student’s pharmaceutical knowledge and interdisciplinary skills.
The pharmaceutical profession has a diverse range of areas of work, and the student needs to become acquainted with them to be able to better plan their professional future. To help achieve this, the students will undertake mandatory internships in these main sectors: public pharmacy/drugstores; hospital pharmacy; the pharmaceutical industry; clinical and toxicological analysis; food and homeopathy. Mackenzie has several registered companies that offer these internships, as well as the structure for the internships in industry, clinical and food analysis within the campus itself. In addition to these, the student can undertake non-mandatory internships, via CIEE (Centro de Integração Empresa- Escola - an institution that organizes undergraduate internships in private companies, in these various areas. All of these internships are supervised by an internship coordinator.
There are activities take place outside the curriculum with the aim of broadening vocational training and enabling the development of skills and the acquisition of experience. These complementary activities are carried out in the following areas: Teaching - extension courses, lectures, tutoring, foreign language courses; Research - participation in introduction to Science programs, research projects and scientific conferences; Extension - community-oriented activities, voluntary work, and technical visits to pharmaceutical companies, among others. Each activity is recorded as hours of complementary activities, and the student must complete 120h to graduate.
The Pharmacy course prioritizes extension activities - the contact of students and teachers with the community - with the goal of promoting health from a multidisciplinary perspective. Through collaboration with other courses of the Center for Biological Sciences and Health, integrated health promotion activities can be developed. These include pharmaceutical care and assistance, laboratory tests and health campaigns. The projects currently underway are Quality of Life and Social Responsibility, Mackenzie Volunteering, QualiMack and Amazon Life. The extension department also promotes technical visits, seminars, workshops and lectures on current topics open to students and the public.
A pharmaceutical career naturally arouses an inclination toward scientific research. Students of the Mackenzie Pharmacy course have opportunities to participate in research projects in various pharmaceutical areas under the guidance of the academic team. Through participation in introduction to Science programs, students develop their scientific thinking, participate in the process of knowledge production and in scientific conferences, and can even take part in exchange programs with foreign universities. The introduction to Science programs PIBIC/CNPq and PIBIC/MackPesquisa offer grants that provide discounts toward the monthly fee.