LUBBOCK -- The El Paso region, the part of Texas most underserved by pharmacists, could become home to a new four-year pharmacy school.

"I look forward to bringing pharmacy back to El Paso," Dr. John Baldwin, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center president, said Thursday.

Baldwin said officials have begun exploring plans to create a four-year pharmacy program at the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine in El Paso. Although a timeline and a cost estimate have yet to be developed, those plans, he said, would be a priority for the school in 2008.

Texas Tech has pharmacy programs in Lubbock, Amarillo, Dallas and Abilene. The newest is the program in Abilene, which had its first class this fall.

Baldwin said the existing programs receive five times as many applicants as Texas Tech can accommodate.

"It's a very popular field for people to go into now," he said.

The popularity may have something to do with pay for pharmacists, who earn as much $85,000 a year fresh out of school, according to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. Bilingual pharmacists stand to earn even more along the border, said Chris Fowler, a program director at the coordinating board.

Pharmacists, she said, are in high demand in Texas, especially as the baby-boomer generation ages and creates more need for prescription medicines.

The border area faces the greatest shortage of pharmacists, she said.

The El Paso region had 42 pharmacists per 100,000 people, according to a 2003

"They're right on the money, in essence, at looking at El Paso," Fowler said.

The University of Texas at El Paso has a small pharmacy program. Students at UTEP finish pre-pharmacy work in El Paso, then take two years of pharmacy courses at UT Austin, and finish their last two years back at UTEP.

That program started in 1999 and has graduated about 46 pharmacists, said its director, Dr. Jose Rivera.

About 75 percent of the pharmacy students stay in El Paso after graduating, Rivera said. That's not enough, though, and he said UTEP has been considering creating its own four-year pharmacy school.

Expanding the existing UTEP program, he said, seems more feasible than starting a new one at Texas Tech, which is in the middle of getting its medical school off the ground.

"One of the first things I will ask is É how can we work together, instead trying to compete," said Rivera, who is also on the faculty at Texas Tech.

Rick Francis, a member of the Texas Tech University System Board of Regents, said the El Paso program wouldn't need to be developed completely from scratch. A program existed at Texas Tech in El Paso but was closed three years ago because space on the campus was too tight.

With two new buildings and a third one planned for the future, Francis said, Texas Tech has the space and is ready to restart a pharmacy program.

"It is very exciting, the commitment Texas Tech has to bring resources into the El Paso economy," Francis said.

Initially, he said, the pharmacy program in El Paso would probably include two years, with plans to grow into a four-year freestanding school.

The timeline for developing the program, Francis said, would be dictated by the results of a campuswide study of the space in El Paso. A cost estimate for the pharmacy school was unavailable Thursday.

When Texas Tech decides to go forward with the full four-year pharmacy school, it will first have to be approved by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which oversees new degree offerings statewide.

Baldwin said he had already begun discussions with officials there.

"I doubt we'll get much opposition," he said.

Brandi Grissom may be reached at bgrissom@elpasotimes.com; 512-479-6606.