Brena Andrews helps grow Pharmacy program outside Arizona
Instructional designer pushes weight — and the college’s online master’s program.
A former University of Arizona sprinter, Brena Andrews fell in love with Olympic weightlifting as a graduate student.
Photo by Kris Hanning, U of A Health Sciences Office of Communications
As an instructional designer, Brena Andrews is converting the U of A R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy’s Master of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences program into an online version that will open it up to students around the world.
Photo by Kris Hanning, U of A Health Sciences Office of Communications
You know those people who buy IKEA furniture and toss out the directions before trying to build it? Brena Andrews is not one of them.
Andrews loves instructions, like really loves them. Even as a little kid, she assembled things for her mom, painstakingly following steps and diagrams.
“I’ve always been passionate about instructions,” Andrews said. “I was a person who asked a lot of questions. It was frustrating sometimes when I felt like adults couldn’t give me the instructions or the answers I needed. So, as I got older, I was just obsessed with figuring it out.”
It’s what Andrews continues to do as an instructional designer at the University of Arizona R. Ken Coit College of Pharmacy. For the past two years, Andrews has worked to convert the in-person Master of Science in Pharmaceutical Sciences program into an asynchronous online version that will allow students across the globe to enroll. Going from face-to-face to face-to-screen means not only making sure course information on the basic foundations of pharmaceutical sciences, pharmacology and toxicology are still relevant, but adding supplemental videos and discussion boards to engage learners from afar. The first online students are projected to start classes in spring 2025.
Andrews is giving the college quite a lift — something she’s more than qualified to do.
A good fit
Andrews is a competitive Olympic weightlifter and coach. As a former sprinter for the U of A track team, Andrews became interested in lifting after her collegiate athletic career wrapped. At first glance, the two sports may seem nothing alike, but they’re not all that dissimilar, Andrews said.
Brena Andrews says weightlifting has boosted her confidence and resilience because failure is part of the sport, but you have to keep going.
Photo by Kris Hanning, U of A Health Sciences Office of Communications
They’re both explosive, and neither requires a ton of cardio.
“Sprinters are notoriously lazy,” Andrews laughed. “Well, not lazy, but we don’t like running a lot or conditioning.”
The U of A appealed to Andrews, a transfer student from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, because of its strong track and field coaching staff. As an undergrad, she was all about athletics and not so much about the academics.
“I was a person who never paid attention; a person who fell asleep in lectures,” she said.
It’s something she now uses to her advantage, both on and off the job. While designing classes for online content, Andrews takes into account ways to engage distance learners through graphics, animation and interaction.
As a weightlifting coach, she does the same. Andrews starts her clinics by having her students talk as much as she does, gauging what they know and what they don’t and laying a solid foundation before they even touch a barbell.
“I love being the person who takes something that’s super complex and makes it more digestible and easier for someone who isn’t that knowledgeable so they can understand,” she said.
Doing the heavy lifting
After Andrews earned a Bachelor of Science in family studies, she decided to go to graduate school. Even though she stayed at the U of A, without her teammates and a sport to train for, she felt a little lost.
Brena Andrews loved being part of a team and missed the camaraderie as a graduate student, so she helped found a fitness club to create that same sense of community.
Photo courtesy of U of A Athletics
“When you’re on a team, athletics is your culture. It’s where you spend most of your time. I was just a regular student when I was in grad school,” said Andrews, who earned a master’s in educational technology. “It was hard to find community.”
She started hanging out at the U of A’s African American Student Affairs’ cultural center. Andrews and a few other students she met there ended up creating the BFIT Black Girls’ Fitness Club as a way not just to build muscle but bonds.
“The idea was to create something that gave me the same sense of community and belonging as athletics did,” she said.
Andrews ripped a page out of the sports playbook. She remembered how much it meant to arrive at the U of A and be handed a backpack full of Wildcat track merchandise. So, she spent her own money to get a logo designed and bought swag to hand out to members. Then, they’d pop around town learning about different ways to get fit.
The young women hit a boxing facility, learned about aerial silks, went on hikes, but it was weightlifting that hooked Andrews. A coach told her she showed promise and offered her a discount on some lessons. Andrews was all in.
“I just fell in love with it,” said Andrews, the oldest of three sisters.
She competes around the country in Olympic weightlifting, which is comprised of two movements - the snatch and the clean and jerk.
As someone who suffered performance anxiety as a runner, her new sport has dared Andrews to be more confident. The lessons she has learned in weightlifting work pretty well in life, too.
“You just have to really trust yourself, and you have to get used to failure because you miss a lot of lifts,” Andrews said. “When you’re lifting, you’re going for it. You’re constantly pushing the envelope. You're constantly trying to do things that you haven't done before, and that’s all part of the sport. I feel like it's definitely made me more resilient.”