Ethan Knox

Marissa Langett ’13, MAT ’17, works to advance Experiential Education

By Ethan Knox ’20 on AUGUST 27, 2026 @BingUNews

For pharmacists, learning on the job is a requirement. Students and preceptors work together to create an experience that sets up Binghamton University School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (SOPPS) alumni for success in their future professions.

But for that to succeed, someone must be beyond the curtain, making sure things are running smoothly. Marissa Langett ’13, MAT ’17, associate director of Experiential Education at the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (SOPPS), is one member of that team.

And she’s recently found a way to make an even greater impact in her field.

In August 2026, Langett was asked to join the inaugural PeopleGrove Pharmacy Advisory Board, organized by the company that owns the experiential learning management system used in the Office of Experiential Education (OEE), CORE ELMS.

“The people on the board are driving the scholarship for experiential education forward,” she said. “It will allow for schools whose staffing is small to succeed; it will help build and develop some tools that will make it easier for consistency across programs. As the inaugural group, this small group can work together over a long period of time to see what is needed to make the program even better.”

PeopleGrove(opens in a new window), a company that focuses on student affairs, admissions, alumni connections, and engagement, merged with the smaller startup, CORE ELMS, over the last several years. Since then, they have invested millions of dollars in supporting the system. The board is just one method they’ve incorporated to improve the offering.

The PeopleGrove + CORE Advisory Board for pharmacy programs brings together higher education leaders, clinical coordinators, and pharmacy professionals — such as Langett — to guide student experiential learning, alumni networking, and competency tracking software. Twenty members from a variety of schools were invited to participate.

In August 2026, she also attended an annual conference for the program (combining both the CORE ELMS and PeopleGrove demographics for the first time), where she met with experts and developers of the program, extending her deep knowledge of the system.

At Binghamton, Langett serves as the “guru” for CORE ELMS, which organizes rotations, collates data, and keeps it all organized. She says that improvements to the system are all in the hope of giving students an easier, more insightful experience.

“CORE ELMS is like a Brightspace or a Blackboard,” she said. “I can’t imagine when working under those systems being able to talk to a developer and saying, ‘This is what I want.’ It takes some time, but my requests sometimes go through, and I can say, ‘I did that.’ And it helps everyone!”

Working to support students

Langett has served in several roles at SOPPS. She began as an administrative assistant for the Office of Experiential Education (OEE) in July 2020 before moving into an experiential specialist role. She later stepped into the interim director role, and when that position was filled, she was offered an associate director role to better reflect her experience in the program.

Working through COVID and often without a full team, she is one of the longest-standing members of the OEE, and she is no stranger to the nuances and difficulty of placing students in rotations, keeping data organized, and more.

With a master’s degree in teaching and her current pursuit of a doctorate in education focusing on well-being and burnout, Langett has always believed that building the tools to succeed outside of college is one of the most important things a student can do.

“I’ve been really working with students on making sure they’re on track, reaching out before things get bad,” she said. “Experiential is so different than didactic and even a skills lab; we find that there’s always a couple students who do well in class, but they get out into the world, and they are just not quite ready for the different pace and scheduling. I’ve been working with students to help them feel more supported.”

While many would consider administrative work a burden, Langett doesn’t see it that way.

“I like having a system that I can work with and I understand, to do cool things for the students,” she said. “I enjoy the puzzle piecing, especially of the scheduling, and trying to make students as happy as they can, given our availability in locations. I like having a piece of technology that I can go to, and it has everything that I need.”

It is because of these outlooks that she is particularly excited to join the advisory board.

She is looking forward to making even small changes and having the ability to advocate — she hopes to improve the usability of the platform from the student and preceptor perspective, while keeping in mind that data is only as good as what the students and the preceptors put in.

“The goal is to make everyone’s life easier, but our students are top priority,” she said. “We want them to do well. We want them to meet accreditation standards, and we want to produce good pharmacists, not just check a box. So, it’s exciting to be in a room of people who know what they’re doing to achieve that, and I’m excited to see what happens.”