U OF C VET SCHOOL TO HONOUR FIRST GRADS
Like so many kids, Meghan Mccarty wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up.
“I’ve just always had a love for animals,” says the now 23-year-old Edmonton native. “My parents worked in human health and my extended family raised cattle.”
Unlike most of her contemporaries, though, she kept on with the dream and in 2009 was accepted into the University of Calgary’s doctor of veterinary medicine program.
“I knew people who had started in 2008,” says Mccarty, taking a short break from exam studies at the faculty’s Clinical Skills building on the U of C’s Spy Hill campus. “They were very happy with the program.”
The students who encouraged Mccarty are set to make history next month, when they collect their degrees at the U of C’s faculty of veterinary medi- cine convocation.
On May 10, those 30 pioneering graduates will join graduates in the fields of medicine and law.
They will stand proudly as the first graduating class of a program that is already earning accolades and attention internationally for being not only a leader in research of animal diseases and food supply safety, but also for its innovative approaches to teaching a new generation of veterinarians.
The impressive, high-tech features of the building where Mccarty and her classmates now have their noses buried in their books, the school’s $65-million teaching and training facility on Calgary’s northwest outskirts, immediately strike the first-time visitor.
Taking up 85,000 square feet of space on several hectares of rolling foothills, the facility holds classrooms with the most upto-date audiovisual equipment, examination rooms expansive enough to navigate the largest of animal patients and labs sporting anatomically correct models of cattle, complete with real-to-the-touch calves waiting to be extracted.
Outside, cows, horses and pigs to sheep, llamas and reindeer are housed in pens and barns, ready for the 125 undergrads and 90 graduate students who regularly rotate through the airy building.
“This is where we do the handson work,” says Dr. Alastair Cribb as he leads a tour of the place that is his pride and joy.
For Cribb, the dean of the relatively new faculty, the Clinical Skills building is the physical manifestation of the faculty’s Four C’s philosophy: competence, confidence, communication and context (experiential learning).
The life-size animal models, he notes, are something he and his fellow instructors never had the benefit of working on when they were undergrads.
Ditto for the private interview rooms, where on this day students are being scored on their listening and troubleshooting skills as they interact with human actors.
“We want our students to have a good ‘chute-side manner,’ ” says Cribb with a chuckle of the vet’s take on bedside manner.
“No other program emphasizes professional communication skills to the degree that we do.”
Few other programs offered by the other four veterinary schools across the country also attach such importance to the study of rural animals as opposed to the bread-and-butter of so many vets, pets like cats and dogs.
“That’s the fun stuff,” says Cribb, “but we also focus on what’s needed.”
Such emphasis on the bovine and equine worlds makes sense in a province rich in ranching and the cattle industry.
It’s no surprise, then, that they also served as the prime engine for the school’s very creation.
In 2003, the town of Wanham, became ground zero for an animal health crisis that would create shock waves around the world.
A cow on a nearby farm was confirmed to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE, also known as mad cow disease.
Within hours, international borders were shut to imported Canadian cattle and cattle products.
Around this same time were outbreaks of West Nile virus, SARS and avian influenza.
“Suddenly, we had a whole series of diseases being transferred from animal to humans,” says Dr. Ole Nielsen, a renowned educator now retired in Edmonton. “It started a movement among the leaders in the veterinary medicine profession for more emphasis on research.”
Nielsen, who is receiving the Order of the University of Calgary at the May 10 convocation ceremony, adds that this “perfect storm” of animal-to-human health crises was compounded by a shortage of veterinarians in rural practice.
“Animal health was now on the front page,” he says.
Still, there was some initial debate among leaders on how to address the issue.
“There was talk about expanding the Western Veterinary College of Medicine,” says longtime veterinarian Roy Lewis of the Saskatoonbased school where Albertans have long pursued their degrees.
“The veterinarians were divided at first about which was the better way, but there was political will to see something located in Alberta.”
As he was preparing to retire from his post as dean of the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph — celebrating its 150th anniversary this year — Nielsen was recruited as chairman of the Alberta veterinary medicine steering committee, which would look at the feasibility of creating a school in Alberta devoted to veterinary education and research.
“The world had changed: understanding animal health and disease was also vital for human and ecosystem health,” says Nielsen. “In this day and age, everything is connected.”
Hearing that the province was also interested in the idea, Nielsen says the University of Calgary “got the jump” on Edmonton with a bold plan for a school closely linked to its faculties of medicine, nursing and kinesiology, with an emphasis on rural practice.
By 2004, the province had chosen Calgary, the school to be up and running by the fall of 2006.
The momentum was put in place with the hiring of Dr. Peter Ayre as dean along with, in 2005, the Alberta government’s announcement that $16 million would be allocated to the Clinical Skills building as well as a por- tion of the university’s Health Research Innovation Centre at Foothills Hospital.
Then, the plan hit the first of many speed bumps.
Ayre quit, citing “politics” and a lack of funding delivery for $60 million in capital costs.
Mere days after his departure, the province pledged an additional $46.8 million to the school to cover startup costs.
Still, by early 2006, it was clear that a fall opening was a mere pipe dream. The school had no dean, was without a full faculty and was awaiting its accreditation by the American Veterinary Medical Association, North America’s governing body.
That was when Cribb’s phone rang. Cribb, who came from the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island, first signed on as a faculty member, but soon relocated to the dean’s chair.
“Veterinary colleges tended over the years to isolate themselves,” says Cribb of his decision to pull up stakes and head west. “This school was about integration. . . . It was very novel, evolutionary.”
His hopes to get the school immediately up and running, though, were held back when the American Veterinary Medical Association. After visiting Calgary, it recommended the program not be launched until 2008 and that it expand from a three-year program to four years.
“To be honest,” says Cribb, “the initial deadlines here were very ambitious, but not very realistic.”
By the time 2007 rolled around, the delays in government funding were finally cleaned up, followed later by the school receiving its full accreditation. It began accepting enrolment applications for September 2008.
“We were still building new buildings, using Porta-potties, wearing safety vests,” says Cribb of that first class of 30 faculty and 34 students, 30 of whom stuck out the four years.
Each succeeding year has “gotten smoother,” says Cribb, while the school has brought in over $50 million in research funding.
The school has also attracted international attention for eschewing the traditional on-site hospital model, replacing it with a program that sees its fourth-year students rotate through a variety of clinical practices throughout the province.
“It really changes the dynamics of how students learn,” says Lewis. “It also exposes them to a variety of work experiences, which encourages some to consider mixed practice.”
For some of those soon-to-be graduates, getting a taste in the field, so to speak, has been nothing short of life-changing.
“I tried to get my rotations outside of Calgary for the sake of being a tourist,” says 24-year-old Jordan Holt, a native of Medicine Hat. “I realized I liked being out in rural areas more than the city and working with cattle and horses.”