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February 21, 2012

  • Today we are excited to announce a first-in-kind public-private partnership between our college, the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, and Pfizer Animal Health that will create a state-of-the-art learning environment for veterinarians everywhere. This unique partnership between academia and industry will deliver the Universities' expertise in medicine and teaching, supported by Pfizer Animal Health's information delivery and customer service know-how. Together, the partnership will offer veterinarians convenient web-based educational products utilizing the latest advances in educational technologies. The content that will be available through this new venture, which has been named Veritas, is currently being developed under the leadership of Dr. Jodi Korich, Director of Education Technology here at the CVM. The partnership between Cornell, Texas A&M, and Pfizer Animal Health will seek to transform the learning process, providing practitioners with unique opportunities to stay current with the latest discoveries in veterinary medicine, hone in their clinical skills, incorporate current medical advances into decisions that affect patient care, and build more profitable practices. This collaboration will leverage technology to ensure convenient, round-the-clock access to these educational opportunities. Additional information about this project can be found on our website at /news/press-releases/texas-am-and-cornell-colleges-of-veterinary-medicine-join-forces-with-pfizer-animal-health. As the Veritas project is launched, watch for more information about this innovative education program.
  • Congratulations to Dr. Louise Abbott, who was recently selected as the holder of the prestigious Thaman Professorship for Undergraduate Teaching Excellence. The Dean of Faculties oversees this award which is, according to the award website, "conferred only upon the university's most distinguished teachers of undergraduates. They are faculty members who have exhibited uncommon excellence and devotion to undergraduate students of Texas A&M University." Dr. Abbott will hold this professorship for three years. The selection process is rigorous and includes review by a distinguished panel of professors. Please join me in congratulating Dr. Abbott for this achievement. The CVM family is very proud of you!
  • The annual Texas Veterinary Medical Association Mid-Winter Conference is complete. I want to personally thank each and every administrator, faculty member, staff member, and student who attended. The TVMA is our state organization. The leadership and membership appreciate our contributions and our membership. Special recognition goes to Dan Posey for his role on the TVMA Executive Committee as Council Member for Veterinary Practice and to Keith Chaffin for being a member of the TVMA Board of Directors. A major reason TVMA selects College Station as its meeting site is to encourage our students, the future veterinarians, to attend, and they did in record numbers. They make us proud. During the conference, we had the opportunity to engage TVMA members in thoughtful discussions on student debt. A prominent solution is scholarship support, and I thank our development team for their help in increasing student scholarships from $O.75M to $1.7M since 2008. The TVMA, as an ongoing partner with the CVM, provides financial support annually. Its members contribute their time and talent to a variety of programs, such as the Ethics program and, more recently, the Multiple Mini-Interview (MMI) process initiated last year under the leadership of Dr. Kenita Rogers and her team. The response to the MMI process has been extremely favorable.
  • In an effort to strengthen the brand and visual identity of our college within the university, as well as to external publics, the Executive Committee recently approved the new CVM Identity Standards. These guidelines work in conjunction with the existing brand standards of Texas A&M University to provide a framework for identifying elements of the college. The new standards are available at /identity and include downloadable versions of the official CVM logo. The brand standards for Texas A&M University may be found at http://brandguide.tamu.edu. If you have any questions regarding logo usage or the identity standards, please contact Angela Clendenin, Director of Public Relations & Communications for the CVM via aclendenin@cvm.tamu.edu or 862-2675.
  • The planning phase has been launched for our new Education Building, which was officially added to the capitol plan by the Board of Regents last Thursday. The planning process is a critical time in any building project, and input is being actively sought from faculty, staff, students, and others. Everyone's opinion is important and will be considered throughout the process. There will be multiple ways to submit suggestions about the new building. Beginning this week, there will be surveys (one for faculty/staff and one for students).
  • I was asked by the Texas A&M Foundation to give a presentation to the Texas A&M Foundation Trustees at their meeting last Friday. There are seven trustees and all are successful, influential individuals on and off campus. All were impressed by our CVM and the work you all do.
  • In a previous edition of Dean's Corner, I mentioned the Texas A&M University Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS), which is a program developed to attract world-renown faculty to Texas A&M University for a one-year sabbatical. Housed in the Office of the Vice President of Research, the leadership team of the TIAS program has already begun to recruit the first class of faculty fellows. The college has submitted three strong candidates with international reputations in their fields for consideration for this very prestigious program.
  • A recent article in Inside Higher Education covered the class size expansion that many veterinary medical schools are implementing and how that expansion will eventually impact the shortage of veterinarians in large animal and mixed practice. Cornell University just increased its class size for that purpose. For those interested, the article can be accessed at: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/02/08/veterinary-schools-expand-focus-large-animals
  • The One Health Concept is growing on campus. Dr. Suzanne Yandow from the Texas A&M Health Science Center accepted an invitation to contribute to the College of Architecture's "Architecture-for-Health" lecture series. She, Dr. Sam Shoemaker, Dean of the College of Medicine, and I spoke again on One Health.

Sincerely,
Eleanor M. Green, DVM, DACVIM, DABVP
Carl B. King Dean of Veterinary Medicine
College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
Texas A&M University
(979) 845-5053