PEER Educators Reach 700 Students During June Presentations
Veterinary students in the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences’ (CVM) PEER program traveled throughout the Bryan/College Station and Houston areas during the month of June to give presentations to approximately 700 students.
PEER fellows Erin Eads and Melodie Raese spent the first two Saturdays of June at the Animal Days events held at the Clara B. Mounce Library in Bryan and the Larry J. Ringer Library in College Station.
There, the two set up interactive boards on animal care, nutrition, and animal behavior for the approximately 250 children and family members who circulated throughout the libraries.
“The first weekend was a special day for us, as it was Melodie’s first time to ever hold a snake,” Eads said. “The Reptile Hospice and Sanctuary of Texas brought a variety of animals including a reticulated and Burmese python, and Melodie got to hold both of them.”
“It was a great few days, because not only did we get to educate others on animal care, but we also got to learn new things about the scaly creatures that you don’t see every day,” Raese said.
The first week of June, PEER began its annual Summer Safari presentations, given every Tuesday through the end of July for 45-60 junior high and high school students and chaperones who visit the CVM each week as part of a Houston-based summer camp (for a total of 225 June visitors).
“The first and second weeks, we presented on animal behavior, and again did the clicker training activity at the end (‘training’ a volunteer to do an unknown action using only a clicker and candy ‘treats’). The kids loved it, and we were surprised to learn how much they knew about genetics and training animals,” Eads said. “We also put out plastinated anatomical specimens at the end just as a bonus. We were able to explain to them about the different types of organs in the body and how they are similar to our own.”
“The last two weeks, we presented on ‘Careers in Veterinary Medicine’ and then opened it up to questions from the students at the end,” Raese said. “We received questions of a wide range, anywhere from what is the coolest thing that we have seen so far to advice for a high school student wanting to become a veterinarian. It was great getting to interact with our future colleagues and to help promote our love and passion for veterinary medicine.”
During the third week of June, Raese presented to two tour groups at the Veterinary & Biomedical Education Complex (VBEC), sharing information on careers in veterinary medicine with the South Texas Academy for Medical Professions High School and careers in science with a local middle school. She reached approximately 75 students between the two tours.
On June 18, Eads and Raese traveled to Houston, where they presented on animal behavior and communication and offered an interactive activity to the Girls, Inc., group and the Companion Camp at the Houston Humane Society—60 total kids.
In the presentation, the PEER fellows related how animal behavior mimics human behavior, but how it varies between species, and highlighted the different types of animal communication—visual, auditory, chemical, etc.—by showing videos of each.
“For our interactive activity, we first played Pictionary to simulate visual communication,” Eads said. “We had the kids get into groups of two to four and then gave the drawer a word related to animal behavior. They then had to draw out that word and have their partner(s) guess what it was.”
After a few rounds of Pictionary, the students switched to Taboo, during which one partner had to describe a word using adjectives, while never saying the actual word, which simulated auditory communication.
“The kids seemed to have a lot of fun, but it was also great for us to see how creative they were,” Raese said. “There were many artists and in-depth storytellers within the group, and it was great to see that incorporated into learning about animals.”
One of their favorite parts of the day was getting to take a behind-the-scenes tour of the humane society following their presentation, during which they were able to learn about shelter medicine from the lead veterinarian.
“It was really shocking to me, specifically, to see how similar urban shelter medicine is to rural private practice. We even used the same client software platform,” Eads said. “It really opened our eyes to how much more shelter medicine is than just herd health and spays and neuters.
“The Houston Humane Society actually has their own low-cost clinic to help fund the shelter, and they also take in emergency and neglect cases,” she continued. “It is not uncommon for a veterinarian to do vaccinations, spay/neuters, and even things like amputations and enucleations in the same day! It definitely gave us perspective on yet another career available in veterinary medicine.
On June 19, the PEER fellows helped facilitate Dr. Tamy Frank-Cannon’s veterinary enrichment camp by splitting into groups with three to four junior high and high school students and teaching basic wound care, splinting, and suturing, as well as performing a spay on stuffed dogs.
“It was more fun than we could even imagine, mainly because of how intelligent and enthusiastic the campers were; most of them want to be a veterinarian or partake in another related medical field,” Raese said. “The campers really were engaged in all of the activities—they even named all of their ‘patients’ and asked questions to apply the information they learned to real life.”
“What shocked me the most, personally, was how quick they picked up on the skills, especially learning how to suture. It seemed like they learned faster than our first-year class,” Eads said. “It really excites me for the future of veterinary medicine. Overall, it was a great time, and one of the most fun outreaches that we have partaken in yet.”
On June 20, Eads and Raese traveled back to Houston to present at the Houston Children’s Museum STEM summer camp, working with third through 10th graders to teach them about infectious diseases and how they relate to wetlands.
“It turns out that the summer group there had been creating a wetland at the middle school they are based out of for the past few years. The kids, themselves, cleared the land, created the manmade wetland, and have been maintaining the forestry and feeding the now-resident animals,” Eads said. “It was very neat to see that the kids were doing the dirty work, allowing them to really be invested in the growth of their mini-wetland.
“They were so proud to show us all of the hard work that they had done, and their faces lit up when we said how awesome everything was,” she continued. “They were also very engaged in the presentation, too, as we talked about how infectious disease can spread and the effects that it can have on both their manmade wetlands and natural wetlands.
From June 25-28, PEER hosted a girls Aggie STEM Enrichment Camp at the CVM, which included a tour of the Diagnostic Imaging and Cancer Treatment facilities at the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital; lectures on cells, microscopy, and histology by Dr. Larry Johnson that included having groups of the girls make and present a PowerPoint on the histology of a chosen body system; a tour of the Winnie Carter Wildlife Center and the Schubot Exotic Bird Health Center; presentations on “The Pathway to Veterinary School” and the details of clinical trials (the latter of which was by PEER content specialist Torri Whitaker); and playing “Medopoly,” a PEER-created spin-off of Monopoly that focuses on the phases and components of clinical trials.
“Finally, Thursday was the best day of the camp, starting with a presentation from Dr. Mark Stickney on companion animal spays and neuters,” Eads said. “Melodie then followed by leading a hands-on teaching clinic on how to perform a square and surgeon’s knot on orange halves.”
“The girls started with hand ties and then progressed to suturing with forceps, needle-drivers, reverse cutting-edge needles, and fishing line,” Raese said. “Something that made this day so unique is how excited the girls were to be learning a surgical skill and that it was combined in unison throughout the CVM—the equipment was loaned to us thanks to several CVM departments, which allowed many people to be indirectly involved in an activity that not only taught younger girls about science, but also got them excited about veterinary medicine in particular.”
“All in all, June was an incredible, busy month for both Melodie and me,” Eads said. “It has been so rewarding to be able to go out into the community and share our love for both science and veterinary medicine. We can’t wait to see what July holds.”
