Dean’s Message

College of Veterinary Medicine

K-State’s College of Veterinary Medicine is a place where tremendous progress happens every day in veterinary education and in research on animal health and human diseases. We provide excellent clinical training programs in the extraordinary Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital and our new satellite clinic, MidWestVET in Omaha, Neb.

Our college is taking a lead role to help establish the new K-State Olathe (Kan.) Innovation Campus that will anchor the Kansas Bioscience Park. In Olathe, we’ll reinforce our presence in the Kansas City Animal Health Corridor as well as create a pipeline of students for our graduate research programs.

We’ve recently recruited and retained the world’s top faculty in agricultural practices. We’re aggressively addressing public health, comparative medicine and food safety and security, partly through our newly created International Food Safety Network and our partnership with the Biosecurity Research Institute.

Our faculty and students have been able to identify the challenges of changes in society, changes in the human-animal bond and changes in disease transmission from humans to animals — and meet them head on. In addition, we know there is a crucial shortage of veterinarians, yet demand for veterinary services continues to rise.

To meet these challenges, we will work as a team — our faculty, staff and students along with you, our faithful alumni and friends. Knowing that we have living and practicing veterinarians in all 50 states and 13 countries, we fully intend to do what we have done in our first 100 years, which is change the world.

We must support our veterinarians in training

In an era of rising tuition costs and increased competition for students, scholarships are becoming increasingly important for our students. Scholarship funds help meet one of our highest priorities — the vital need to encourage the best and the brightest students to achieve their full potential.

We must continue to recruit and retain the best faculty

One of the greatest areas of challenge in the veterinary profession is the unprecedented number of specialists going into private practice. We must be competitive and creative in finding new resources to recruit excellent faculty from private practice and industry while rewarding them at a level that keeps them at K-State.

We must take the next step

We continue to address challenges to enhance faculty salaries, reduce student debt through scholarships, assure a strong, relevant core curriculum and evaluate the need to increase class size.

We invite you to be a part of the future by providing job opportunities for our graduates, contributing to our fundraising efforts, participating in alumni activities and coming “home” to visit whenever you can.