Celebrating Our Success | Message from the Dean

Message from the Dean | November 2017

Celebrating Our Success

October has been an amazing month. Between the WVMA convention, the SVM research day, and Homecoming with a win by the undefeated Badgers over Maryland, there was much to celebrate. We have also just learned that Lyric Bartholomay, associate professor of pathobiological sciences, is the recipient of a Vilas Faculty Mid-Career Investigator Award from UW-Madison -- a great honor confirming the high esteem in which she is held by the school and her colleagues.

I am pleased to announce that two weeks ago, the school completed the $3 million BerbeeWalsh Match. Thank you to Jim Berbee and Karen Walsh for your leadership. We have also reached the halfway mark for the $5 million Morrie Waud Match ! As you know, Morrie Waud has been one of the school's strongest supporters, focusing much of his energy on our students and our large animal hospital. With this match, Morrie continues to make a lasting impact with his time and philanthropy. Thank you, Morrie. We are well ahead of target for our fundraising goal for the SVM building expansion , now having raised more than $20 million in support of this important project.

As many of you know, the SVM expansion project will hopefully be enumerated by the legislature in the 2019-21 budget, with construction scheduled to start in 2020 and a completion date of 2022. In advance of that project, we hope to begin construction of the new parking ramp on the east end of Lot 62 by 2019, with completion sometime during 2020.

The next five years will be both exciting and disruptive, but will position the school for continued excellence and leadership of the veterinary medical profession in the coming decades.

I want to thank each and every one of you, whether you are a student, an employee, a friend, an alumnus, or a client, for all that you have done to help the school achieve its current success. Have a great remainder of your fall!

P.S. This afternoon at 2:30 p.m. CT, the Diversity and Inclusion on Air podcast from the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) will feature a conversation between me; Lynn Maki, the SVM's Associate Dean for Student Academic Affairs; and Lisa Greenhill of AAVMC. We'll discuss the inclusion of diversity in the new Council on Education accreditation standards used to evaluate colleges of veterinary medicine; why this is an important metric; and how colleges might evaluate and improve their efforts. You can listen live here, and the conversation will be also be archived.

UW Veterinary Care Updates from the Director

In October we celebrated National Veterinary Technician Week, a special opportunity to recognize the critical contributions of our veterinary technicians. This year we had an extra reason to celebrate: Ophthalmology's Kim Sherman received the 2017 Veterinary Technician of the Year Award from the Wisconsin Veterinary Technician Association.

Also honored during Veterinary Technician Week were Bill Neal (Dentistry and Oral Surgery) and Sara Kennedy (Special Species), receiving UW Veterinary Care's 2017 Veterinary Technician Recognition Awards in the Early Career and Legends categories, respectively. Selected by the hospital's veterinary technicians, these annual awards recognize commitment to the profession and service to our patients, clients, students, and clinicians.

Congratulations are also in order for clinical pharmacist Jim Budde, who was recently awarded the Distinguished prefix by UW-Madison; Sandy Eklof of Anesthesia, who passed her Academy of Veterinary Technicians in Anesthesia and Analgesia (AVTAA) examination and obtained her Veterinary Technician Specialty in Anesthesia and Analgesia; and several faculty and staff from the Dentistry and Oral Surgery program -- William Gengler, Chris Snyder, Cindy Bell, and Stephanie Goldschmidt -- who earned awards at the 2017 Annual Veterinary Dental Forum.

And welcome to two new clinicians who recently joined UW Veterinary Care: Alan Williamson (Anesthesia) and Corinne Lawson (Emergency and Critical Care ).

One bit of sad news to share: In October, K9 Odin, an explosive-detection and tracking K9 for the UW-Madison Police Department, was put to rest. Odin was one of several police dogs to receive a protective vest from the School of Veterinary Medicine, funded by pooled donations from SVM students, staff, faculty, and friends of the school -- just one of the ways that we support local K9 units.

To close, here is a note of thanks from a recent UWVC client:

"It was a great experience from the moment I got to the clinic. The entire staff was very knowledgeable and friendly. The doctors and students treated my dog with love and great care. I appreciated them keeping me informed as they did their examination and that they explained his illness in terms I could understand."

- Kim, Minocqua, Wis.

Ruthanne Chun DVM'91
Director, UW Veterinary Care
Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs

School News

Diagnostic Imaging Resident JR Lund at World Dairy Expo

Ken Waller, assistant dean for clinical affairs; Diagnostic Imaging resident JR Lund; and a number of student volunteers helped with check-in prior to judging at the World Dairy Expo October 3-7 in Madison, using ultrasound to scan each cow's udder to help ensure cow comfort and fair competition. The Diagnostic Imaging service has been working with the World Dairy Expo since 1998, playing an integral role in the showing rules and ethics process.

Partners in Giving, the annual combined campaign of Dane County for state, university, and UW Health employees, is running now through November 30. All employees should have received information packets and pledge forms in your mailbox with more details about pledging and the charities involved -- the campaign helps more than 500 local, state, national, and international organizations. To make a contribution, visit giving.wi.gov or give your pledge form to any of these contacts: Rebecca Black, Marla Ostby, Maggie Hutchison, Mary Vander Waal, or Vicki Kalscheur (UW SVM), Linda Gauer (Hanson Labs), or Amy Kuehn (Yoshihiro Kawaoka's lab).

Employees are invited to register for November Listening Sessions for their primary job families as part of the UW-Madison Title and Total Compensation Study (you can use the Job Family Exploration Tool to locate your primary job family) . Listening Sessions provide employees an opportunity to learn about the study, review the job family definitions, and provide input on the sub-families. After the November listening sessions, the Job Family Functional Teams will use employee input to finalize the new job titling framework under development. Then, b eginning in the first quarter of 2018, employees will work with their managers to review and/or revise their job descriptions and finalize how their positions map to the new structure.

Student Updates

Elizabeth Endres DVMx'20 was recently spotlighted by The Waunakee Tribune, sharing stories from her family's dairy farm, her experience at the SVM, and her work toward becoming a large animal veterinarian in Wisconsin and forging relationships with the farmers she'll serve. "When you're little you dream, 'Oh, I want to be a veterinarian.' But then as I got more involved I realized, "Hey, I really AM interested. This IS what I want to do!' Then it morphs more into a goal, instead of just a dream," she told the newspaper.

Faculty and Staff News

Lyric Bartholomay , associate professor in the Department of Pathobiological Sciences, has been honored with a Vilas Faculty Mid-Career Investigator Award from UW-Madison. The award recognizes research and teaching excellence and provides flexible research funding for one year.

Easterday and Hyland Honored with WVMA President_s Award

Two UW SVM founding faculty members -- Emeritus Dean Bernard Easterday and Susan Hyland MS'73 PhD'78 -- were honored with the 2017 President's Award from the Wisconsin Veterinary Medical Association (WVMA) at the organization's annual convention in Madison. WVMA President Scott Spaulding DVM'91 noted the pair's leading role in the creation of the SVM and their long legacy, which continues today, in advising and mentoring veterinary medical students.

Amelia Munsterman, clinical assistant professor of large animal surgery, was the subject of a recent new faculty focus from UW News. What is Munsterman enjoying most about working here? "The wonderful people," she said in the interview. "Faculty have all been warm and welcoming, and the staff is super helpful, and are knowledgeable about their jobs. And I can't forget the students who are all invested in the University and improving the lives of their patients. The teamwork is outstanding."

Research News

New research from Yoshihiro Kawaoka, professor of pathobiological sciences, published in Cell Host & Microbe, shows H7N9 influenza is both lethal and transmissible in an animal model for flu.

In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of UW-Madison researchers led by Ian Duncan, professor of neurology, reports that in long-lived animals, renewed but thin myelin sheaths are enough to restore the impaired nervous system and can do so for years after the onset of disease.