Progressing Toward the Future | Message from the Dean

Message from the Dean | June 2018

Progressing Toward the Future

As you know, the school updates its strategic plan annually to highlight progress toward our eight strategic priorities and the creation of new initiatives to advance these priorities in the coming years. Here you will find the latest strategic plan annual report, highlighting all that we have done to advance the overall mission of the UW School of Veterinary Medicine and, in particular, how we educate our students, recruit and support our faculty, bolster UW Veterinary Care's success, and conduct research to benefit both animal and human health.

One of this year's highlights includes engaging all of our incoming veterinary medical students in diversity dialogue discussions. We also will host the biannual Iverson Bell Midwest Regional Diversity Summit in Madison in 2020.

Over the past year, the school met its $70 million comprehensive campaign goal and has subsequently raised that goal to $100 million. At the end of 2017, we had already raised $90.3 million and are currently at approximately $23 million raised for our new building expansion. Our scholarship endowment at the end of 2017 has grown to $17.7 million, a 60 percent increase over the past five years and, importantly, our students' average indebtedness is the second lowest in the nation. We will continue to focus on scholarship support to lessen our students' indebtedness and thereby enable our graduates to pursue the wide variety of career opportunities available to them in this amazing profession.

In the last year, we have hired nine new faculty and four new clinical instructors. All are outstanding in their respective fields and I look forward to their contributions in the coming years toward our students' veterinary medical education, the research that we conduct, and the clinical care we provide. Over the past five years, the SVM has hired a net of seven new faculty members in addition to those that we have replaced. We anticipate adding four new faculty positions in 2018.

In the research arena, we have grown our annual research expenditures to $24.2 million, an increase of 3 percent over 2016, and continue to hold international leadership in much of the research that we conduct, importantly in the areas of infectious disease and One Health. Our Companion Animal Fund grant program has increased by about 70 percent over the last year, supporting many of the research projects conducted by our clinical faculty. We currently have six students enrolled in our dual DVM/PhD program and we anticipate an additional student will be admitted this year.

The school continues to focus on improving our students' veterinary medical education. Our Clinical Skills Training Center, which was significantly expanded in 2017, is an important area of emphasis in the coming year, in addition to creating more clinical competency modules. And the Renk Learning Center has been a significant improvement for our students. The school also remains focused on supporting our students' wellness and mental health and the work-life balance of the larger SVM community.

UW Veterinary Care saw nearly 26,500 veterinary patients this year and we continue to try to find space within our current infrastructure to manage our caseload and improve students' education.

I am hopeful that in the next month UW System will announce its prioritized rankings for the capital projects that will be recommended to the governor for the 2019-21 budget. Following that ranking, we hope to be able to select architects to initiate and complete the design of our building addition. The architects for the Lot 62 parking ramp have been selected and design for the ramp should begin this summer, with construction planned to start in summer 2019 and be completed by the beginning of the fall 2020 semester. It is still our hope, if we are successful in our fundraising efforts and in being enumerated by the governor and legislature, that we will begin construction of our new building in the late summer to early fall of 2020, with an estimated completion time of 2022.

I hope that all of you have a great summer and if you are in Madison, please stop by and say hello.

UW Veterinary Care Updates from the Director

Welcome to several new members of the UW Veterinary Care team -- certified veterinary technicians Ashley Onsager and Alexa Peters in Anesthesia, phone receptionist James Hudson, and pharmacy technician Maggie Liceaga, who joins us June 4.

We send our gratitude and, in some cases, goodbyes, to our finishing interns. Andrew Eitzer and Sara Tolliver (Diagnostic Imaging), Michelle Piccione (Dermatology) and Kelly Shaw (Large Animal Surgery) will all stay on at UW Veterinary Care as residents in their respective specialty areas and Jill Caviness (Primary Care) will join us as a clinical instructor. Best wishes to Olivia Swailes and Deb Yenessa (Shelter Medicine) and to our rotating small animal interns, who have a range of destinations: Kyle Bartholomew, anesthesiology and pain management residency at UW Veterinary Care; Adam Eby, surgery residency at North Carolina State University; Harathi Krishnan, private practice in Chicago; Rebecca McBride, neurology residency at The Ohio State University; Andrea Minella, comparative ophthalmology residency at University of California, Davis; Natasha Pakravan, private practice at Cape Cod Veterinary Specialists in Massachusetts; and Joey Sapora, surgery residency at Colorado State University.

On June 11 we welcome our incoming interns (specialty area in parenthesis): Hillary Hammond, Kaitlyn McNamara, Marjorie Owen, Alec Repasy, Danielle Roberts, Kenneth Sui and Sridhar Veluvolu (rotating), Miranda Lee Braithwaite and Eric Howlett (Primary Care), Melissa Gall and Bridget Holck (Shelter Medicine), Kara Magee (Oncology), Molly Viner (Imaging) and Sarah White (Large Animal Surgery).

The dedication of our interns contributes immensely to the top-notch care that our patients receive; here is just one recent comment from a client grateful for that dedicated service:

"Every time I have had to bring either one of my dogs to UW Veterinary Care for treatment it is always a great experience! From the knowledge of the doctors, the experience they bring, the courtesy of the students and staff -- amazing. I would bring my animals to UW every time if I lived closer! I love it!"

- Andrea, Rockford, Illinois

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

School News

Veterinarian Sabrina Brounts with equine patient

The spring 2018 issue of On Call mailed to alumni and friends of the school last month, highlighting UW Veterinary Care's comprehensive equine services, the efforts of state veterinarians Paul McGraw DVM'88 and Darlene Konkle DVM'93 to safeguard animal and human health in Wisconsin, and much more. Additional copies can be found in the Veterinary Medicine Building and Hanson Labs, and you can also read the online edition.

Student News

Four new students from St. George's University join us this month, starting in the clinic June 11: Kyla French, Amy Kalinauskas, Amy Ryckman and Andrea Swanson.

Rachel O'Leary DVMx'19, who upon graduation plans to work in a production animal clinic with dairy cattle, received a $1,000 scholarship from the Dairy Calf and Heifer Association.

The UW SVM's Veterinarians as One Inclusive Community for Empowerment (VOICE) chapter, which strives to increase awareness, respect and sensitivity to differences among all individuals and communities in the field of veterinary medicine, won a Social Justice Advocacy Award at the annual campus Bucky Awards Ceremony in April.

Faculty and Staff News

Theresa Ollivett, assistant professor of food animal production medicine, was featured on the cover of the March/April issue of Bovine Veterinarian, discussing the use of on-farm thoracic ultrasonography to evaluate lung function in dairy calves.

Congratulations to Heidi Barnes Heller, Department of Medical Sciences, and the Department of Surgical Sciences' Samantha Morello and Jason Bleedhorn on their promotion to clinical associate professor, and to Troy Hornberger, Department of Comparative Biosciences, on his promotion to professor.

Welcome to Sophie Aschenbroich, a veterinary anatomic pathologist -- and dual French-American citizen, originally from Lyon, France -- who joins the Department of Pathobiological Sciences as clinical assistant professor, and to Chithra Kamath, the SVM's new accountant in Business Services.

Congratulations to Professor M. Suresh, the first recipient of the John E. Butler Professorship in Comparative and Mucosal Immunology. The award will begin on July 1, 2018, and extend through June 30, 2023.

Farewell to research scientist Matthew Aliota PhD'10, who is departing for a faculty position at the University of Minnesota. During his time at the SVM, Aliota earned a Forward Under 40 Award from the Wisconsin Alumni Association for his research and outreach related to Zika virus and other mosquito-borne diseases.

Research News

Research led by Associate Professor Tracey Baker and Professor Jyoti Watters, both in the Department of Comparative Biosciences (CBS), exploring the relationship between maternal breathing dysfunction during pregnancy and increased risk for autism-like behavior in offspring is among 17 innovative projects to receive a UW2020: WARF Discovery Initiative grant. CBS Professor Ted Golos and Associate Professor Sathish Kumar are also co-investigators on a UW2020 project to advance the use of CRISPR-mediated genome editing technology at UW-Madison to model human disease.

A new research grant from Zoetis will support work by Mostafa Zamanian, assistant professor of pathobiological sciences, to advance understanding of the fundamentals of heartworm disease and explore potential novel interventions to help prevent it.