December 2019
2020 AAVMC Award Honorees Announced
The AAVMC has announced the recipients of five awards that recognize professional excellence, achievement and service in academic veterinary medicine.


The awards will be presented during the AAVMC's 2020 Annual Conference and Iverson Bell Symposium, which will be held March 6-8, 2020 at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Learn more.
Best Selling Author, Higher Ed Expert Selingo to Present Keynote at 2020 Conference
One of the most respected voices in higher education will present a keynote address at the 2020 AAVMC Conference March 6-8, 2020 in Washington, D.C. Jeffrey J. Selingo is a contributing editor at The Atlantic, and former top editor of the Chronicle of Higher Education. He is the author of three books, including the New York Times bestseller, There Is Life After College: What Parents and Students Should Know About Navigating School to Prepare for the Jobs of Tomorrow. Registration is open for the for the meeting which will be held at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. With programming structured around the theme “Catalyze 2020: Innovate and Inspire,” the conference is expected to attract hundreds of educators and other leaders from the veterinary medical profession. Learn more.
Final VMCAS Data Confirms Growth, Trends
Final data from the 2019-20 Veterinary Medical College Application Service (VMCAS) application cycle has been analyzed and it confirms a continuing rise in the number of applicants applying to member institutions, according to AAVMC Director of Admissions and Recruitment Affairs Diana Dabdub. A total of 8,645 students applied for seats during the Class of 2024, a rise of about six percent over last year. The vast majority of those applicants were white females between 20 and 25 years old. Learn more.

University of Arizona and Long Island University Join AAVMC
The AAVMC has two new members: The Long Island University College of Veterinary Medicine and the University of Arizona College of Veterinary Medicine have each received a Letter of Reasonable Assurance (LORA) from the Council on Education (COE) and will enroll their inaugural classes in Fall 2020. At full enrollment, LIU will serve 400 students, with 100 in each class. Arizona’s classes will include up to 110 students. LIU is structured on a distributed clinical education model and Arizona will use a hybrid-distributive clinical educational model. Learn more.
Veterinary Wellbeing Summit Shines Light on Problem, Solutions
Presentations from mental health experts, leaders from the profession and others highlighted the 2019 Veterinary Wellbeing Summit held November 17-19 in Chicago. The conference, themed “Putting the ‘We’ in Wellbeing,” was attended by 264 people representing various sectors of the world of veterinary medicine, and it put an exclamation mark on both a vexing problem and the decisive action that’s being undertaken to address it. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP), the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) jointly introduced a new resource at the meeting: “ After a Suicide: A Toolkit for Colleges of Veterinary Medicine.” Learn more.
AAVMC, MSD Animal Health Collaborating on Global Antimicrobial Resistance Project
MSD Animal Health is teaming up with the AAVMC on an international grant program designed to help mitigate the global public health problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Administered through the AAVMC’s Council on International Veterinary Medical Education (CIVME), the new MSD Animal Health CIVME Antimicrobial Stewardship Grant program seeks to improve instructional programs related to AMR in educational institutions around the world. Projects are expected to align with one or more criteria that advance CIVME’s mission. The deadline for grant submission is January 30, 2020. Proposals should be forwarded to CIVME-grant@aavmc.org and grant application materials can found on the CIVME website. For more information about the program, please contact Dr. Harold Bok at g.j.bok@uu.nl. Learn more.
U.S. Department of Education Re-certifies Council on Education (COE)
The U. S. Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) has re-certified the Council on Education as the official federally recognized accrediting agency for academic veterinary medicine. AAVMC and AVMA officials were notified of the action in a letter from Diane Auer Jones, Principal Deputy Under Secretary, Delegated to Perform the Duties of Under Secretary, U.S. Department of Education in a letter dated November 8, 2019. The decision follows an extensive review process that included extensive documentation, presentations and public comment. The renewed recognition is valid for a five-year period. Learn more.
Cantner Joins AAVMC as Director of Strategic Initiatives
Dr. Caroline Cantner will join the AAVMC in January 2020 as Director for Strategic Initiatives. Cantner is replacing Vanessa Mariani, who has joined Elanco as a senior vice president. Cantner brings five years of association experience through her work as the AVMA’s Assistant Director for Student Initiatives, Western Region. Cantner provided primary AVMA staff support to the Veterinary Debt Initiative (VDI) and has spoken on related topics at veterinary medical schools, conferences, and webinars. Cantner received her VMD from the University of Pennsylvania and worked in small animal general practice prior to joining the AVMA. Learn more.
AAVMC Collaborating with IBM, VetBloom on Blockchain Project
The AAVMC is collaborating with IBM and VetBloom, the digital learning ecosystem from Ethos Veterinary Health, on a project that is applying blockchain technology to document learning credentials in the veterinary medical profession. The goal is to create a framework for competency-based veterinary medical education using digital badges to support credentialing. Other initial collaborators working on the project include the International Council for Veterinary Assessment (ICVA), and the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA). Blockchain aims to address the challenge of competency-based learning by creating tamper-evident, digital credentials stored on a distributed blockchain network. Learn more.
Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program Seeking Veterinarians
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Clinical Scholars program is seeking more veterinarians to participate in multidisciplinary teams tackling health equity issues in their communities. The program funded a multidisciplinary from Michigan State University that includes personnel from the MSU-CVM during their 2019 Clinical Scholars cohort. The 2020 application cycle opens January 10th and closes March 11th, and the foundation has reached out to the AAVMC to help them encourage the development of more applications from interdisciplinary teams that include veterinarians. For more information, please contact Deputy Director for Recruitment and Communications Melissa Green, MPH Green at 919-843-304 or clinical.scholars@unc.edu. Learn more.
AAVMC Supporting Foster the Future Exposition in Washington February 5, 2020
The Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) is hosting a food and agriculture research exhibition and discussion forum at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington on February 5, 2020. The AAVMC is supporting the event. Foster Our Future showcases FFAR-funded and other agricultural research by allowing participants to interact with exhibits that demonstrate how science is changing the food and agriculture landscape. Established by bipartisan congressional support in the 2014 Farm Bill, FFAR is a nonprofit organization that leverages federal investment with other partners to address critical shortfalls in agricultural research. Learn more.
Academic Veterinary Medicine in the News

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USA Today
Today's Veterinary Practice
CNN
Veterinary Practice News
Scienmag
Jotup
Columbus Dispatch
Ag News Feed
DVM360
WVLT-8
People in Motion

Dr. M. Daniel Givens, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Auburn University, has been named Dean of the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine (VMCVM) at Virginia Tech, effective June 1, 2020.

Dr. Dana Zimmel has been named Interim Dean at the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine.

Dr. Molly McCue was named Associate Dean of Research at the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine.
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