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News from the Center for
Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine
by Valerie E. Ragan,
DVM, Director
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Greetings from the College Park
campus of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary
Medicine (VMRCVM). It has been an exciting and busy spring for
us as we have wrapped up our center assessment activities and
are moving into implementing some new things.
First, however, I would like to
congratulate Dr. John Kable, on his induction as the new MVMA
president, and would sincerely like to thank Dr. Jim Reed,
immediate past-president for his leadership and support of the
Center for Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine (CPCVM) and
our activities over the last year. It is been a real pleasure
working with Dr.
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Reed, and I feel we’ve built a solid
partnership that we are looking forward to continuing under Dr.
Kable’s leadership. Dr. Reed and Dr. Tom Armitage, MVMA vice
president both served on our CPCVM advisory board over the last
year and we’ve certainly appreciated their input and support as
we’ve developed priorities and activities for the CPCVM and
updated the public and corporate curriculum at VMRCVM.
I am also very pleased to announce
the addition of Dr. Stephen Sundlof to our faculty on the
College Park campus of VMRCVM. Dr. Sundlof stepped down as
director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN)
for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), to accept a
two-year assignment with the CPCVM. Prior to serving as director
of CFSAN, he spent the previous 14 years as director of the
FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine. Under an agreement between
the FDA and us, Dr. Sundlof will work with us to enhance the
public and corporate veterinary medicine curriculum for
veterinary students with a focus on food safety and security,
and to develop career transition training for veterinarians
interested in public veterinary practice. He is also working to
develop a new training and development program in regulatory
science designed for government employees, which will be done in
partnership with the University of Minnesota and the Ohio State
University.
The expectation of this
collaborative effort is to provide a continuum of training in
public practice from the veterinary school level through the
mid-career level. Dr. Sundlof is a perfect example of the
quality of faculty we hope to continue to attract to the CPCVM
as we expand and develop into our vision of a world-class
training center for veterinarians in the public practice sector
of veterinary medicine. Hopefully many of you met Steve at the
Ocean City summer session. Dr. Gerhardt Schurig, dean of the
VMRCVM and a number of department heads from VMRCVM also
attended the summer session to share updates from the college.
Speaking of the MVMA Ocean City
summer session, we were pleased to host a special symposium
entitled “Disasters and Disruptions: Peace of Mind for
Practitioners”. Our goals were to engage leaders in veterinary
public practice with Maryland practitioners and veterinary
students, and to bridge the gap between public and private
practice. We also wanted to bridge the gap between generations
of veterinarians, so we invited a mix of seasoned speakers as
well as younger speakers, including some who graduated in 2005,
2006, and 2009. We were quite pleased that several VMRCVM
current public and corporate track students attended the
symposium as well. We asked them to introduce themselves and
tell us a bit about their areas of interest, so that those
currently engaged in public practice can get to know our future
colleagues. All in all, it was a fun and interesting symposium,
and we appreciated the opportunity MVMA provided for us to
participate.
Since our last update, we have also
signed a memorandum of understanding with the American
Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnositicians (AAVLD).
The AAVLD is a not-for-profit professional organization
consisting of more than 1,200 members from 35 different
countries seeking to disseminate information relating to the
diagnosis of animal diseases; coordinate diagnostic activities
of regulatory, research and service laboratories; establish,
improve, and develop new diagnostic techniques; establish
accepted guidelines for the improvement of diagnostic laboratory
organizations relative to personnel qualifications and
facilities; and act as a consultant to the United States Animal
Health Association on uniform diagnostic criteria involved in
regulatory animal disease programs. Through this partnership,
veterinary students with an interest in diagnostics and
laboratory work will have a great opportunity to learn from
AAVLD members. Many current students are interested in research
and this is a good opportunity for them to gain knowledge and
have access to those with expertise on the laboratory side of
veterinary medicine. The CPCVM and AAVLD will work together to
educate and mentor veterinary students interested in diagnostic
medicine and research, while providing them networking and
potential future employment opportunities.
We also plan to continue our “Meet
the Faculty” seminar series in the fall, once the students
return. We have been in touch with MVMA to solicit topics of
interest, and have some tentative dates lined up. Once we
confirm those dates and topics, we will let you know what they
are, and they will be posted on our website as well.
Finally, on a personal note, I’d
like to sincerely thank MVMA for inviting me to join the Board
of Directors as Director-at-Large. I have sincerely appreciated
our interactions and our partnership as I’ve grown into this
position in College Park. This invitation signals to me that the
best is yet to come. I am honored to have been asked, and I look
forward to doing my part to ensure the College Park campus of
the VMRCVM is visible and valuable to Maryland veterinarians and
the profession of which we are so proud. |
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