By Reece Nations
The Texas Tech Board of Regents held a meeting on Oct. 4, in which a near $1.5 million increase to the university’s future veterinary science program’s project budget was approved, raising the anticipated project allotment to $89.82 million.
The $84,480 budget adjustment signal the board’s intention to move ahead with the veterinary program project with interim Chancellor Tedd Mitchell in place of now-former Chancellor Robert Duncan after Duncan announced he was stepping down as chancellor in August.
Courtesy of the Texas Tech University School of Medicine website
With academic opportunities scarce for would-be veterinarians, the Amarillo-based project would provide more options for those with a passion for animal medicine.
Guy Loneragan, professor of food safety and public health in the Department of Animal & Food Sciences, said he has heard from vets throughout Texas, who say their workforce requirements are currently not being met.
“(W)e need to be able to produce a small animal vet to go into Sulphur Springs, a large animal vet to go into central Texas and mixed animal practitioners to go into south Texas,” he said. “We need to produce all types of vets to serve in these agricultural communities.”
Texas A&M University System Chancellor John Sharp has been vocally critical of Tech’s veterinary school plans, stating in an op-ed published in June by The Dallas Morning News plans for a veterinary science program as A&M has reportedly addressed the needs of the state’s agricultural industry for nearly a decade.
“The fact is, our regional plan had been in the works for years,” Sharp wrote in the editorial. “In 2010, West Texas A&M had submitted to the Legislative Budget Board an appropriations request to enable West Texas A&M… to prepare students to practice in veterinary medicine with a specialization in large animals.”
Courtesy of the Texas Tech System Board of Regents
But the demand for an additional vet science program is an old one, Loneragan said. Through various reports, a pending shortage of large animal specialist veterinarians was identified as far back as the 1970s, according to Loneragan, not 2009 as Sharp has suggested.
The large animal veterinarian shortage has outgrown the capacity of any one institution, he said. In response to this, Tech’s board saw an opportunity to create a new veterinary science program that uses a transformative curriculum to meet the needs of rural Texans.
“We just have to look at the data. The data says that right now Texas A&M only satisfies one-fourth of the workforce demand, which means we must import three-quarters of new veterinarians every year,” Loneragan said. “If we look back in time just two decades ago, Texas A&M satisfied 80 percent of the workforce demand. So, in just one generation we have changed from a state that trained its own workforce for its own needs to a state that’s now overwhelmingly dependent on other states and other countries for its workforce.”
The differences between A&M and Tech’s already accredited veterinarian program curriculum start at the very beginning, he said. Tech’s school would be centered around a focused mission to produce professionals who live and work in rural communities across Texas.
Part of that mission revolves around giving students experiential learning within rural agricultural communities. How a student’s final year of hands-on learning unfolds will in turn change the design of the first three years of their curriculum in order to better prepare them for such real-world experiences, he said.
Loneragan said the lack of options have pushed students out of state, which could be a costly educational experience as students face out-of-state fees.
“Texas’ demands have outgrown one institution,” he said. “It really needs multiple institutions with different approaches to better satisfy the workforce and educational demand.”
Meanwhile, current students enrolled in Tech’s pre-vet programs feel left out, Cleveland Weston, president of the Texas Tech Pre-Veterinary Society, said. As a result, many students have mixed feelings about whether they want to enroll at A&M.
“Regardless, it’s obviously a phenomenal school, there is no denying that,” Weston, a senior pre-veterinary medicine major from Boerne, said. “But the limitation comes from the fact that they have low acceptance rates. They’re very prestigious, so that’s understandable, but they see thousands of applications and it’s very difficult to get in.”
Weston said that pre-vet students are finally beginning to feel like their needs are being addressed with the addition of a veterinary science program. As the proposed vet school in Amarillo looms over the horizon, many feel as though they enrolled at Tech at just the right time.
They do recognize, however, that nothing is set in stone and the school’s first enrollment date could be pushed further back. Originally planned to begin in 2019, the program’s start was most recently postponed to 2021.
“In my opinion, if they were able to meet the Texas’ demands like they say they are as far as veterinarians, then there wouldn’t be a shortage of rural veterinarians,” Weston said. “It doesn’t really make much sense to me, personally. All we want to do is go out there and help animals.”
Tech’s pre-vet society is mostly volunteer-based, he said. Its members willingly donate countless hours of their time to be involved with organizations like the South Plains SPCA and the Humane Society of West Texas.
Courtesy of the Texas Tech System Board of Regents
But, as Loneragan and Weston mentioned, until Tech’s program becomes a reality, ranchers and farmers throughout Texas will continue to be underserved. Weston said that the Tech pre-vet society still has faith that 2021 will be the year enrollment begins in Amarillo.
“For (the vet school) to happen while they’re still here, it would feel like they’re finally not being overlooked anymore,” he said. “We’ve been blessed by having such a good group of officers who are putting in all this hard work, all these members are donating hours and hours of their time… it would definitely validate the experience.”
About Reece Nations: Undergraduate Managing Editor
