RUSSO (Host Intro): The University of Maryland Eastern Shore can now officially start recruiting and admitting students for the inaugural class of its highly anticipated, and first of its kind veterinary school. Delmarva Public Media student reporter Dillon Austin has more.
AUSTIN: Dr. Stanley Robertson is the Dean of the University of Maryland Eastern Shore School of Veterinary Medicine. He's been at the forefront of the university's efforts to establish its veterinary program, which is the first of its kind in Maryland. And just last week, those efforts took a massive step forward.
ROBERTSON: It's a monumental opportunity for UMES to be in this space.
AUSTIN: The school received an accreditation letter of reasonable assurance from the American Veterinary Medicine Association's Council on Education, essentially greenlighting the inaugural Doctor of Veterinary Medicine class in Summer 2027. Robertson says the program could make an industry impact almost immediately.
ROBERTSON: When you look at the opportunity to graduate more underrepresented students.
AUSTIN: According to a 2022 study from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, less than 3% of the nation's veterinarians are African-American, while simultaneously there's a 16% shortage of veterinarians in the state of Maryland.
ROBERTSON: And also trained veterinarians for the workforce in the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the region and across the nation.
AUSTIN: The decision allows UMES to begin recruiting and admitting students into its veterinary program. While applications are not yet open, the university is expected to announce application dates, deadlines, and submission instructions soon. The program will be the first veterinary school physically located in Maryland and the first at a publicly historically black college or university.
ROBERTSON: Honestly, I'm most excited for them to experience many opportunities from being a practitioner, whether it be a small animal practitioner, large animal, mixed animal, being a specialist at some point if they do additional training, being involved in food safety, being involved in public health, being involved in research, lab animal medicine, corporate medicine. There's a lot of opportunities for our veterinary students.
AUSTIN: UMES will offer an intensive, three-year program that gives students early hands-on training and clinical experience in communities and practice settings where veterinarians are needed.
ROBERTSON: The first year will be a lot of the foundational things like anatomy, physiology. We call that course "Healthy Animal." There'll be pharmacology, there'll be pathology in addition to a course that runs across the whole six semesters of the first two years before they get into the clinics is our clinical skills curriculum. And that's where they'll get a lot of hands-on experience with not only live animals, but also with models. We will expose our students to models and simulations to get their confidence and their competence, get them familiar with what they're going to do on the live animal before they actually work on live animals. We also have another course that goes throughout the whole six semesters of the preclinical curriculum called Professional and Life Skills. This is where they will receive a lot of communication training, training in financial management, professionalism, ethics, and things like that.
AUSTIN: Despite this milestone, UMES still has work to do before it welcomes its first class of veterinary students.
ROBERTSON: This is one step of many, and there's a lot of things that we need to continue to accomplish before we are fully developed and before we get full accreditation, which won't happen until after we graduate a class.
AUSTIN: UMES expects its first class of veterinary students in Summer 2027. As the university continues its efforts toward full accreditation, prospective students can find information on prerequisite courses, admission requirements, and the selection process on the School of Veterinary Medicine's website and other social media platforms.
ROBERTSON: I'm very grateful to the University of Maryland leadership, to the people that started this, that laid the foundation for this program, the president, the provost, Dean Kairo, Dr. Braxton and others who did the foundational work before I got here.
AUSTIN: I'm Dillon Austin for Delmarva Public Media.
