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Values
The College of Veterinary Medicine is unique
within the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest as the only
program that is fully accredited by four key national accrediting
agencies (AVMA, AAALCA, AAVLD, AAHA) for veterinary medical education.
The College also provides exceptional undergraduate and graduate
instruction and conducts high-impact research in focused areas of
veterinary and other biomedical sciences. We take these responsibilities
seriously, recognizing that the quality of our graduates and scientific
advances reflects directly upon our competence and commitment to these
endeavors. Innovation is integral to our mission of creating and
disseminating knowledge for the sustainability and enhancement of animal
and human health. We seek to foster outstanding scholarship and
collaborative success by nurturing intellectual excitement and
creativity through mentoring in the classroom, laboratory, and animal
hospital, and by encouraging interactions among diverse groups of
students, faculty, and staff. The College of Veterinary Medicine is,
therefore, guided by a commitment to excellence, and embraces the core
values of Washington State University that include inquiry, knowledge
application, leadership, character, stewardship, diversity, and a safe
and positive work and learning environment.
Vision
The College of Veterinary Medicine envisages
itself as a flagship program of Washington State University. As such, we
will excel in our instructional, scholarly and creative, and service and
outreach missions. We will enhance our traditionally strong and broad
instructional base in the basic and clinical sciences, while building
upon nationally acclaimed programs in biotechnology, infectious diseases
and immunology, food safety, and neuroscience and neurology, and
developing a leading program in oncology. We will seek to develop and
produces graduates who possess both the technical and non-technical
skills that are needed to become a successful member of the veterinary
profession and society in general.
Strengths and Challenges
The College of Veterinary Medicine is strengthened
by:
A strong connection and commitment to the
land-grant mission of Washington State University.
A faculty that is committed to quality
education, enjoys consistently high teaching evaluations, and has
been honored with university, state, and national teaching awards.
The fact that faculty rather than teaching
assistants provide all the didactic and laboratory instruction, and
most of the clinical teaching in the College. This results in a
higher quality of education, more experienced teachers, and better
continuity in instruction from year to year.
An internationally recognized faculty of
health scientists, with particular strengths in biotechnology,
infectious diseases and immunology, food safety, neuroscience and
neurology, muscle biology, and a number of clinical specialist
disciplines.
A faculty that substantially contributes to
collaborative, interdisciplinary programs in agricultural animal
health, food safety, biotechnology, reproductive biology, alcohol
and drug abuse, and animal well-being. .
Strong extramural support with per capita
peer-reviewed grant support unequaled on campus or nationally in the
veterinary profession. The College continues to have outstanding
success in obtaining new programmatic and capital support through
state and federal initiatives, and has an outstanding record of
accomplishment in private development.
The success of the Agricultural Animal Health
Program (AAHP) in enhancing research and graduate training, and
service and outreach through AAHP component units (Animal Health
Research Center, Field Disease Investigative Unit, Washington Animal
Disease Diagnostic Laboratory [WADDL], and USDA-ARS Animal Disease
Research Unit).
A highly trained research, instructional, and
support staff that is dedicated to the College’s mission.
Veterinary students who are academically
among the most successful at Washington State University, and
graduate and postdoctoral training programs that have an outstanding
record of competing for individual and training grant funds, and
overall accomplishment.
State-of-the-art clinical facilities in the
Veterinary Teaching Hospital and research laboratories in the Animal
Disease Biotechnology Facility (ADBF).
Strong stakeholder relationships with the
university community, governmental agencies, veterinarians,
biomedical scientists, and the general public throughout the state
and region.
We are challenged to maintain these strengths
because:
Of lost faculty positions and the failure to
develop new positions in essential clinical sciences and critical
areas of emerging research focus, due to ongoing budgetary
reductions.
Faculty and staff (research, clinical, and
administrative) are insufficient to capitalize fully on teaching and
research opportunities. This is exacerbated by our commitment to
using faculty rather than teaching assistants to teach courses.
Attracting and retaining outstanding faculty
are hampered by salaries that fall increasingly behind peer
institutions and private sector opportunities, difficulty in
offering competitive start-up packages, lack of specialized
personnel support, and areas of substandard research space.
Regular budget reductions over the last
decade have led to a severe lack of PBL operational support and
technical staff, and inadequate resources to purchase and maintain
needed core equipment. Other research infrastructure such as animal
holding facilities and seed-grant programs are also under-funded,
creating inefficiencies and contributing to lost opportunities.
Changing demographics in the state, coupled
with the growth of private sub-specialty clinical practices,
represent significant challenges to maintaining an adequate teaching
hospital faculty and caseload.
A rapidly changing regulatory environment,
rapid emergence of new diseases, bioterrorism concerns, and changing
economics in the agricultural animal industry serve as moving
targets when developing and providing cutting-edge diagnostic and
clinical service, and the research needed to support these areas.
Of retirements within the next ten years of
faculty who have provided strong leadership and account for a
significant share of extramural funding, or who have provided
high-contact hour preclinical and clinical teaching.
Strategic Priorities
The College of Veterinary Medicine increasingly
depends on extramural funding, not only for research, but also to
support core operations and technical and instructional staff, graduate
education and teaching assistantships, clinical and outreach programs,
and basic college infrastructure. According to the Annual Report of the
Vice Provost for Research, the Departments of Veterinary Microbiology
and Pathology and Veterinary and Comparative Anatomy, Pharmacology, and
Physiology are two the top four WSU departments in generating extramural
grant expenses and have the lowest ratio of state to total funding of
any academic departments at Washington State University. Consequently,
we recognize that if we are to faithfully and aggressively pursue our
mission, our strategic priorities must enhance our research
competitiveness while also facilitating ongoing improvements in the
quality of professional instruction, graduate and undergraduate
education, and outreach activities.
To capitalize on our opportunities, and as a basis
for making major budgetary, human resource and other organizational
decisions, the CVM has established strategic priorities that will only
be effectively realized through both additional and reallocated
budgetary support:
- Build on existing strengths to position the
College as an international research leader in the veterinary
sciences and broader biomedical scientific arena. We must use our
existing strengths to attract and retain quality faculty (including
endowed chairs), students, and staff who have established strategic
and productive partnerships that support and sustain international
prominence in our focused areas of excellence:
-
microbial and host genomics
(as they
relate to immunology, pathology, and infectious diseases);
-
integrated biomedical sciences (relating
to neuroregulation of physiology and behavior, muscle biology,
cellular and molecular neurobiology);
-
clinical sciences (oncology, neurology,
cardiology, and infectious diseases);
-
food, water, and vector borne diseases.
- Maintain full accreditation status with the
American Veterinary Medical Association Council on Education (AVMA-COE),
the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory
Animal Care (AAALAC), the American Association of Veterinary
Laboratory Diagnosticians (AAVLD), and the American Animal Hospital
Association (AAHA).
- Evaluate and optimize the quality of
instruction in population and production medicine. A means of
assessing effectiveness of this teaching must be established that
should include periodic evaluation of learning and development of
benchmarks. Finally, a strategy must be developed that identifies
means by which adjustments will be made in event the educational
experience is deemed to be suboptimal.
- Address existing PBL line item deficits such
as those related to Veterinary Teaching Hospital operations by
identifying new funds, reallocating existing ones, and developing
programs that will increase service-based revenues (e.g., developing
a nationally acclaimed clinical and research program in oncology).
- Allocation of new PBL when secured, and
continued reallocation of existing PBL to create tenure track or
clinical educator positions in core clinical and basic health
science disciplines, the teaching of which is currently outsourced
and/or supported by temporary funds; e.g., ophthalmology,
dermatology, dentistry, and behavior.
- Introduce a Dean’s List for D.V.M. students
and those in the undergraduate neuroscience program.
- Expand with collaborative clinical training
and graduate education partnerships throughout the College, by
building on the successful model of post-DVM training grant and
individual clinician-scientist development award funding used by
Veterinary Microbiology and Pathology.
- Pursue biomedical research and education
ventures in collaboration with other colleges, branch campuses, and
both human and veterinary health science activities in Spokane in
order to selectively expand the reach of interdisciplinary programs
that target high ability students, including veterinary subspecialty
clinical practice and research, and both undergraduate neuroscience
and graduate and undergraduate bioengineering. This may invite the
creation of new undergraduate degree majors, e.g., in biomedical
sciences or animal biotechnology.
- Enhance quality assurance and management
systems within service areas such as the Veterinary Teaching
Hospital and Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory (WADDL);
improve instructional technology and bioinformatic and medical
informatic capabilities in support of health care and diagnostic
service delivery, and the associated applied research that will keep
the CVM’s veterinary health care and diagnostic programs in a
prominent leadership position.
- Continue to upgrade and expand the space
available for instruction, graduate education, and leading-edge
research in integrative biomedical sciences, diagnostic services,
and high biosecurity containment animal housing facilities.
- Expanded development activities designed to
increase returns from major gifts, and planned and annual giving. As
well as continuing to seek endowed chairs and scholarship, greater
emphasis will be placed on identifying support for junior training
positions in diagnostic pathology and clinical specialties.
- Seek funds and develop plans for
construction/establishment of a common area for staff, faculty, and
students.
- Expand and change the name of the Center for
the Study of Animal Well-Being (CSAW) to the Center for Animal and
Human Well-Being to reflect and build on the traditional strengths
of the CVM in areas relating to the human-animal bond and reverence
for life. This will incorporate enhanced efforts to develop
professionalism, leadership, problem solving, and emotional
intelligence or wisdom in students enrolled in the D.V.M. program.
- Develop a specific faculty recruitment plan
that is based on anticipated retirements, existing and future areas
of focus, and emerging trends in veterinary education.
- Explore the creation of an undergraduate
degree program in biomedical sciences and/or animal biotechnology,
with particular emphasis on bioengineering and
medical/bio-informatics.
- Vertically integrate instruction in
non-technical life skills (leadership, emotional intelligence,
communication) throughout the DVM curriculum and all college
programs engaging all CVM community members in collaboration with
CTLC and other WSU entities, and employing new faculty with
instructional and research expertise in their fields and health
science education.
2002 STRATEGIC PLAN FOR WSU, CVM, 2005-2010 04-05
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