Strategic Plan, 2005-2010: College of Veterinary Medicine
Mission
Our mission is to enhance animal and public health and well-being through
excellent professional veterinary medical education; graduate, resident, and
undergraduate education in the health sciences; biomedical, biotechnological and
clinical research; and public service through clinical care and diagnostic
services, life-long education, and outreach.
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
