The red-winged blackbirds are back on the Palouse. I feel like having a bit of a conversation with them. Snow is still with us, deep even, in the cattails. They mingle with song sparrows and quail apparently unbothered by, well, winter. I don’t remember when they started singing last year, but this seems early. Nonetheless, I am grateful.
I want to start with a shout-out to all the big and little things people have done in the past month to support friends and colleagues, allay fear, organize ideas, and communicate with WSU leadership and our government affairs team about the impact of funding cuts to science, disease surveillance, and our work locally and globally. As one example, our work on the ground in Kenya and Tanzania helps us stem disease outbreaks where and when they happen, builds trust so that the United States is a partner of choice and supports local workforce development — sustaining people within their own communities.
Locally, we move forward. This summer, we are preparing to welcome a new cohort of faculty. Each year we develop a faculty hiring plan based on our core missions of teaching, clinical service and research. Our plan this year was ambitious as we are expanding our Doctor of Veterinary Medicine student class size to meet the high demand for veterinarians. And, well, we were very successful. We have hired faculty to sustain our small animal medicine, surgery, oncology, cardiology, and emergency critical care clinical services. We have sustained our excellence in anesthesia and equine medicine and surgery. We have recruited one faculty member to engage with our simulation-based education program and junior surgery. We have hired stellar teaching faculty who focus on the art and best practices for teaching our undergraduate students. We are completing our faculty hires to fill out our newly minted undergraduate public health degree — these final two research track faculty will teach and engage in scholarly activity in the areas of environmental health and public policy. And we will welcome a research faculty member focused on neuroscience, circadian rhythms, and seasonal adaptation, and perhaps one focused on computational science and the microbiome. These research faculty members drive graduate education and experiential learning for all of our students and advance health discoveries for people and animals. We recruit faculty from other countries, from many different states, and from people who have trained at WSU and want to return. All are welcome here.
If you’d like to know more, you can always read the latest stories from our college on our news page. For even more content, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Be safe, healthy, happy, and stay hopeful.
Take care & Go Cougs, Dori Borjesson