This week marks four years I have had the pleasure of serving as the Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine and it has me thinking about how much we have accomplished and how much I have grown in this role. I still miss parts of my life as a faculty member. The transition to leadership is strewn with goodbyes to pieces of your professional life that you cherish – teaching, mentoring, clinical work, discovery.
Lately, I have been missing discovery and innovation (research, the usual word, but that seems so dry compared to what it actually is). I have followed the discoveries initiated by my amazing lab team and our collaborators at UC Davis and it makes me smile. But I now live vicariously through all the amazing journeys our faculty at the College are taking. Journeys that are transformed by current events, funding agencies, relationships with collaborators, industry stakeholders and legislators, and engagement and alignment with donors.
Discovery is made better and stronger by these networks. Rabies Free Africa started as a dream that could have huge impact on human and animal life in East Africa. Visit the Rabies Free Africa site. This dream has been supported by a steady stream of donors (individuals and veterinary clinics- thank you!), grants that have supported research focused on critical programmatic needs – vaccine storage and facial recognition software – and now a partnership with VetCor that has the potential to provide a truly sustainable funding model for this work. Program impact amplifies success and our own Dr. Sarah Frech (DVM alumni and member of our Dean’s Leadership Council) and her husband, Dr. Stan Erck, now support global health research. They love our impact in community health and infectious disease research.
Discovery is also made better by engagement with stakeholders. A new team has crystallized at the College in the area of aquatic health. Our aquatic health program has primarily focused on disease diagnosis, but new faculty collaborations are now moving forward at a very fast clip. This is fueled in part by the threat to salmon, sturgeon, and shellfish populations in our state, focused by stakeholder, legislator, and citizen concerns, funded by a grant by the USDA, and set as a priority by university leadership for some dedicated federal funding for research facilities. Visit the Aquatic Health lab page on the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory site.
I still miss deep, direct engagement with discovery, but championing for these programs and people is a powerful substitute.
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Be safe, healthy, happy, and stay hopeful.