Oklahoma is committing $250 million to build a new veterinary teaching hospital at Oklahoma State University.
The project aims to replace a 40-year-old facility and address a growing shortage of rural veterinarians, especially those serving large and food animal operations.
OSU officials say that it is the largest state appropriation in university history.
According to Todd Greenwood with the Farm Journal Foundation, “This state is ahead of many. I want to commend everyone for that. We find that within the four categories of the workforce pipeline— from high school students to undergraduate pre-vet students, veterinary students, and early practitioners— there are critical decisions in there that they have to make to cross into each of those phases. There are good programs in each of those phases, but there are very few bridges across for them to follow.”
Greenwood says that Oklahoma is taking the lead by building pipelines from high school to vet school and supporting young practitioners.
The university’s president says that the mission starts with recruiting the right students.
“Our focus is on trying to attract people from rural Oklahoma, train them, and get them back to rural Oklahoma. And so we take that mission very seriously, and part of our legislative efforts in the past have been to provide the scholarships for students who will commit to practicing large animal or food animal veterinary medicine in a rural area,” President Jim Hess states. “We awarded eight of those this last fall and hope to do some more next fall, so we’re very appreciative of our legislative team members who provided that support. It’s absolutely critical for a rural veterinarian to not have much debt.”
A boost in state scholarship funding has doubled available aid this year, helping more students commit to rural large animal practice.
