It’s no small secret or surprise that it is difficult to recruit professionals to move to rural areas of the country. As an already small profession, it is especially challenging to persuade veterinarians to move out of dense urban communities to single stoplight towns or agricultural communities.
Texas in particular faces a shortage of veterinarians in small and regional areas. According to a 2016 report by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, there are roughly 6,600 veterinarians in Texas. Of this number, only 180 serve livestock in rural areas.
As the massive, sprawling state Texas is, 74 percent of counties have less than 50,000 people. In these counties, almost half of veterinarians are over 60 years old. In comparison, in urban areas, only 25 percent of licensed veterinarians are over the age of 60.
In addition to having a shortage of licensed veterinarians, only a small number of students are admitted into Texas’s only veterinarian program at Texas A&M University. In 2017, 600 students applied to the veterinary medicine program. Due to limited capacity, only 142 students were accepted. More Texas students left the state to pursue veterinary medicine than the number of first-year students enrolled in the state. After, many don’t return to the state or its rural areas.
In an effort to recruit and train students who are passionate serving small, agricultural communities, Texas Tech University (TTU) has announced the accreditation and construction of the Texas Tech University School of Veterinary Medicine (TTUSVM). The school will be located on the TTU Health Sciences Center-Amarillo campus.
Funding the state’s second vet school
The idea to build an additional vet school in Texas isn’t a new one. TTU was approved for a vet school in 1971 but was never funded at the time, said Dr. Guy Loneragan, veterinary epidemiologist and professor of food safety and public health at TTU.
“Even 50 years ago, there was a need for rural veterinarians to serve Texas,” Loneragan said.
Serious development has been considered over the last five years, and the TTU System Board of Regents finally approved the establishment in August 2018.
The Texas Legislature appropriated a little over $4 million to conduct a feasibility and planning assessment in 2017, and in this year’s session funded TTU $17.4 million over the next two years, to be appropriated towards matters such as curriculum development.
“At the same time, we needed to raise money for the facilities,” Loneragan said. “We committed to not asking the state to fund construction. The facilities budget is $90 million, and all of that money has been committed and raised privately and through economic development corporations.”
The $90 million was mostly raised in the Amarillo region and effectively committed in a nine-month period. It was largely a community effort as well as people from all across the state.
“It speaks to the fact that people believed in the need, in the vision and really wanted to invest in the students and children of the state and provide them more education opportunities,” Loneragan said.
Choosing Amarillo
The Amarillo campus was chosen for several reasons including: the already established and vibrant campus from the Health Sciences Center; the “set of leaders that were visionaries and looked at projects that were big and impactful for the region and state;” and the proximity to numerous livestock industries headquarters such as Texas Cattle Feeders Association and the American Quarter Horse Association.
The TTU veterinarian school hopes to be able to produce licensed general practitioners who will be a great fit for the small agricultural regions that have both livestock and pets.
“This forces us to rethink everything, such as the type of student we select so they are more likely to help us meet our goals,” Loneragan said. “If we want someone to live in a location such as Del Rio for example, chances are they would be someone already from a border community, so we have to really rethink how we admit and who we admit into the program.”
TTU’s three-pronged approach for preparing graduates to working in small communities includes being very purposeful in how they attract, train and educate the students.
School specifics
The first TTUSVM class is expected to be admitted in fall 2021. The inaugural class is expected to consist of 40 to 50 students, and build from there to be 60 to 70 students. The buildings will be designed to house future growth, and able to hold up to 100 students.
The Board of Regents approved moving into the final part of design on June 25, which will include building specifics and the final layout. The school will consist of two sets of facilities: a location on the Amarillo campus housing the majority of the classroom teaching and labs; and a second location a few miles away on the outskirts of the city to focus on bringing in large animals.
Groundbreaking is expected to commence in September and a 21-month construction time sets the facilities to be completed by summer 2021, just in time for the first class to be enrolled in the fall. — Anna Miller, WLJ editor
