At the SAVMA Symposium 2017, Penn Vet SCAVMA won the Outstanding Chapter of the Year Award for the “Meet a Mentor” event held last fall. The event allows students to find potential research mentors at Penn.
At the National VBMA Conference earlier this year, Penn Vet was awarded the Chapter of the Year Award (the first time this award has been given). Penn Vet also won the Networking Award for outreach and collaborative efforts, including working with SCAVMA and PVMA for the career fair, reaching out and surveying Pennsylvania Practitioners, and hosting additional educational events such as the Etiquette Dinner in 2016.
Penn Vet was in attendance at the CDC’s Veterinary Student Day in January. Students on the trip were Jacqueline Brockhurst, V’18, John Cain, V’20, Mary Jane Drake, V’20, Amber Lee, V’18, Souci Louis, V’20, Anna Martin, V’18, Caroline Solomon, V’20, Gregory Sousa, VMD-PhD candidate, Kerrie Tiedemann, V’17, and Elana Vlodaver, V’20. They were joined by faculty members Shelley Rankin, PhD, and Stephen Cole, VMD. For more information, visit www.cdc.gov/onehealth/vsd2017.
The Penn Vet Food Animal Club (FAC) made its first appearance at the 2017 Zoetis-Ohio State University Food Animal Medicine Student Symposium in March. Attendees enjoyed lectures by Dr. Temple Grandin, Dr. Dan Thomson, and other leading food animal veterinarians. Students also participated in wet labs, workshops, and networking socials. New to the 2017 symposium was the Merck Veterinary Dairy Challenge, a competition created to evaluate students’ knowledge of current recommended practices and principles of dairy farm management. Teams of three to four students assessed the management practices of a host dairy through farm record evaluation and on-farm inspection of all aspects of the operation. Teams then shared a short presentation of their findings and recommendations with a panel of judges. Of the Penn Vet attendees, Jordan Fairman, V’20, Emily Griswold, V’20, Amy Kraus, V’19, and Benjamin Luksic, V’20, competed in the event as Penn Vet’s first Dairy Challenge team. The team was one of seven competing in this inaugural contest, which also included five teams from OSU and one from the University of Wisconsin. The FAC plans to return to the symposium in 2018 with greater representation from Penn Vet and another Dairy Challenge team.
Penn Vet students Jordan Fairman, Emily Griswold, and Amy Kraus competed in the 2017 SAVMA Bovine Palpation Competition at Texas A&M in March. They had the fourth highest score on the written exam and moved on to the second round of the competition. This was the first time Penn Vet had a team in the competition. The students are coached by Michael Pesato, DVM, and have been practicing at Marshak Dairy for a year. Penn Vet will host
the 2018 Bovine Palpation Competition at the SAVMA Symposium next year.