The Golden Age of Learning Fifty Years Later, Learning and Learners have Changed
T
he learning environment that greeted the first students in what was then the Purdue University School of Veterinary Science and Medicine bears little resemblance to the modern setting in Lynn Hall. Today’s norms were either unimagined or extreme cases when members of the Class of 1963 enrolled. The list below came from a conversation with Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Kathy Salisbury, who joined the PVM faculty in 1984 after completing her residency in small animal surgery at Purdue. This is just a sampling of the many ways in which Purdue Veterinary Medicine has come of age since the graduation of the first class: • A schedule of primarily lecture and laboratory classes gave way to a revamped curriculum, beginning in the 70s, when a clinical block scheduling format was introduced in the fourth year. The curricular changes continued into the ‘90s, with the implementation of tracking in the third and fourth years, and problem-based learning for students in the first two years of the DVM program. • The Veterinary Technology Program was established in 1975, making Purdue Veterinary Medicine a College that educates all members of the “veterinary team.” • The emphasis on companion animals grew as people increasingly viewed pets as part of the family. • New facilities, including a major Lynn Hall addition in 1995, a separate Large Animal Isolation building, and a radiation therapy unit, reflected advances in medicine and technology, as well as the vastly increased demand for small animal care, which had precipitated the obsolescence of the original small animal clinic. • The “Digital Age” opened the door to new ways of delivering course material. Faculty who first had to learn what “bootingup” meant, went on to develop interactive learning resources, including virtual dissection in anatomy, and digital slide banks accessible via laptop for histology and pathology.
Dr. Henry Green, associate professor of cardiology, joined the PVM Faculty after completing his cardiology residency at Purdue in 2003.
• The level of care and number of specialties students are exposed to in the Veterinary Teaching Hospital increased dramatically. Sophisticated procedures such as joint replacement surgeries in dogs, which were never done 50 years ago, are reasonably commonplace today. Stem cell therapy, shockwave and laser lithotripsy, as well as laparoscopy and other minimally invasive surgical procedures, are part of today’s clinical experience. • Interventional urology and cardiology, along with brain tumor surgery, and recombinant vaccines are further examples of veterinary medical advances unimagined 50 years ago. • Emergency and critical care became a discipline in its own right, and the opportunity for students to gain hands-on primary care experience expanded greatly because of the burgeoning caseload seen by the hospital’s Animal Emergency Service, which opened in 2010 after an agreement was reached with practitioners who closed a privately run service in the community. • Shelter medicine, a concept that did not exist 50 years ago, defines an entire program at the College today.
• The faculty and student body has become much more diverse. Nearly 40 percent of today’s 118 faculty members are female, 15 percent are underrepresented minorities and six percent are international. The student population also changed dramatically from an all-male first class of less than 50 students to a nearly 290 member DVM student body that is 75 percent female, and 17 percent underrepresented minorities. • The College has forged international relationships with veterinary programs in Japan, the Czech Republic, the Ukraine, France and Taiwan, and now enables students to take international externships in such locations as Switzerland, South Africa, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Peru, Germany and Australia.
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Two veterinary students work with Dr. Tony Johnson (center), clinical assistant professor of emergency critical care, as he examines an injured stray kitten (Purdue University photo/Mark Simon)