In Mozambique, Raabis examined and drew blood from poultry to evaluate antibody titers against Newcastle disease (part of a small scale livestock vaccination program).
Dancing With Cows: Sarah Raabis ’08 Sarah Raabis wants to improve human health around the world, including in rural America. Her way of doing that is to take care of animals. Raabis is in her fourth year at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, and will graduate in 2012 with a certificate in international veterinary medicine and a specialty in Animals in Humanitarian Assistance. “Vet school has been my goal since grade school,” she says. “This international program is perfect for me: it combines veterinary science with the type of service I did at Saint Anselm.” Three service trips as an undergraduate whetted her appetite: a stay in Tanzania through Cross-Cultural Solutions and Spring Break Alternative trips to South Dakota and Louisiana. For two summers, she worked as a residential volunteer at Heifer International’s Overlook Farm in Rutland, Mass. Heifer International works with communities to reduce hunger and poverty. “I fell in love with working on the farm and being outdoors,” says the Worcester native. After her first year in vet school, Raabis spent the summer in Mozambique with a U.S. Army grant, studying livestock density and disease prevalence in Limpopo National Park. Base-camped in a tent with another student, she visited, conducted surveys, and recorded data in surrounding villages. Last summer, she spent two months at a dairy veterinary practice in upstate New York. Raabis’ final year of vet school is like a year of medical school: clinical rotations in every specialty from anesthesia to ophthalmology. (Alpacas and pigs get glaucoma and cataracts, too.) She is on call one night a week at the veterinary hospital in North Grafton, Mass. 58