Honors
Top vet student looking forward to caring for small animals after her stint at aquarium
Dogs and cats can stink. But even at their worst they smell way better than sharks. Penny Regier knows.
It was also extra special because she had to leave her home in Tulsa and her husband during the week “It’s just a rotten smell,” she says. while she attended class. She also “I can’t even think of a word for it had to leave behind the luxury of a other than sour. They’re just sour.” full-time job and teach herself how Regier learned that as the biol- to be a student again. “I hadn’t had to study for almost ogist in charge of the sharks at four years, so it was a big change,” the Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks. Regier says. “And I missed makOften, she’d spend her days in the ing money.” tank with the sharks, examining them. She liked her job, and even Regier, 28, came back to school though you can’t really smell them in 2009, and after some early underwater, the 2005 graduate of bumps in the road, she found her OSU had had her fill of sharks, their groove, excelling in both the classteeth and their sandpaper skin room and the lab. after three years at the aquarium. The first three years she says
Gennessee photo
Out of the shark tank
Penny Regier (left) receives the Dean Harry Orr Award, the veterinary college’s third-year academic award, from Dean Jean Sander.
In the future, she hopes to land a small-animal surgery internship and residency. She has been interested in the specialty ever since she took in two dogs that have had more than their share. “These were my ‘free’ puppies that I rescued,” she says. “One of them had hip dysplasia in both hips, and the other tore both of his ACLs — part of the joys of owning dogs. I think that’s probably what started this whole thing.”
Eventually, she’d like to join a practice somewhere in the United States as a small-animal surgeon. She’s not ruling out starting her She decided to go back to school were all about reading and study- own practice in the future, but she and do what she had wanted to do ing. This past year has been her wants to avoid the added stress of since she was a kid: become a vet- favorite, she says. She’s been apply- starting her own business for now. erinarian. Now, she’s a fourth-year ing what she’s learned in her earlier The Dean Harry Orr Award feastudent about to finish her degree courses while she does her rota- tures a $2,500 scholarship and is and winner of the Dean Harry Orr tions inside OSU’s Boren Veteri- named for the second dean of the Award, the college’s third-year aca- nary Medical Teaching Hospital. College of Veterinary Medicine. Orr demic award. The award was extra “Now it’s just hands-on experience led the college from 1953 until his special for Regier. and clinical experience,” she says. death in 1956. “It just really meant a lot that I “We’re actually getting to work with made it this far while being able to and interact with animals and apply do what I want to do,” she says. “It everything we’ve learned.” was great.”
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C e n t e r f o r Ve t e r i n a r y H e a l t h S c i e n c e s
— Matt Elliott