10 minute read
Multifaceted Instructor
Multifaceted Instructor
Story by Joe Montgomery
Advertisement
Retracing the remarkable career of K-State’s Dr. Howard Erickson.
The town of Wahoo, Nebraska, currently with a population of less than 5,000 inhabitants, boasts quite a list of notable individuals over its 150-yearlong history. Among them are a Nobel Prize laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, Hall of Fame baseball player, state governor and an Academy Award winning producer.
Wahoo is also the hometown to Dr. Howard Erickson, professor emeritus, who happens to have had a diverse and impactful career, including a calling to help capture history, in particular, for the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine.
Career of many facets
Dr. Erickson began his education at Luther College in Wahoo, and then he attended K-State and earned his DVM in 1959. He received a doctorate from Iowa State University in 1966, while serving in the Air Force.
“My career has had very many different facets,” Dr. Erickson recalls. “I started out in practice, sort of a mixed practice – mostly large animal. In the Air Force, I worked in public health over in England, and then I became a graduate student, sponsored by the Air Force, at Iowa State University working with an artificial heart project for three years. Then I rejoined the Air Force and was stationed in San Antonio, Texas, at the School of Aerospace Medicine working in the cardiovascular area, placing transducers on the heart in different animals – working with primates too.”
Howard and his brother Larry grew up on a farm near Wahoo, Nebraska. Both studied at K-State, and both taught at K-State, the latter in the chemical engineering department. Larry was the director of the hazardous substance.
From there Dr. Erickson transitioned to research administration. He went to the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama.
“I thought research program. Courtesy photo. I was going to be assigned to Washington, D.C., but I ended up at Maxwell Air Force Base,” Dr. Erickson says. “Later I went back to San Antonio again with the Aerospace Medical Division at Brooks Air Force Base and worked in R&D management for five years. Then I retired and joined the faculty here at K-State.”
Research on the run
Dr. Erickson vividly remembers the search committee members who hired him: Dr. Roger Fedde, Dr. Dan Upson and Dr. Fred Oehme. Dr. Russell Frey was the department head.
“There was a thrust at the time for studying respiratory disease in the college,” Dr. Erickson says. “Dr. Fedde was studying cattle, and he had a treadmill in Coles Hall in the laboratory. To simulate stress and respiratory disease, he had the calves walk on the treadmill. He said to me, “You ought to focus on the similar topic, but a different species. Why don’t you look at the pig?’”
Dr. Erickson obtained a treadmill from the hospital in Manhattan that was intended for use by a cardiologist for stress testing. When the physician left town, the treadmill was not being used, so Dr. Erickson was able to get it.
“I had a veterinary technician, Karen Terhune, and a graduate student, Steve Olson, who helped me with the research,” Dr. Erickson says. “We installed a cage around the treadmill, otherwise pigs will jump off. That would retain the pigs on the treadmill.”
When Dr. Jim Coffman was head of the Department of Surgery and Medicine at K-State (now Clinical Sciences) he encouraged Dr. Erickson to conduct studies with horses.
“He had Dr. Judy Cox as a graduate student,” Dr. Erickson says. “She was studying the horse and I was on her committee, or helped her, so we started research with ponies on the treadmill, and then we gradually started working with Quarter Horses. We walked the horses right into Coles Hall through glass doors, down the hallway and into the laboratory, and I’m surprised we didn’t have a major accident – a blow-up, but we never did.”
Dr. Erickson’s research on horses established a strong reputation and led to the evaluation of nasal strips for use in racehorses. His work attracted the attention of national media and he participated in several interviews.
“Dr. Coffman redirected me to study the horse and it snowballed into developing a national/international program in equine exercise physiology,” Dr. Erickson says. “We went to Japan, Hungary, Sweden and many different countries to report the findings of our research. The program became nationally/internationally recognized. There is an international congress on equine exercise physiology that’s held every four years – it’s been held in this country, as well as Australia, France, Sweden and England, where we had opportunities to present our findings.”
History calls
“To go way back, when I was a student in Luther College in Wahoo, I had a blind instructor there by the name of James Iverne Dowie,” Dr. Erickson says. “He taught a course on modern history. That probably piqued my interest in history initially. And then probably it subsided for a number of years until Dr. Ron Marler became the dean.”
Dr. Marler felt the K-State veterinary college wasn’t documenting its history very well.
Dr. Erickson explains a heart diagram to officers in the Air Force's School of Aerospace Medicine in San Antonio, Texas.
”Our centennial was coming up in about 10 years, so he decided we needed to form a history committee, and he asked for volunteers,” Dr. Erickson says. “I volunteered to be on the history committee. Dr. Frey chaired the history committee. I remember we had hired a faculty member from the English department to start writing our college history, but that didn’t quite work out, so Dr. Ronnie Elmore picked it up. He asked me to help him with it.”
In 2005, Drs. Elmore and Erickson published, “A Century of Excellence: Kansas State University College of Medicine,” coinciding with the college’s centennial celebration. The book features a page for each class with sections on K-State alumni who became AVMA presidents, an overview of the Kansas City Veterinary College, K-State’s connection with the Tuskegee Institute (where several K-State alumni became deans and/or instructors in its School of Veterinary Medicine), and other special topics.
Dr. Erickson’s contributions to the history book also led to the development of an elective course on the history of veterinary medicine that he teaches.
“[Around 2009] we went to a core curriculum plus electives, and I think there were two hours of electives in the fall semester and the spring semester,” Dr. Erickson says. “The faculty were asked to develop electives. I had helped write the history of our college, so I thought I could probably teach an elective on the history of veterinary medicine.
- Dr. Howard EricksonClass of 1959
“I think I had 15 students the first year and it went to 25 or 30 the second year. I’ve had as many as 80 students, which is too many. I ask them to write a paper and develop a PowerPoint presentation on their topic. When you try to read 80 papers, that’s a lot of work. I only have 21 students this year, which is wonderful. I don’t know how long I will continue to teach. I need to draw a line on that somewhere,” he smiles.
Teaching and service
Dr. Erickson says that teaching at K-State was a little different earlier in his career.
“I taught weightlessness in the Air Force to future astronauts who took a course at the School of Aerospace Medicine when stationed in Texas, and then I started teaching cardiovascular physiology and renal physiology to the veterinary students at K-State,” Dr. Erickson said. “And now I’m teaching history of veterinary medicine. So, I’ve had quite a spread really.”
In addition to teaching, Dr. Erickson has served on the admission committee for 10 years and he’s been involved with Veterinary Medical Alumni Association (VMAA), where he helps to select recipients for alumni recognitionawards. In 2018, the VMAA surprised Dr. Erickson and presented him with the college’s Distinguished Service Award.
“That award was a real surprise and a distinct honor at this stage of my career,” Dr. Erickson said. “I have thoroughly enjoyed my nearly 60 years in veterinary medicine. The last few years, exploring the history of veterinary medicine with alumni and students, has been most rewarding.”
Interestingly, Dr. Erickson has an unusual connection to the college and its history, even though he has not been there for all 116 years.
“I’ve known every dean that the college has had,” Dr. Erickson says. “I think I met all of them. Dean Cornelius, I’ve only met him briefly. I worked with Dean Kitchell through the AVMA Council on Research when I was in the Air Force. When I was a student, Dr. Ralph Dykstra had stepped down as the dean, and he was in charge of the reading room in Leasure Hall. They needed a student to kind of sit there and take charge in the evenings – Tuesday and Thursday evenings – and it paid 75 cents an hour. I had a fraternity brother, Jim Boyd [DVM class of 1957] who told me it’s an easy job. You can just sit there and study and lock it up at night – and bind the journals once a year, so I got to know Dr. Dykstra a little bit when I was a student.”
Graduate students monitor a horse on a treadmill for one of Dr. Erickson's exercise physiology research projects.
Married life
Dr. Erickson’s days as a student also led him to meet his wife.
“One summer I was working for the agricultural economics department,” Dr. Erickson says. “It was probably between my second and third year in veterinary college. We were surveying the counties in Western Kansas after a severe drought in the 1950s. We were wanting to find out how the farmers were surviving the drought.”
Dr. Erickson said the first county he surveyed was Dickinson County.
“We usually didn’t stay at a hotel because we didn’t get paid very much,” Dr. Erickson says. “We tried to find a boarding house. Well, I went to church one Sunday. Sitting behind me, a woman introduced herself. Being the daughter of the pastor, she was going to introduce herself to any new visitors.”
Dr. Erickson noticed the pastor also had a granddaughter at the church. Her name was Ann.
“Ann didn’t say much to me at first,” Dr. Erickson says. “She kind of walked out of the church, but then she picked up that I went to K-State, so then she perked her head up and said hello. Later in the day, I went through the phone book, and I called her to ask if she wanted to go swimming that afternoon at the swimming pool. She invited me to her house for dinner that night. I went on to Western Kansas, but I kept coming back to Abilene during the summer to see her. She was going to K-State too. It all blossomed from there.”
Dr. Erickson and his wife Ann have two sons, James and David, who were born in England when he was stationed there in the Air Force. He and his wife have five grandchildren: Zinnia, Dahlia, Alex, Reid and Isabelle. His brother Larry also has a connection with K-State.
A wonderful profession
Although officially retired and now an emeritus professor, Dr. Erickson continues to teach the veterinary history elective in the fall semester, is active in the American Veterinary
Medical History Society, and helps with the K-State VMAA board. He served as a full-time faculty member at K-State from 1981 to 2011, and has more than 60 years of service overall in veterinary medicine. Looking back, Dr. Erickson says he has had some outstanding mentors and colleagues to work with during his career, both in the Air Force and at K-State. He is appreciative of all the opportunities he’s gained by studying veterinary medicine at K-State.
“You see, a veterinarian is a multidisciplinary person,” Dr. Erickson says. “They often take care of animals. Sometimes they’re in public health work. Sometime they’re in industry developing vaccines. Sometimes they’re in the Army – Special Forces. Sometimes they have a career in the Air Force, like I did. Sometimes they’re in a university and teaching. It’s multifaceted.”
