Jennifer Le
program is close to my heart. I love giving tours and talking to potential students because they’re so excited—as a third year student, motivation is a little low, so it is fun to remember how enthusiastic you were when you started and how lucky you are to be here. I have even seen students in the class of 2017 that I gave tours to when they were considering veterinary
school; it makes me so happy to see them achieve their goals. In addition to being an ambassador, I am also the president of the Veterinary Business Management Association (VBMA). As president, I get to use my background in business to help others in my class. We do not receive much business instruction in veterinary school—only during third year—so it is nice to help people outside of school. I’ve been to the national conference in Orlando twice, and I’ve been able to bring speakers from it to the CVM. This has gotten great feedback from the students. Through my participation in the VBMA, I also get to stay on top of my business degree, rather than losing it while focusing on the veterinary medicine aspect of my education. Speaking of my education, I’ve gotten to learn about some pretty innovative procedures here. One that I’ve come to really like is a minimally-invasive procedure for treating patent ductus arteriosus, or PDA. PDA is a congenital defect where the right side of the heart does not close off from the left side as it should. By using a catheter, veterinarians, and even human doctors, can go in and close the separa-
tion. The knowledge of this technique, which can be used on both humans and animals, comes from the collaboration between human and animal doctors. In the future, I hope to own my own practice and help educate the public about disease prevention. I would like to be able to go out into the community and do programs like the Houston Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) does for children and the public in general. In fact, the CVM has added a Houston SPCA rotation, which is great because I started off volunteering at the Houston SPCA before veterinary school. I’ll get to end there as a fourth year, so it has all come full circle. I really love veterinary school. It is a completely different environment from my other professional program. Veterinary school provides more of a family-type atmosphere; you are around your classmates so much, and you get to know everyone very well. Some of my classmates are going to be my friends for life. Whether we got in on our first try or after several, we are all in this together so that we can not only heal animals but also help contribute to the greater good of the world as well.
Ashton Richardson DVM ’17 My interest in veterinary medicine actually came from going through Hurricane Katrina. I am from New Orleans, and mine was one of the many families affected by the flooding from the storm. After Ashton Richardson
losing everything, we relocated to Baton Rouge, where we lived with seventeen other people in one house. It was a really stressful time. My dad was away working for a while, so I basically had to look out for my mother and my grandmother while he was gone. When he returned, he realized how hard everything had hit me, and so every day, after football practice, he started taking me to a stable where I could ride, groom, and care for horses. My dad has always been an animal fanatic, and working with the horses was something that he and I did together, just the two of us. It was very therapeutic, and it caused me to fall in love with veterinary medicine and to want to pursue it as a career. I attended Auburn University for my undergraduate degree, where I played football. My heart lies, however, in public health combined with food animal production and international development. To me, the One Health concept is a comprehensive way of approaching human, animal, and environmental wellbeing, and as a future veterinarian, I see it as
an opportunity for me to impact human health through better animal health. For example, there are developing countries in Africa where thousands of children die each year from rabies. This is completely preventable. In Africa, rabies in animals is limited to the canine population, so if there was a veterinary infrastructure set up to vaccinate dogs, we could save these children. Additionally, from a food production standpoint, there are a lot of children who do not get enough protein in their diets. This causes them to not develop proper cognitive functions. These children are physically stunted, volatile, unstable, and are often the ones that are recruited as child soldiers. So, by being able to provide a healthy protein source, you can provide social stability and prevent mass migrations that cause even more competition for resources. When it comes to the environment, I have been inspired by the works of Allan Savory, a biologist from Rhodesia, who is studying holistic raising and management
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