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University of Nevada, Reno, photo

Morrill Hall housed the entire University of Nevada, Reno, in the 1880s. Last week, UNR announced it would like to add a veterinary school to the campus, which now has scores of buildings.

Citing persistent shortages in veterinary services in the state, the University of Nevada, Reno, is pursuing plans to open a veterinary school. It's the second Nevada university in the past year to announce such aspirations.

An informational presentation on the prospective program delivered to a Board of Regents committee last week came amid a decade-long surge in new and proposed veterinary programs in the United States.

In a possible sign of how rapidly the veterinary school landscape is expanding, a slide-show overview presented to the regents committee identified 32 veterinary schools in the U.S. There are 38, including one in Puerto Rico and two that will seat inaugural classes later this year.

The slide deck also made no mention of the program at Utah State University (USU), opened in 2025, which has a contract with Nevada under which the state pays the Utah program so that some qualifying Nevada residents can attend for a price equivalent to in-state tuition. Nor was there any mention of Roseman University of Health Sciences, near Las Vegas, which announced last June that it was initiating planning for its own veterinary school.

The University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), a public research university, joins seven other schools across the country that are in various stages of developing veterinary programs.

"We feel it is part of our responsibility as a land-grant institution to train veterinarians for the state, just like we train medical doctors for the state," Vincent Catalano, senior vice provost for UNR projects and strategic initiatives, told the VIN News Service this week. "Our goal is to fill the needs of the state. We believe that we have the infrastructure and resources to do an outstanding job."

Catalano said that without its own veterinary school, Nevada struggles to attract and retain veterinarians to work in urban and rural settings alike. "There are two very large urban areas in the north and the south that need a lot of veterinarians," he said, referring to the areas in and around Reno and Las Vegas. "And we have a huge geography of rural lands where we need veterinarians for agriculture." 

It's early days in the planning process. "Everything is still open and on the table," Catalano said. "We don't want to get ahead of the Board of Regents." UNR hopes to obtain approval from the full board in June.

After that, UNR would be able to proceed with a full feasibility study, hire a veterinarian to helm the project and begin the formal process of seeking accreditation from the American Veterinary Medical Association Council on Education. UNR's projected target date for provisional accreditation is 2028.

Catalano said it's too early to say exactly where a veterinary school would be housed, but the campus has space for construction, as well as existing veterinary sciences facilities and agricultural land.

UNR also has not decided whether it would build a teaching hospital, a standard feature at most established veterinary schools. In contrast, all programs opened since 2020 provide clinical training through what is known as a distributed or distributive model, which involves sending students off campus, usually to private-sector practices. Some programs combine experience at on-campus clinics with distributed training, calling it a hybrid approach.

Tuition is among the details to be determined.

Early support

More than 60 letters were submitted to the Nevada Board of Regents in favor of the proposed program, many from students in UNR's undergraduate veterinary science program. There were no letters in opposition.

"I am a first-generation college student, and I was raised by a single mother who would give me the world if I asked for it," wrote Savannah Kennedy, a sophomore in the veterinary science program, "but having a veterinary college in the state I live in will help me obtain my dream of becoming a veterinarian."

Kennedy said she believes it's harder to get into an out-of-state school and that paying nonresident tuition will make it harder for her to fund her education.

The need to control costs could become more urgent starting July 1, when federal loans for those entering professional school will be capped at the cost of attendance or $50,000 per year, whichever is less, with a maximum program limit of $200,000. Nearly all veterinary schools exceed these limits. State schools generally are the least expensive for their respective in-state residents.

Several letter writers cited the desire for in-state tuition and the competitiveness of out-of-state programs as reasons for supporting a school at UNR.

Maddie Burns, a veterinary science major, noted in a letter that Nevada had, for a time, discontinued funding a program that subsidized tuition for Nevada residents attending veterinary schools in other states.

"My classmates and I deserve better," Burns wrote. "We've deserved this vet school for years."

Burns was likely referring to the Professional Student Exchange Program (PSEP), administered through the Nevada Office of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE). The program, established in the 1950s, provides funding to offset the cost of out-of-state tuition for students in states that either don't have schools in certain health care professions or have limited enrollment capacity in their home state.

During a 2020 budget crunch in Nevada, the Legislature discontinued funding for Nevada PSEP. The funds were reinstated in the 2023 legislative session. The program is not expansive. There are a total of four PSEP slots available to Nevada residents to attend veterinary school at Colorado State University, Midwestern University in Arizona, Oregon State University or Washington State University.

In 2023, the Legislature also allocated $8 million toward what it calls "stipends" to cover the difference between resident and nonresident tuition for Nevada students accepted into USU's new veterinary program, according to Patty Porter, director of the Nevada Office for WICHE. Under what's known as the Health Profession Education Program (HPEP), the state has committed to subsidizing the tuition of as many as 70 Nevadans seeking DVM degrees at USU through 2034.

Two Nevada students were admitted to the Utah program in 2025 under HPEP. Porter said 17 Nevadans have received offers of admission for this fall and are eligible to apply for the HPEP stipend.

In both PSEP and HPEP, graduates commit to returning to Nevada to work in the profession for one year for each year they received a subsidy. If they do not fulfill that obligation, the money must be repaid.

Roseman

Roseman University of Health Sciences image

Located south of Las Vegas, Roseman University of Health Sciences was the first of two Nevada programs in the past year to announce plans for a veterinary program. The veterinary school accreditor is scheduled to make a preliminary visit to the campus next January.

First bid in Nevada

Roseman, which made its plans for a veterinary school public nine months ago, is a private, nonprofit institution founded in 1999. It has two campuses in Nevada and one in Utah. The veterinary school would be located in Henderson, a city just south of Las Vegas. Roseman plans to use a hybrid approach for clinical training.

Asked whether UNR's announcement impacts Roseman's efforts, the founding dean, Dr. Katherine Fogelberg, said, "It doesn't affect us either way. We've been at this for a long time."

In a press release issued a few days after the regents meeting, Roseman announced that the AVMA Council on Education had scheduled a consultative visit to the Henderson campus in January 2027. In a consultative visit, representatives of the accreditor make an in-person assessment of a program's readiness to pursue accreditation.

Fogelberg said Roseman has been planning its program for about three years, starting with a feasibility study in 2023. The university aims for its first class to enter in 2028.

Bigger picture

Of the 38 veterinary schools in the U.S. and its territories, six have opened since 2020. In addition to the program at USU, they are at Universidad Ana G. Méndez in Puerto Rico, Long Island University in New York, Rowan University in New Jersey, Texas Tech University and the University of Arizona. Two others — at Clemson University in South Carolina and Lincoln Memorial University in Florida — will seat their first classes later this year.

In addition to the Nevada universities, six schools have announced they are developing veterinary programs, with the majority well into the accreditation process. They are Arkansas State University, Lyon College in Arkansas, Midwestern University in Illinois, Murray State University in Kentucky, Rocky Vista University in Montana and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

At least one other state is entertaining the idea of its own program. Lawmakers in Hawaii last year approved creating a working group to study the feasibility of a veterinary school at a community college on the island of Oahu.

The expansion of veterinary schools in the U.S. comes as existing programs struggle to attract and retain faculty in an already tight marketplace. Research from the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges showed 474 funded and unfilled faculty positions in 2023.

Asked about the faculty crunch, UNR's Catalano said hiring quality faculty has always been a challenge across disciplines. "Down the road," he said, "we hope to be producing those veterinary faculty for the rest of the country and for Nevada."