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A shortage of veterinary educators, building for decades, is exacerbated by current and projected openings of new veterinary schools, a condition explored in a recent story by the VIN News Service.
The article, Veterinary faculty shortage unlikely to abate soon, published on Feb. 12, reported that new and established veterinary programs are trying myriad ways to bridge the gap, such as through flexible job descriptions and recruiting veterinarians during their residencies to careers in academia.
The article elicited illuminating comments on a message board of the Veterinary Information Network, an online community for the profession and parent of VIN News. A selection of responses are gathered here. The comments have been edited for style, clarity and brevity.
I am one of those "part time" faculty. I am an adjunct at the University of Illinois and a visiting professor at St. Matthew's University (in Grand Cayman). I love to teach, but my real job [as senior director of poison control at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] pays the bills. I do miss getting to know the students better, but it is nice to be able to teach/leave and not have to deal with all the other stuff that comes with academia.
Dr. Tina Wismer
Nonprofit-sector veterinarian
Champaign, Illinois
One response I haven't seen discussed is not relying almost exclusively on boarded specialists to teach. Apart from the shortage itself, this leads to an education that often doesn't prepare students well for the realities of primary care, where the vast majority of vets work. Specialty-focused curricula often create a culture that actively devalues or disparages general practice and leaves graduates with a mismatch between their knowledge, their skills and the needs of primary care practices and patients.
The growth of spectrum-of-care and community practice rotations helps this some, but more involvement of GPs [general practitioners] in veterinary training could benefit students, as well as mitigate the faculty shortage.
Dr. Brennen McKenzie
Private-sector practitioner
Los Altos, California
I think there's an assumption that boarded specialists are somehow automatically good teachers. Clearly, that's a fallacy. Some are good educators for students, interns and residents, and others, not so much. Some are interested in and skillful at teaching, but some, less so. But along the same lines, for those programs with distributive models, who is assessing the knowledge base and pedagogical skills of those who mentor students clinically?
Dr. James Fingeroth
Retired from private-sector practice
Pittsford, New York
When the University of Calgary opened its vet college, I interviewed for a clinical instructor position, and while I didn't get an offer, one of the things that spooked me was an expectation for publication. If there's a desire to hire good people with job security, it seems like typical tenure-track obligations are a significant barrier.
Dr. Joe Waldman
Private-sector practitioner
Calgary, Alberta
I have seen this a bit in other areas of academia. My husband is a PhD chemist; he is now working in industry after being thoroughly scared away from academia and teaching. He loves tutoring, would be a great lecturer, but he couldn't make the position work.
The courses are so specialized that you can't just hire someone to teach as their Monday-to-Friday job. But unless the university is able to pay them to do something for the rest of the time, it's also not conducive teaching as a side job and doing something else to make up the amount of working hours you want in your life.
For his position, he had three one-hour lectures per week he was responsible for. He maybe could have applied to teach more than one course if the scheduling worked out, but nowhere near full-time hours. When he calculated how much time he spent planning and marking, he was making well below minimum wage per hour. For someone who isn't already employed as a researcher at the school, this was the norm for entry positions into teaching at this level.
The big issue, though, was that these lectures happen during the day, so you have to be able to step out of your day job for an hour a couple of times per week. He lucked out that this was right after everyone was sent home due to Covid-19, and the university was able to book his lectures at 5 p.m., so he logged off his day job and logged into his teaching job. Maybe one three-hour lecture would be slightly easier to schedule around, but we can't just make the students only have class on evenings and weekends. ... [I]t is much easier to just pick one full-time job and not have to worry about the constant scheduling headache.
Dr. Marissa Bessell
Private-sector practitioner
Bowmanville, Ontario
Plenty of veterinary schools do hire lots of experienced general practitioners in genuine non-research faculty positions, as clinical-track assistant/associate/full professors. These folks are often amongst our best teachers and clinicians and are core to our curriculum.
The days of veterinary teaching hospitals being only "ivory tower" specialist-only, referral-only programs are long gone for those programs that want to concentrate on what we really need to be producing: Day-1-ready general practitioners that need to work with clientele across the full width of the socioeconomic spectrum. That's where 80% to 90% of our graduates go.
Dr. Andrew Mackin
University faculty member
Starkville, Mississippi
The American Veterinary Medical Association Council on Education takes a dim view of virtual teaching in vet schools. So to get a full-time position would mean relocating.
I teach nutrition at several vet schools, both in-person and remotely (I'm actually typing this while visiting Long Island University). The COE wants evidence that remote instructors have been trained in distance education (it's not as simple as presenting slides over Zoom). Each school has some flexibility in how much education is delivered in-person vs. livestreaming vs. prerecorded.
If anyone is interested in remote teaching, I would recommend doing some background work before applying — PowerPoint skills, how to do learning objectives and assessments (e.g., test questions), organizing topics, storytelling and case-based, etc.
Sometimes networking with a course leader instead of the dean will get your foot in the door. Offering to guest lecture on a topic or discipline you're highly qualified for is a good start. Some instructors would jump at the chance at having outside experts cover a topic.
Dr. Craig Datz
Industry veterinarian
Columbia, Missouri
I am one of those primary care veterinarians in an on-campus hospital. Western University of Health Sciences never had a specialist-only teaching hospital. We have only had a general practice with some extra bells and whistles compared to some of the surrounding clinics. We do not have a wide array of specialists to draw upon within our clinic, and the vast majority of clinical teaching is by general practitioners.
We would love to add some more to help cover our clinic in addition to our two shelter partners, but enticing folks to leave the salary of private practice has been tough. The package of the paid time off, sick time, benefits, etc., is much better than I ever had in private practice. My salary, not so much. But the life balance I am able to maintain is also better than private practice was.
I do not have any research full-time equivalent, meaning I get to focus on the clinic, which is lovely, but that also makes me non-tenure track for now. I am told they are working on a tenure-track clinical path. I wish I had an answer as to how to entice folks out of private practice, but the salary is going to be a huge barrier. I would think the part-time, hybrid-hire situation is an interesting idea to try and fill the gap. But ultimately it always comes down to whether the money is there to pay them.
Dr. Kevin Ellis
University faculty member
Fontana, California