Progress 09/01/21 to 08/26/24
Outputs
Target Audience:1)Veterinary students at other colleges In March 2021, we taught a condensed, online, asynchronous version of our full-semester academic course "Beyond Private Practice: Veterinary Careers and Pathways" to 48 third-year DVM students at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. Our March 2022 course was taught to 18 Tufts students Our March 2023 course was taught to eight Tufts students (Tufts charged students to take the course, which caused a dropin participant numbers). The course consistently received very high course evaluations. The course was not taught at Tufts in 2024 as there was a change in admininistration and there needs to be further discussion regarding their curriculum. In June, 2024, we delivered the course to the University ofArizona's College of Veterinary Medicine, and the course once again received very high ratings. We are rolling the course (and planned others) out slowly so we can learn how to best manage the courses for devliver on a much larger scale to multiple colleges at the same time. We have several other public practice related courses in various phases of conversion to online courses. 2)Graduate veterinarians a) Career Transition workshops for veterinarians We providecareer transition workshops annually for veterinarians wishing to change careers, with the majority seeking to move from private practice to public practice. We announce those workshopsvia: The announcement section of our CPCVM website Our CPCVM listserv (now over 900 members) Facebook groups (Veterinary Public Health Network, and DVMoms GAIN) Twitter and LinkedIn Virginia Tech's Continuing & Professional Education organization AVMA career development website Our April 2021 workshop was attended by 24 veterinarians from at least 11 states. Our February 2022 workshop was attended by 45 veterinarians from at least 16 states. Our April 2023 workshop was attended by 28 veterinarians from at least 13 states, and one international participant. b) Individual career guidance to veterinarians. Our April 2024 workshop was attended by 33 veterinarians from at least 23 states. b) Individual career guidance to veterinarians. On a regular basis, we provide pro-bono career counseling to individual veterinarians who contact us seeking advice on making a career change. 3. Both graduate veterinarians and veterinary students: We have created a graduate certificate program in veterinary public practice that is tentatively scheduled to launch in 2025. It has been approved at the university level, and is now pending approval at the state level. Once final approvals have been received, it will offer veterinary students and veterinarians formal academic credentials to supplement their existing clinical training in order to be successful in public practice. 4. Veterinary Colleges Veterinary colleges, the majority of which focus on training veterinarians to enter private practice, benefit from exposing their students to the broader scope of veterinary medicine, including public and corporate veterinary opportunities. This will also help address the shortages in some of these critical sectors of veterinary medicine. We have taught veterinary students at Tufts and Western colleges of veterinary medicine during the course of this grant with plans to expand to other colleges gradually. We also offer travel scholarships for veterinary students to attend conferences and public practice externships through other external partnerships we have been able to develop. 4. PABOs (Partnering Agencies, Businesses, or Organizations) By offering internships and externships to students and practicing veterinarians, our partners benefit by obtaining early access to potentially qualified employees who have a shared interest in their specific area of public veterinary medicine. Changes/Problems:We slightly changed the design and development of the certificate program. We broadened the originally intended audience from career-transitioning veterinarians to now include veterinary students nationwide. The goal is to develop partnerships with other US Colleges of Veterinary Medicine to incorporate the certificate courses into their curriculum and tuition structure. This will qualify the program to offer student financial aid, which should make it appealing to more participants, and thus enable the program to scale up faster and become financially sustainable sooner. We realized that the development of online courses and the certificate program are really a single initiative to share content with remote veterinary students and graduate DVMs, and thus are best developed and reported on in tandem. We draftedself-paced learning modules focused on career transitioning for veterinarians, but due to university logistical andplatform licensing delays, the initial modules have been delivered through the workshops and at conventions. We are indiscussions now with an external partner to potentially be able to utilize an acceptable platform for online delivery. Our project manager who was hired to manage this grant left for another position near the latter part of the grant timeframe. We were therefore unable to spend the funding for his position as we were not able to recruit and hire a replacement during the remaining timeframe. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?With the assistance of a graduate student in instructional design funded by the NIFA grant, we were able to convertin-person courses to an online format for remote delivery to other colleges of veterinary medicine. As a result, thisgrant provided an opportunity for CPCVM faculty to learn new skills in online course development and delivery, and gain insight into the logistics, challenges, and opportunities for expanding our unique offerings to other colleges of veterinary medicine. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The core intent of this effort is training and outreach that provides resources to veterinary students and practitioners aboutthe need for, and opportunities for, veterinarians in the public sector.As such, we focused on building a portfolio of resources that highlight opportunities in the public sector through self-paced learning modules, multi-day workshops, condensed academic courses for other colleges, a certificate program, and experiential opportunities for students and veterinarians. In parallel, we have worked to develop communication and distribution channels via our website, social media, delivering content to other colleges, and partnering with agencies and professional organizations in order to share our expertise. In addition, we also gave presentations to the following audiences: Mulitplepresentations at the AVMA convention on public practice and the development of experiential opportunities for veterinarians (2021-2024) Eight hours of presentations at the Southwest Veterinary Symposium in2022 on career transitioning and career opportunities in veterinary public practice. AAVMC Catalyze 2021 event, in partnership with Tufts University, entitled "A National Center of Excellence in Public andCorporate Veterinary Medicine: Moving towards a collaborative model for veterinary medical education" (March 2021) We presented this content at the AVMA convention and were featured in a follow-on article in JAVMA (July 2021) https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2021-07-15/thinking-career-transition-assess-yourself-first United States Animal Health Association 2021 annual meeting in the Diagnostic Laboratory and Veterinary Workforce Committee What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Impact statement: The deficit of veterinarians working infood safety and public health is perpetuated by insufficient training and guidance within current veterinary curricula, and an absence of resources for veterinarians seeking a career transition. This results in adirect threat to animal and animal health, and economic security due to a lack of capacity toappropriately detect, prepare for, and respond to disease threats. The CPCVMprovides veterinary students with the skills and knowledge to be successful in public practice and serves as a resource for veterinarians who wish to make a career redirection. We utilizea collaborative approach to the nationwide distribution of educational content focused on the veterinary knowledge, skills, and abilities central toentry into the public practice arena. This grantprovided usinvaluable support to scaleup to serve as aCenter of Excellence in Veterinary Public Practice, serving the profession across the country and expanding exposure and access topublic practice careers. Our faculty were able to learn new skills in online course development and delivery, and gain insight into the logistics, challenges, and opportunities for expanding our unique offerings to other colleges of veterinary medicine. Veterinary students and veterinarians wereprovided opportunitiesto gain real-life exposure to public practice careers. bjective 1.1: Provide competitive travel stipends for veterinary students, open to students from all veterinary colleges, to complete public practice focused externships. Major activities completed; We awarded 4travel awardsin FY 23-24 to support veterinary studentparticipationin public practice related externships. We also awarded additional grants due to an extension ofour initial grant from 2019 for us to award travel grants that we were not able to award due to COVID.Wepartnered with the American College of Veterinary Preventative Medicine (ACVPM) to continue providing such travel scholarships, which were initiated in March '24. A total of 7awards have been made through the partnership with ACVPM to date. It is anticipated that up to 10, $1000 awards will be made annually going forward. 2) Data collected; Post-externship surveys were givento allawardees to assess impact of the experience on their awareness and desire to work in the career area related to their externship location. 3) Summary statistics From Sept. '21 to Aug '24, travel scholarships were provided to 19students from 13 colleges of veterinary medicine. Externship locations were diverse: students worked withCDC; with USDA, Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) or in other opportunitiesrelated to foodsafety; across various offices in USDA, APHIS Veterinary Services; at state departments of agriculture; and in field locations on pathology or epidemiology projects. 4) Key outcomes: Students gained exposure to shortage areas of veterinary medicine, andgave presentations on their experiences at their colleges after their return, thus exposing many more studentsto these career opportunities. We developed systems and processes for providing such travel scholarships in the future, as noted by the partnership with ACVPM. Objective 1.2: Continue to transition current veterinary student course materials to an online platform, which will be made available to students through partnerships with other colleges of veterinary medicine. Major activities completed:: We created an onlinecourse,"Beyond Private Practice: Careers and Pathways in VeterinaryMedicine", initially delivered to students at Tufts Universityin 2021. Sudents explore career opportunities beyondprivate practice, includingpathways to determining and pursuing a successful and personally fulfilling career choice.The course was taught again in '22 and '23, and was taughtto students at the University of Arizona (UAriz) CVM in June 2024. A second course, "Veterinarians and Public Policy",has been drafted in an online format but has not yet been delivered externally. Two additional courses have been outlined for transition to online asynchronous courses. Our goal is to make these courses availableto other colleges, after we ensure we can adequately manage these courses at multiple colleges simultaneously.. Data collected; 98% of the students taking the initial course saidthat they would recommend the course to other students.Similar positive reviews were received in '22 -'23. 100% of UAriz students said they would recommend this course, andthat they understand the career options and opportunities "a lot better" post- course. Summary statistics:See above. 4. Key outcomes Students were much more aware of career opportunities beyond private practice, andlearneda process that would enable them to effectively find those positions that would be a good personal fit. Objective 2.1: Develop course content and internship opportunities for the creation of a formal online certificate program targeted at veterinarians interested in working in areas of public practice. Major activities completed; We drafted a 12-credit Graduate Certificate in Veterinary Public Practice proposal which is moving throughthe institutional review process, and haspassed the first level of review atVirginia Tech.The six courses of the proposed program have received the approval of the College's Curriculum Committee.The proposalhas been reviewed by the campus office of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV), and we are currentlyworking with their personnel to complete specific formatting to facilitateapproval before submission for the finalprogram evaluation. Data collected; N/A Summary statistics: N/A Key outcomes:.We remain on schedule for a targeted Fall 2025 program launch once approved. Objective 2.2: Partner with agencies, businesses, and organizations to develop short-term experiential opportunities for graduate veterinarians considering public practice careers. Major activities completed The CPCVM partnered withFSISto offer experiential opportunities for veterinarians. We developed a program proposal which was approved and initiated in 2024.FSIS now offersa 1-4 week experiential opportunity for veterinarians. several of whom have already participated in the program. We arecurrently in discussions with the USDA, APHISto initiate the same opportunity. 2:Data collected: We have received a few post-experience surveys thus far that indicate the program isvery helpful and useful. Summary statistics and discussion of results:N/A Key outcomes:. Veterinariansgained an opportunity to learn about career opportunities with FSIS, whichhad the opportunity to assess potential new employees. Objective 3.1: Provide continuing education opportunities related to careers in veterinary public practice, and knowledge and skills needed for public practice careers 1. Major activities completed / experiments conducted; In '21-'24, we conducted 4virtual, multi-day Career Transition Workshops for veterinarians; 2government and 2industryfocused. Topics included career opportunities in federal and state government and industry, self-assessment, resume building, professional networking, and approaches to job searching. Formats included short lectures, individual and group activities,discussions, expert panels, and networking. Over a dozen industry, Federal, and State veterinarians presented.The American Association of Veterinary State Boards RACE committee reviewed and approved the program for 10.5continuing education credits for the government focused workshopand 8.0 for the industry focused one. 2) Data collected; Pre and post- workshop surveys. 3) Summary statistics and discussion of results: 128 veterinarians from across the country participated. 4. Key outcomes: Provideda process for career change, information regarding career opportunities and how to find them, and developed networks.Providedan opportunity for speakeragencies to recruit interested veterinarians.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/22 to 08/31/23
Outputs
Target Audience: Graduate veterinarians a) Career Transition workshops for veterinarians We announced our workshops via: The announcement section of our CPCVM website Our CPCVM listserv (now over 800 members) Facebook groups (Veterinary Public Health Network, and DVMoms GAIN) Twitter and LinkedIn Virginia Tech's Continuing & Professional Education organization AVMA career development website Our April 2021 workshop was attended by 24 veterinarians from at least 11 states. Our February 2022 workshop was attended by 45 veterinarians from at least 16 states. Our April 2023 workshop was attended by 28 veterinarians from at least 13 states, and one international participant. b) Individual career guidance to veterinarians. On a regular basis, we provide pro-bono career counseling to individual veterinarians who contact us seeking advice on making a career change. 2.Veterinary students at other colleges In March 2021, we taught a condensed, online, asynchronous version of our full-semester academic course "Beyond Private Practice: Veterinary Careers and Pathways" to 48 third-year DVM students at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. Our March 2022 course was taught to 18 Tufts students Our March 2023 course was taught to eight Tufts students (Tufts charged students to take the course, which caused a drop in participant numbers). This course is tentatively planned again for 2024, although there has been an administration change at Tufts so we will need to confirm. We are also currently in discussions with Western University in Arizona, which is interested in having us deliver the course to their students in June 2024. We are working through details at the time of this writing.We have also informally been approached by an additional veterinary college about potentially having access to the course. Both 1.Veterinarians and 2. Veterinary Students: Pending: our certificate program, onceapproved, will offer veterinary students and veterinarians formal academic credentials to supplement their existing clinical training in order to be successful in public practice. 3.Veterinary Colleges Veterinary colleges, the majority of which focus on training veterinarians to enter private practice, benefit from exposing their students to the broader scope of veterinary medicine, including public and corporate veterinary opportunities. This will also help address the shortages in some of these critical sectors of veterinary medicine. We have taught veterinary students at Tufts for the past three years and are in discussions withother colleges about offering our "Careers and Pathways" course as an elective. 4.PABOs (Partnering Agencies, Businesses, or Organizations) By offering internships and externships to students and practicing veterinarians, our partners benefit by obtaining early access to potentially qualified employees who have a shared interest in their specific area of public veterinary medicine. Changes/Problems:None of the travel awards in this grant have been allocated to date. This is due to our need to award travel grants from a previous NIFA grant, which were delayed due to COVID travel restrictions and work-at-home policies at hosting organizations.The previous grant has now been finalized and we expect to award these four travel awards in FY 23-24. The changes noted below result from the design and development of the certificate program: - We broadened the originally intended audience from career-transitioning veterinarians to now include veterinary students nationwide. The goal is to develop partnerships with other US Colleges of Veterinary Medicine to incorporate the certificate courses into their curriculum and tuition structure. This will qualify the program to offer student financial aid, which should make it appealing to more participants, and thus enable the program to scale up faster and become financially sustainable sooner. - We realized that the development of online courses and the certificate program are really a single initiative to share content with remote veterinary students and graduate DVMs, and thus are best developed and reported on in tandem. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The CPCVM worked closely withVirginia Tech's Technology-Enhanced Learning and Online Strategies (TLOS), primarily with a PhD student in the program with expertise in the development of online courses. TLOS played a vital role in teaching CPCVM faculty membershow to effectively design, develop, and implement online training courses. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The core intent of this effort is training and outreach that provides resources to veterinary students and practitioners about the need for, and opportunities for, veterinarians in the public sector. As noted, we focused on building a portfolio of resources that highlight opportunities in the public sector through multi-day workshops, condensed academic courses for other colleges, a certificate program, and experiential opportunities for students and veterinarians. In parallel, we have worked to develop communication and distribution channels via our website, social media, delivering content to other colleges, and partnering with agencies and professional organizations in order to share our expertise. In addition, we also gave presentations to the following audiences: AAVMC Catalyze 2021 event, in partnership with Tufts University, entitled "A National Center of Excellence in Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine: Moving towards a collaborative model for veterinary medical education" (March 2021) We presented this content at the AVMA convention and were featured in a follow-on article in JAVMA (July 2021) https://www.avma.org/javma-news/2021-07-15/thinking-career-transition-assess-yourself-first United States Animal Health Association 2021 annual meeting in the Diagnostic Laboratory and Veterinary Workforce Committee Two presentations at the AVMA convention on public practice and the development of experiential opportunities for veterinarians (July 2022) Eight hours of presentations at the Southwest Veterinary Symposium in 2022 on career transitioning and career opportunities in veterinary public practice. Four presentations at the AVMA convention on career transitioning, and federal, state and municipal career opportunities (July 2023) What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?Since this grant has been provided a no-cost extension of one year, we expect our next (Final) report to include: - an update on the student travelawards. We anticipate all of the travel stipends willbe awarded. - an update on the establishment of the Public Practice Veterinarian academic certificate program, and related online course availability.. -any additional short-term experiential opportunities for graduate veterinarians developed with external partners. - the availability of additional self-paced learning modules.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Objective 1.1: None of the travel awards in this grant have been allocated to date. This is due to our need to award travel grants from a previous NIFA grant, which were delayed due to COVID travel restrictions and work-at-home policies at hosting organizations.The previous grant has now been finalized and we expect to award these four travel awards in FY 23-24. Objective 1.2: We created an online, for-credit academic course, "Beyond Private Practice: Veterinary Careers and Pathways", which was initially delivered to 3rd year students at Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in March 2021. In the course, students explore career opportunities in veterinary medicine outside of private clinical practice, with a focus on pathways to determining and pursuing a successful and personally fulfilling career choice. The course was taught again in 2022 and 2023, with similar positive student reviews. Based on the feedback, we are confident that this abbreviated version of our full-semester course is achieving its objective of merging the discovery of student career interests with exposure to the opportunities available in the veterinary profession beyond private practice. This course is tentatively planned to be taught at Tuftsagain in 2024, although there has been an administration change at Tufts so we will need to confirm. We are also currently in discussions with Western University in Arizona, which is interested in having us deliver the course to their students in June 2024. We are working through details at the time of this writing. We have also informally been approached by an additional veterinary college about potentially having access to the course. A second course, "Veterinarians and Public Policy", has been moved to an online format but has not yet been delivered externally. Two additional courses "Developing the Public Veterinary Practitioner" and "Problem Solving in Public and Corporate Veterinary Medicine" have been outlined for transition to online asynchronous courses, with the intent to fully move them online by August 2024 . Our goal is to make these courses availableto other colleges through negotiated financial or other agreements. Objective 2.1: In December 2022, we finalized program development for a new certificate in veterinary public practice and submitted it for University approval. We proposed a five-course (10-credit) asynchronous online graduate certificate, geared toward veterinary students nationwide as well as veterinarians planning a career transition. As of this writing, the program has been reviewed and endorsed at the first stage of University review (Institutional Planning Committee) and is moving sequentially through the remaining institutional review and approval steps. We broadened the originally intended audience from career-transitioning veterinarians to now include veterinary students nationwide. The goal is to develop partnerships with other US Colleges of Veterinary Medicine to incorporate the certificate courses into their curriculum and tuition structure. This will qualify the program to offer student financial aid, which should make it appealing to more participants, and thus enable the program to scale up faster and become financially sustainable sooner. We expect final approval in Fall 2024, at which time we will formalize the experiential component of the program with select public agencies and organizations. We currently anticipate a Fall 2025 program launch. Objective 2.2: Formal agreements with the American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians (AAVLD) and USDA Food Safety and Infection Service (FSIS) and implementation documents have been drafted to provide short term experiential opportunities for veterinarians who would like to gain exposure to particular fields as part of the career decision making process. FSIS is currently working with their administration on liability issues and we are waiting on agencies to finalize and initiate the programs. We are working with the CPCVM Advisory Board to identify other agencies and organizations that may have an interest in developing these types of experiences for graduate veterinarians, with the intent of initiating at least one in the next year. Objective 3.1: 1. We reconfigured our "Career Transition for Veterinarians" workshop from an in-person to an online format. By eliminating the travel cost and traveltime required of an in-person activity, participation now costs significantly less and reaches more veterinarians from across the country and internationally. We include presentations from veterinarians working for the federal government, state governments, industry, a veterinary recruiter, and an AVMA representative. In August 2020, we delivered our first online workshop, with an industry focus. We then delivered additional workshops in April 2021, February 2022, and April 2023, alternating between an industry focus and a government focus. Following all of our workshops, we solicit feedback. One question we ask is, "Would you recommend the workshop to a colleague?" We have received scores that range from 9.1 to 9.7 on a 10-point scale. Our workshops are well-received, financially self-sustaining, and provide funds for other initiatives. The AAVSB - RACE™ committee approved our online "Career Transition for Veterinarians"(industry focus) for 8.0 continuing education credits and our workshop (public/government focus) for 10.5 credits. 2.We created 12 self-paced learning modules, focused on career transitioning for veterinarians, to supplement the career transition workshops. Due to university logistical and platform licensing delays, the initial modules have been delivered through the workshops and at conventions. We are in discussions with an external partner to potentially be able to utilize an acceptable platform for online delivery. These modules provide veterinarians with general, actionable overviews on self-assessment, career opportunities,and veterinary career planning. 3. We created a new CPCVM website. In 2021, we established a new website that focuses on veterinary careers in public and corporate practice, with dedicated sections addressing the needs of the three types of populations we serve: veterinary students, veterinarians, and organizations that employ veterinarians. In 2022, we added a testimonials page with brief narratives from 12 of our public and corporate veterinary graduates so that practicing veterinarians, as well as veterinary students at other colleges, can gain a perspective on the variety of career opportunities and paths. In 2023, we added a section that is the entry point to our new Advisor program for veterinary students. We currently have 24 veterinarians with a wide variety of educational and work experience who have volunteered to be student advisors. The webpage enables students to search their biographies and quickly identify any veterinarians they're interested inspeaking with.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/21 to 08/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience:1) Practicing veterinarians. On a regular basis, we continue to provide pro-bono career counseling to veterinarians who contact us seeking advice on making a career change. This is the audience we are targeting with our online career transition modules that are under development. 2) Veterinary students at other colleges. In March 2022, we taught a condensed online asynchronous version of our full semester academic course "Beyond Private Practice: Careers and Pathways in Veterinary Medicine" to 17 3rd-year DVM students at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University. In our follow-on survey, we included the question"Would you recommend this course to other veterinary students?".100% of this year's students responded that they would recommend the course. 3) Veterinary Colleges. In addition to Tufts, we are in discussions with another college about accessing our online "Beyond Private Practice: Careers and Pathways in Veterinary Medicine" course. The dean of that college is very interested, and requested a syllabus which they are presenting to their curriculum committee. We have also been approached informally about access to the course by representatives from two other veterinary colleges. 4)PABOs(Partnering Agencies, Businesses, or Organizations). We are finalizingpartnering agreements for experiential opportunities fr graduate veterinarians with one federal agency (USDA-FSIS) and with one professional organization (AAVLD) Changes/Problems:Factors external to the project affected our progress in the first year of this grant. Prohibitions on travel due to COVID-19 for the past twoyears forced the continued suspension of the experiential component of the student learning experience until late Fall 2021. As a result, we elected to pay for travel stipends from a backlog of funds for an identical objective in a previous grant (via an approved grant extension). We did not fund two travel stipend awards from this grant during the first year as originally expected. We expect to award these funds in the coming year. In 2021, we wrote a requirements document specifying the features that an online platform would need to provide in order for us to host our learning modules. Our intention was to determine the best, low-cost provider so that our modules would be affordable to the veterinary community while allowing us to recover the costs of hosting, paying for the AAVSB RACE content review, approval, and distribution of continuing education credit. Determining final platform and technical requirements, and logistical constraints related to hosting video content were a prerequisite to video production, therefore we had to delay module availabilityuntil those constraints were addressed. Professional-level recording of the modules in a studio will be initiated in late August/early September 2022. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?
Nothing Reported
How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The core intent of this effort is training and outreach: to provideresources to veterinary students and practitioners related to career development, highlight the need for veterinarians in the public sector, and show how to prepare for and pursue those opportunities We remain focused on building these resources (self-paced learning modules, career transition workshops, an academic and experiential-based certificate program) and developing distribution channels (via our website / portal, licensing content to other vet colleges, partnering with agencies, professional organizations, and businesses) to share our expertise. Additionally, in the past year, we discussed the results of our work on grant related activities in several presentations. The first was at the United States Animal Health Association 2021 annual meeting in the Diagnostic Laboratory and Veterinary Workforce Committee. In July 2022, Dr. Valerie Ragan gave 2 presentations at the AVMA convention on public practice and the development of experiential opportunities for veterinarians. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?For Objective 1.1, we will continue to promote, accept applications for, and evaluate candidates for the student travel stipends related to externships. As externships are completed, we will be surveying the students for feedback on their experience. With the cumulative survey results and feedback from both years, we'll develop an advocacy narrative in order to approach partner agencies, businesses, and organizations (PABOs) for long-term experiential opportunities and financial support for student travel. Some of the student feedback from summer 2023, as well as the promotional package, solicitation, and follow-on negotiations with PABOs will occur after the second year of this grant. For Objective 1.2, we expect to continue offering our "Beyond Private Practice: Careers and Pathways in Veterinary Medicine" course to Tufts University, and anticipate having at least one additional school engaged with either the ""Beyond Private Practice" offering. We hope to gain experience in managing the course for several schools, which will help us understand how to most efficiently scale up to a larger audience, and when we should offer the second course. We want to be sure we are able to manage all external courses well before scaling up nationally. For Objective 2.1, as noted in the Project Timetable, this next year we will be reviewing the outline of our certificate program - both the course work as well as the experiential expectations - with government agencies and industry, seeking feedback and modifying the offering if needed prior to submitting the program to Virginia Tech for academic approval. Since the certification program will take time to be approved, announced, registrations accepted and the multi-course / internship program completed, the post-experience evaluation with participating veterinarians and with our partners will be ongoing, and will occur after this end of this grant. For Objective 2.2, in the second year of this grant, we will seek additional partners who can provide experiential opportunities in public practice for graduate veterinarians. Also, we anticipate receiving post-experience evaluations from veterinarians who have participated in experiential opportunities with our initial public practice partners.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Aim 1: To expand opportunities for veterinary students to explore careers in areas of public practice. Objective 1.1: Provide competitive travel stipends for veterinary students, open to students from all veterinary colleges, to complete public practice focused externships. We were able to award competitive travel stipends for student externships during the first year of this grant, however, we allocated the monies from identically-intended funds in a previous grant, which had been delayed for two years due to COVID-related travel restrictions and remote work requirements at sponsoring organizations. Therefore, the funds for two travel stipend awards that were expected to be paid out in the first year of this grant were not spent,and will be awarded in the coming year instead. Objective 1.2: Continue to transition current veterinary student course materials to an online platform, which will be made available to students through partnerships with other colleges of veterinary medicine. During this past year, the 1-credit"Beyond Private Practice: Careers and Pathways in Veterinary Medicine" was taught for a second time to Tufts third-year veterinary students. Prior to the start of the class, when this year's students were asked the career awareness question of "How well do you feel you understand career options and opportunities in veterinary medicine?", 16 respondents (94%) selected "some", while 1 student indicated "I know about private practice but not much about other opportunities". No students claimed to know "a lot" about career options and opportunities. Whenasked "Have you considered a career in veterinary medicine in an area other than private clinical practice?" 8 students (47%) selected "Yes, a career other than private clinical practice is my intended career path", and the remaining 9 (53%) indicated "Yes, I've considered other areas, but I'm not sure they're right for me". No students indicated "No, I never really thought about veterinarians doing anything other than private clinical practice", or "No, I'm private clinical practice all the way". In the post-course survey , we asked "Overall, after taking this course, how well do you feel you understand the career options and opportunities in veterinary medicine?" Of the 17 responses, 12 students (71%) indicated "a lot better", while the remaining 5 students (29%) indicated "somewhat better". No students selected "about the same as before the course". We also inquired "Now that you have taken this course, would you recommend this course to other veterinary students?" With a 100% response rate, 100% of the students indicated that they would recommend the course to a peer. Therefore, we are confident that the asynchronous online version of our full semester CVCVM course that merges the discovery of individual student career interests with exposure to the opportunities available in the veterinary profession is achieving its objective. Tufts hasrequested access to the course again in 2023. In addition, we are currently in discussions with a second College of Veterinary Medicine regarding providing the course to their students as well. The dean from that college is very interested in providing the course, and the course syllabus has been provided for consideration by their curriculum committee. Representatives from two additional veterinary colleges have informally approached us to start discussions about potentially having access to the course as well. We have initiated the development of a second online asynchronous course "Veterinarians and Public Policy".The materials are well underway, and we plan to potentially offer this in 2023, Since we have been approached by several colleges interested our "Beyond Private Practice: Veterinary Careers and Pathways"class, we want to ensure we have successfully scaled up delivery of that course before offering a second course. Aim 2: To expand access of veterinary public practice related courses and short-term internship opportunities to veterinarians interested in public veterinary practice careers. Objective 2.1: Develop course content and internship opportunities for the creation of a formal online certificate program targeted at veterinarians interested in working in areas of public practice. The design of this certificate program - both the course work as well as the related internships - will be modeled on our newly developed asynchronous online courses. We have recently hired a new faculty member who joined us on August 1, 2022, with an extensive background in veterinary public practice, academia, and program development. One of her primary responsibilities is the development of this certificate program. Objective 2.2: Partner with agencies, businesses, and organizations to develop short-term experiential opportunities for graduate veterinarians considering public practice careers. We initiated a partnership with the USDA-FoodSafety and Inspection Service (FSIS) to provide short-term experiential opportunities for graduate veterinarians. Documents and registration forms have been delivered to FSIS and are being finalized. Documents and registration forms have also been created and delivered to American Association of Veterinary Laboratory Diagnosticians (AAVLD) for similar short-term experiential opportunities for graduate veterinarians. They are pending review. ?Aim 3: To expand career guidance and continuing education for veterinarians seeking to transition into a public practice career. Objective 3.1: Provide continuing education opportunities related to careers in veterinary public practice, and knowledge and skills needed for public practice careers. Website: As a part of the VMCVM college website, our Center focuses on the topic of "veterinary careers in public practice", with content specifically addressing the needs of the three types of populations we serve: veterinary students, veterinarians, and organizations with veterinarians on staff. This past year we added a testimonial page from our public and corporate veterinary graduates to highlight the variety of positions they hold. Learning modules: This year, we created two on-line, self-paced learning modules. We have been working with Virginia Tech media specialists to ensure quality and delivery of the modules, and these modules are now scheduled to be formally recorded in a Virginia Tech studio at the end of August and September. They will be posted online shortly thereafter. These initial free modules are intended to provide the practicing veterinarian with a general, actionable overview on self-assessment and career planning. These modules are the first in a series of planned modules, most of which will be eligible for AAVSB RACE™ continuing education credit. The evolving series of modules will supplement the Career Transition workshops that we already offer on a recurring basis.
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