A REPORT CARD FROM THE DEAN: News from the Atlantic Veterinary College.

It is my pleasure to update CVJ readership on recent activities and future directions of the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC). We at the AVC graduated our 12th class in May of 2001, but our first with a class size of 60. As practitioners all recognize, the clinical practice job market has been very strong and the majority of 2001 graduates entered companion animal practice. However, many continue to be interested in food animal or equine practice. Also, 8 AVC graduates were successfully matched into internship programs in Canada or the United States. At the front end of our undergraduate program, the Class of 2005 were welcomed with our second annual AVC-CVMA Welcome Ceremony. The College feels it is important to establish the framework on which to build professional attitudes and actions as its students enter the program. Our Welcome Ceremony included the presentation of a lab coat and invited the attendance of AVC faculty, staff, and special guests (mentors) of the students. My thanks to the CVMA for cosponsoring this event. The AVC research and graduate studies programs are growing. There are 57 graduate students studying with us at present (37 MSc and 20 PhD). Also, the College has recently introduced 2 new graduate programs: an MVSc and a Graduate Diploma in Pathology and Microbiology. The faculty are competing well for national council grant research funding, and they have had remarkable success in the Canadian Institutes of Health Research competitions with 5 funded projects, ranging from diabetes to the role of estrogen in heart disease. Two AVC graduate students and 3 faculty members received NSERC funding. Through Aquanet, Canada's Network Centre of Excellence for Aquaculture Research, the AVC's unique focus on fish health has been recognized in the receipt of funding for 3 projects. Total project funding awarded from NSERC and CIHR for the year 2000–2001 was $1.6 M while other research contracts and grants totalled over $900 000 for population and individual animal studies primarily in cattle, swine and finfish, shellfish and crustaceans (lobster). The College has the University's first Canada Research Chair (Comparative Pharmacology and Toxicology); the province's first Industry Chair for Swine Research; Atlantic Canada's Sir James Dunn Animal Welfare Centre (with its associated Chair); and Canada's first Lobster Science Centre. The AVC Veterinary Teaching Hospital (VTH) and Diagnostic Laboratories continue to build a reputation for responsive, high-quality, regional (and beyond) services. Our very skilled technical and support staff, in tandem with dedicated clinicians, play a significant and positive role in the delivery of these services. Recruitment and retention, particularly of clinical faculty, is a challenge. Comparatively higher salaries, access to ultra-modern technologies, state-of-the-art facilities or laboratories and jobs that allow for singular, focused duties attract faculty to specialized, referral practices or positions within industry. Some approaches to reverse this trend may include advertising further afield, “training-to-fill,” and offering more flexible appointments. As an example of training high quality personnel, the College was successful in receiving a generous donation this past summer that established the Alice Peake Bissett Residency in Companion Animals. The AVC is very pleased and proud of its place within the community and the region. Its recent open house attracted over 2300 visitors. As a mainly student-driven event, it provided a great opportunity for our students to meet the public, answer questions about our program, show off the diversity of our profession and yes, suture-up some teddy bears. Another young crowd was attracted this summer to the College's 3rd annual Vet Camp, where 70 out of 250 applicants were accommodated at the 1-week summer program for students in grades 7 to 9. Also, to inform our constituencies on the value of AVC to the region, we commissioned a regional economic impact study of the AVC. The analysis was very positive and revealed that through teaching, research, and service, the AVC makes a great contribution to companion animal health and to the farming, aquaculture, and lobster industries in Atlantic Canada. As quoted in the report: “AVC's contribution to the Atlantic economy is much greater than simply providing regional students a place to study.” I would like to make some comments on where I see the AVC going over the next several years. I believe that society is offering an opportunity and a challenge for veterinary medicine to step up and play a major role in addressing many issues of concern on the national agenda, for example, maintaining consumer confidence in food safety, public health (West Nile virus, raccoon rabies), environmental sustainability, animal health, preservation of export markets, biosecurity, and foreign animal diseases (foot and mouth disease) to name just a few. Canada's 4 colleges of veterinary medicine need to maintain their international accreditation, graduate veterinarians with the new skills to address these challenges, undertake research, and train the high quality graduate students to serve the needs of society through positions in both the private and public sectors. Consequently, the AVC, in partnership with the other 3 Canadian veterinary colleges and with the support and help of the CVMA, has presented, a proposal for infrastructure reinvestment in our colleges to the federal government. The proposal builds upon the basic premise that infrastructure renewal and capacity building is a necessity to keep Canada current with the investment in veterinary college infrastructure exhibited by other developed countries. This will put each of our colleges in a much better position to maintain accreditation and build the capacity to help to address the national agenda. In the particular case of the AVC, we need increased capacity (facilities) to undertake the research the nation requires, upgrade and update our service units, and maintain our attraction to recruit and retain the good quality people that the profession needs. The AVC's program strengths include biomedical sciences, population medicine, fish health, and emerging strengths in animal welfare and ecosystems health. To network their programs more closely and capitalize on each of their individual strengths, the Canadian colleges have embarked on a CANARIE Inc. project linking the 4 Canadian Veterinary Colleges along the broadband network of CA3Net. A faculty member at AVC is presently sharing in the delivery of a graduate course in epidemiology with a faculty member at the Ontario Veterinary College. The College is doing similar things with teleconferenced meetings and distance continuing education speakers, and it will soon be branching into sharing high speed, data rich packages in the form of radiographic images between radiologists. In the near term, the faculty are undertaking a curricular review; they have been challenged to do this by our Strategic Plan 2000. The College's Curricular Task Force will be visiting many aspects of the curriculum, keeping in mind the need to diversify the profession, provide a contemporary skill set for graduates, identify and measure outcomes of the teaching program, all within the goal to “. . .educate students to become highly competent and successful veterinarians and scientists, committed to professional excellence, life-long learning, and meeting societal needs.” Because our educational program impacts on multiple jurisdictions and organizations (colleges, provincial licensing boards, NEB), I, and others from AVC, would be very pleased to continue to bring our thoughts forward to national discussions on the important issues facing the profession.

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