Gerhardt Schurig selected to lead Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges

Washington

— The Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) named Dr. Gerhardt Schurig its new president on July 18.

Schurig is dean of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine.

Dr. Deborah Kochevar, dean of the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, was selected as the association's president-elect.

"Society holds practitioners of veterinary medicine in high esteem, and those of us in academic veterinary medicine face the challenge of balancing the need for efficient and forward-looking change with the need to maintain the best practices that make it such a great profession,” Schurig says in a prepared statement. “Veterinary medical education instills a uniquely valuable, comparative approach to medicine and we need to continue on that path—but we also need to pursue a vision that will enable us to progress and adapt to the future. I look forward to working with our member institutions and stakeholders to achieve this goal.”

Other AAVMC officers include: Dr. Stuart Reid, principal of the Royal Veterinary College at the University of London, as secretary; Dr. Peter Haynes, dean of the Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine as treasurer; Dr. Christian Abee, chair of the Department of Veterinary Science and director of the Michale E. Keeling Center for Comparative Medicine and Research at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, as at-large director for departments of comparative medicine; and Dr. Alastair Cribb, dean of the faculty of veterinary medicine at the University of Calgary, as at-large director for Canadian colleges.