Iowa State, Nebraska program address food animal shortage

AMES, IOWA — Officials at Iowa State University (ISU) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) approved an agreement to allow Nebraska students to begin a veterinary degree program in their home state and finish at ISU.

The agreement was approved by the University of Nebraska Board of Regents, Nebraska's Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education and signed by Iowa State University President Gregory Geoffroy and University of Nebraska-Lincoln Chancellor Harvey Perlman.

Each year up to 25 students from Nebraska will enter a four-year study of veterinary medicine and attend the first two years of the program on the UNL campus. The program will be part of the university's College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources and the departments of veterinary and biomedical sciences and animal science.

Students will complete their final two years and receive their doctor of veterinary medicine degree from ISU.

UNL students will pay ISU professional-school resident tuition all four years. Nebraska will pay the difference between resident and non-resident tuition for the final two years.

The cooperative program will address the region's increasing need for food animal veterinarians, the universities report.

Both universities are in the process of hiring new faculty and developing facilities to accommodate the new program.

ISU is renovating laboratory spaces and classrooms, undertaking an expansion of its veterinary teaching hospital, and plans to add 30 faculty positions during the next five years.

UNL will add seven new faculty members and renovate facilities in its veterinary and animal sciences areas.

A joint oversight committee consisting of representatives from both universities will coordinate efforts.

The first students will enter the program at UNL in the fall of 2007 and move to the ISU campus in the fall of 2009.