Weaving art into veterinary medicine

When preveterinary student Erin Maegerle was 3 years old, she had decided that when she grew up, she would be a veterinarian, just like her grandmother. Maegerle would spend a lot of time in her grandmother's clinic as child, but also some time on the road with her mother, who also works in the veterinary medicine industry. This has led her to pursue her dreams at Rowan Univeristy's Schreiber School of Veterinary Medicine, through a program designed for undergraduate students who want to pursue careers in veterinary medicine.

On this week's episode of The Vet Blast Podcast, our host Adam Christman, DVM, MBA, is joined by Maegerle, to discuss what it is like to be in Rowan University's 3+4 Accelerated program for preveterinary students, their shared love of theater, and some advice Christman has for veterinary students who may also have a love or background in theater.

Below is a partial transcript

Adam Christman, DVM, MBA: Let's talk about this. So this is at the Schreiber School of Veterinary Medicine at Rowan University. And what is [it] when you're saying 3+4? What does that mean?

Erin Maegerle: Okay, yeah, so the 3+4 means that we have 3 years of undergraduate and then we have 4 years of vet school. So I've already completed my first year of the 3 and I have 2 years left and going into my second year, and then once my third year is done, we have 1 more interview with the same people that we interviewed with before we got into the program. And then that's it. We're into the vet school, which is so exciting, because, as you know, vet school is extremely difficult to get into, so it is just amazing to have this opportunity to just be streamlined right into it.

Christman: Tell me a little bit more about that. So you interviewed beforehand, and so it sounds like they have a lot of great mentorship and nurturing your career growth as you develop into veterinary school. And what does that? What is that like?

Maegerle: So we put on our college [applications] that we were interested in veterinary medicine, and a lot of us got emails inviting us to apply for this program. And we went through an essay portion, and once we passed the essay portion, we kind of just talked about why we're interested in veterinary medicine and kind of what our future plans are with veterinary medicine. We got into a panel interview round, and once we passed that, we were reviewed by Dean [Matthew Edson, DVM, CVPM, MRCVS] himself, and he chose the 8 of us. And it has been super, super great, and we're all super excited.