When Allison Coffin was a kid, she wanted to swim with sharks. But while in college she learned something that changed the course of her career: fish have ears.
“I went to college to study marine biology, and while there I learned that some fish can produce sound and talk to each other,” says WSU neuroscience professor Alli Coffin.
Beth Davidow has seen a lot of changes to the veterinary profession since she graduated from Cornell nearly 25 years ago. But the biggest change, she says, is the amount of debt today’s veterinary students carry when they graduate.
Walking quickly through an underground tunnel that stretches nearly a half mile, I carried samples frozen on dry ice between two buildings on the Mayo Clinic campus to be tested as part of a clinical study on irritable bowel syndrome, or IBS. Analysis of the tissues may help physician-scientists understand the causes of IBS and one day find a cure. In other places, it could take hours or days for analysis to begin, but here at the Mayo Clinic, I was impressed by how almost instantaneous everything is.
In 1968, the very first Washington Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association Scholarship was awarded to veterinary student Arthur “Rocky” Crate (’69 DVM) in the amount of $200. He wrote, “I feel very proud, and very humble, to be so highly honored. No other scholarship would have given me the pleasure and the satisfaction that yours has given me, not only because of my love for horses, but because I hold your association, and the work which you are doing, in very high regard.”
It was a shock to to win Top Ten Senior. There are a lot of amazing people here! I was fortunate to be able to do research in the neuroscience department. I started out as a freshman without really knowing where I was going with it but by my senior year, I had my own project that became part of my honor’s thesis.
Pets can be a vital anchor for people caught in the slow-motion disaster of homelessness. In Spokane and Seattle, Washington State University nursing and veterinary medicine students work together with the University of Washington and nonprofit partners to deliver vital care to both homeless people and their animal companions.
John and Rachel Clark are driven to prevent rabies in Africa, a disease that kills tens of thousands of children worldwide each year. So driven, in fact, for the past two years they have packed up their now 4- and 8-year-old children to host canine rabies vaccination clinics in Malawi, East Africa, where John was born and raised.
“I saw an article about Rabies Free Africa in the HuffPost featuring Dr. Guy Palmer,” says John. “I sent a note to Rachel that said, ‘This is what I want to do!’”
Change is afoot. Recently, I announced that I would step down as dean of our college at the end of 2019. A search will begin soon to identify our next dean. This is thus a time of reflection for me on where we have come since I became dean 11 years ago.