Chadron, CSC get high marks for Pre-Vet Symposium

Greg Lewbart of North Carolina State University, a national advisor for the association, said there was some skepticism when Chadron State pre-vet students submitted the bid to host the symposium a year ago that the college might not be large enough to have an outstanding program.

“Some of us wondered about the facilities and the programming. The bid was kind of out of the box,” said Lewbart. “But they did a great job. The symposium was well-organized, the programs were good and we had great hospitality. Everything went well as far as I know, and I heard similar comments from others.”

This was the first time the symposium has been held on the campus of a college or university that does not have a veterinary school. The association’s constitution had to be changed to allow CSC to host the event.

The 200 in attendance this year was considerably smaller than have attended most previous symposiums. Both Lewbart and Dr. Georgia Younglove, a CSC agricultural professor and one of the sponsors of the college’s Pre-Vet Club, said that was probably because of CSC’s location and that fact that there isn’t direct airline service from terminals in the Midwest and East, making the flights more expensive.

Still, students at the symposium came from coast-to-coast. Among those in attendance was Dr. Keith Lapwood of Massey University in New Zealand. Massey has one of the five veterinary schools outside of North America that is approved by the American Veterinary Medical Association. He said Massey accepts about 20 veterinary students from the United States annually.

Lewbart, who flew into Rapid City and then rented a car for the trip to Chadron, took side trips to pay his first visits Mount Rushmore and the Hot Springs Mammoth Site.

Lewbart added that the “wet labs” Saturday afternoon at the Dawes County Fairgrounds where the pre-vet students were able to participate in necropsies, or postmortem examinations, of various animals was a plus for the symposium at CSC.

“At most of the symposiums, there are demonstrations for the students to watch, but this time they got to dig in and do everything themselves,” said Lewbart. “I think they enjoyed that.”

The new president of the association is Samantha VandeHey, a sophomore at Wisconsin-Green Bay. She said she was really impressed with the programming. In particular, she said she enjoyed the presentations by Chadron State graduate Dr. Aprill Sherman, who is now practicing in Fremont, on her African wildlife adventure while she was a student at the veterinary college at Kansas State University, and by Rob Reed of Crawford, a farrier and coach of the CSC rodeo team.

“The slides on the trip to Africa were really interesting and the program on horse lameness was amazing,” said VandeHey. “I didn’t know so much depended on a horse’s feet.”

VandeHey traveled to Chadron by van with several pre-vet students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A couple of the students from the latter institution said they went to downtown Chadron Saturday afternoon and found the people to be extremely friendly. They said they stopped at one business that already had the “Closed” sign on the door. But when the owner saw them looking in the door, she asked them to come in.

“She said we must be here for the veterinary symposium and let us look around in her store. We had a good time,” one of the Wisconsin students said.