Episode #33 – Dr. Phillip Nelson

Do you work in the animal health industry or veterinary profession? Have you ever wondered how people began their careers and how they got to where they are today? Hi everyone. I’m Stacy Pursell, the founder and CEO of the Vet Recruiter, the leading executive search and recruiting firm for the animal health industry and veterinary profession. I was the first recruiter to specialize in the animal health industry and veterinary profession in the United States and built the first search firm to serve this unique niche. For the past 25 plus years, I have built relationships with the industry’s top leaders and trailblazers. The people of Animal Health Podcast highlights the incredible individuals I have connected with throughout my career. You will be able to learn more about their lives, careers, and contributions. With our wide range of expert guest, you’ll be sure to learn something new and every episode.

Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode. Welcome to the People of Animal Health podcast. On today’s show, we are talking with Dr. Phillip Nelson. Dr. Nelson has more than 40 years of experience in higher education in veterinary medicine, fulfilling a spectrum of roles as a clinical educator and including hospital and college administration. During his career, he has developed passionate interest in provided leadership in the role of veterinary medicine and public health issues of diversity, the economics of and access to quality education and the veterinary market and the general welfare of the veterinary healthcare team.

He has contributed to the establishment of not one, but two veterinary colleges in the US, both of which established new pedagogic platforms and veterinary medicine. And I have to admit that I had to look up the word pedagogic, and I hope I said that correctly because I didn’t know what it meant and I learned what it means relating to the methods and theory of teaching, and that’s very interesting. So I look more to learning. I look forward to learning more about that in today’s podcast episode. So welcome onto the People of Animal Health podcast. And how are you today, Phil?

I’m just fine, Stacy, and I pronounce it pedagogic for the record, but I do appreciate your investigating the word anyway and understanding the meaning. How are you doing?

Well, thank you for that. I’m doing great. Like we were just talking before, I can’t believe this year is just flying by and I know that you and I have been talking about doing this podcast for a while now. So I’m so excited to have you on today and to get to hear your story, Phil. I know that you’ve had tremendous success up to this point in your career, but I would like to start off at the bottom in the very beginning of your career, what was your life like growing up and where did you grow up?

So I grew up, I was born in Washington DC, and my mother is from Hot Springs, Virginia. My father is from Macintosh, Alabama, the great metropolitan city of Macintosh, Alabama, and they met in DC. They moved back to the south, my father is a Tuskegee graduate and we lived there for a while as he worked in dining services. Then we moved to Jackson where he became director of the dining services at Jackson State University. Most of my childhood was spent there, or at least the rest of my childhood was spent in Jackson, Mississippi. I grew up during the civil rights era in Mississippi and had a penchant for… A love for animals early on, and also had a love for science early on and was guided by my father and a African-American veterinarian, Dr. Roland Powell, who was also a Tuskegee graduate.

Clearly, there’s a theme here that if I was going to go into vet school, there was only one school I was going to go to. And worked as a kennel boy for Dr. Powell, and that’s where my interest was cultivated, I would say. So I was on the path from the time that I was eight or nine years old to become a veterinarian. I was accepted to Tuskegee and on my first application and after two years of pre-vet went to Tuskegee and received my degree in 1979.

During that time, I know that you worked in a veterinary practice, but at what point did you decide, this is what I want to do professionally?

I think I decided that… My experience with veterinary students is that they’re kind of stubborn, it’s a calling for people who decide to become veterinarians. I do remember that when I was in high school and in undergrad, I had a number of chances to move into medicine, human medicine. I was in the pre-med club president of the pre-med club. I actually interviewed with Harvard and Yale for their med school. They sent recruiters down and recruited me hard and could not understand why I would not consider it. I think at one point during my sophomore year of undergrad, I did seriously consider switching to medicine. I applied for a summer program. My father had just bought a restaurant and needed someone to stay to help manage it.

That turn of events probably cemented my decision because I did not get to go to Harvard for that program. But I think that it was mostly a comfort level. I will say that the racial tensions of the time I think played a part in my decision. I think I probably felt more comfortable going to Tuskegee than going to Harvard because of that. I know my father was very concerned about the impact of racism and the potential abortive effect it might have on my career, but that did not undermine my penchant or my desire to become a veterinarian. I just think it was a rationalization that moved me further that direction. I hope I answered your question.

Yes, you did. Thank you. And I’d love to know more about the beginning of your veterinary career. How did you get started in veterinary medicine?

So my plan honestly, was once I went to vet school, Dr. Powell and I had a verbal agreement that I joined his practice when I graduated. I was a little surprised that I ended up in academia, but serendipity stepped in as it does in most cases. Mississippi State started a veterinary school my junior year, and Dr. Powell was on the forming committee for that veterinary school. And I was so focused on my plan that I turned down residencies and internships because I knew I was going to go into practice. And in December of my senior year, I received a letter from the dean of Mississippi State asking me to apply for a faculty position. And to my surprise, I had been recommended by Dr. Powell. I didn’t know what that meant, he hadn’t talked to me. I didn’t know if that was a hidden message that I didn’t have a job or that my job was in danger.

And I was a little surprised that they would even recruit me coming right out of school. But I was also intrigued because I never even thought about being a part of a brand new school that was being established and decided to take the job. Now, mind you, you should know that I wasn’t that satisfied with the teaching techniques that I had gone through at Tuskegee. I got a wonderful education, but I felt that was more provocative and humane way of training veterinarians. And so I questioned some of the memorizations and the lack of deep discussions that I thought I was going to participate in as I moved into professional training and was very disappointed at that. You have to understand, I grew up on a liberal arts campus. Jackson State was my home essentially, it was my playground, and I didn’t know this then, but I was being indoctrinated and inculcated by faculty at a liberal arts college.

Even then, my mentors, my advisors, my babysitters were faculty and staff at a university. And I now understand the uniqueness of that culture that I took for granted every day. But I developed a certain sense fun in education and thought learning was fun because of the activities that I had access to. So I went to Mississippi State, and at the time that it was started by Dr. Billy Ward and was the associate dean for academic affairs and Dr. Phil Bushby, who’s aborted surgeon, and both of them are retired now. They both impressed me with their pedagogy for academia for learning. Their focus was on learning, not necessarily teaching. And they introduced a new curriculum, new techniques that was consistent with what I thought was a much more enjoyable training program, and I wanted to be a part of it. So I surprised myself and accepted the offer.

I’d love to know more about that. Talk more about that. You mentioned that you were in a learning setting that you thought could be improved upon, and then there was a new way to do things. I’d love to know more about that, if you will.

Sure, no problem. I think that, again, I had wonderful faculty at Tuskegee, and I cannot overemphasize that. But in some cases we had syllabi, well, we had class notes that had been mimeographed for years that you could barely read. We had exams that had not been changed for years, or several questions might have been changed. And the answers were pet phrases that you had to know, there were little tricks that the student body used to pick up on that the higher classes would tell you when he says that, then that’s a key phrase that’s going to be on the test and just things like that. And there wasn’t a chance to truly express your understanding of a complex concept, and there wasn’t a direct application of those complex concepts to a clinical problem until later in the curriculum. And so you found yourself simply memorizing facts and figures and concepts without knowing why, without understanding how it might be applied.

Now, it may have been me and I started with myself first, but I started hearing some of the same complaints from fellow students. When I got to Mississippi State, one of the first things Dr. Bill Ward said was that if you come here now, the first thing we’re going to ask you to do is write your final exam for the courses that we’re going to assign you so that you can reverse engineer your course. And once you understand what you want the students to know at the end of the course, then it’s a lot easier to determine the activities and the content that you’re going to cover in order for them to answer that exam. And we’re going to make a contract with the student. Mississippi State was one of the first colleges that established an objective based curriculum in it. And so the objectives was what you derived from your exams that you wrote first.

And once you understood what the objectives were, that was your contract with the students. You put those objectives in a syllabus and you told the student, if you get 90% or more of these objectives, you’ll get an A. If you get 80%, you’ll get a B, and so on. And believe it or not, that was a rather novel concept in higher ed at that time. This openness of expectations in order to understand what grades you might aim for, it’s like going bowling and there’s sheets in front of the pens and there’s somebody behind the sheet that tells you how many pens you hit so that you can guess where you might want to throw your second ball. In this particular case, they took the sheets off so you could see the pens fall and you can aim more accurately on your second attempt. There were other little things that they did, they focused on the humaneness of the curriculum.

I was at Mississippi State for five years, my first time there, and I went back to Mississippi State during my mid-career as an associate dean. And it was at that point, the curriculum had matured and blossomed, and Dr. Bushby and I, began to see a lot of wear and tear on the students. And of course, by this time, the school’s been established, has been in place for more than a decade, and faculty have come and go, and every time a new faculty member comes in, new objectives were added to the curriculum. Very few objectives were dropped from the curriculum. And one day we did an exercise and counted all of the objectives that we were requiring of the curriculum and played the mind game that if they were to learn 90% of those objectives to have an A average, they would have to learn an objective every seven seconds, 24 hours a day for the four years that they were in school.

Wow.

And you immediately recognize that is an impossible task. But not only is that an impossible task, which objectives are they learning? Which ones are important, even if they were able to do it, which 90% was so important that this is why we’re going to reward them with an A. And we began to question just what is supposed to be important about content as opposed to a learning behavior, especially as we were approaching the digital age. Remember now, before 1980, the Apple 2E had not been invented. There were no cell phones, there were these huge phones we used to screw into our cars.

I remember those.

But technology had not advanced to the point where it was very easy to get to information, and that’s why we had to memorize a lot of our information. So this is not an empty criticism of our teaching techniques. We did what we had to do when it came to technology. It took seven years to publish a book. And so by the time the data in the book came out, it was already seven years old and could be archaic.

Wow.

So that forced us to take another look at our teaching tactics. And it also said that what we thought was so great a decade ago was just a milestone in evolution in teaching.

Well, I would love to know more about what were the early days like for you in your career as you were getting started?

I am reticent to say that my early days was hawed with episodes of racism that I was not necessarily surprised, but definitely disappointed that I had to deal with it along with my professional challenges. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at Mississippi State both times because I’m a Mississippian, because I’m from Mississippi, I understand the culture. I did not necessarily accept or enjoy parts of the culture, but my experience within the veterinary school was extremely valuable, and I felt part of the CVM family. However, the problems that I had within the school was actually from outsiders, not necessarily the faculty and staff.

I was respected by the student body as far as I knew, I was respected by the faculty and staff. We kept each other as children, we entertained with each other, et cetera. But during the early years, the college was still being constructed, and there were workers, masons and carpenters, et cetera, that were as much a part of the traffic within the college as the employees and the students, and many times I had encounters with them that reminded me of the racist tenor of the state. And there were several times when and whenever I went across campus or just went to the grocery store, I remember having a constant run-in battle with a manager at a Sears mail outlet.

When my wife and I first arrived in Starkville, we rented a faculty house and we had no furniture. And I believe in spending my money locally and the appliance store, most of our appliances came from the Sears mail order store. And I went to that store and I didn’t have a Sears card. And we went in and we picked out a refrigerator and picked out some appliances, and I went to apply for a Sears card, and the woman who took my application asked me for my information and asked me where did I work? And I told her that I was working at the veterinary school at Mississippi State. And her response was, “Well, there is no vet school at Mississippi State.” And I said, “Well, you wouldn’t know it. It’s only been around for a year.”

So she says, “So you’re a janitor there?” And I said, no, I’m an assistant professor at Mississippi State College Veterinary Medicine. And she scoffed and said, “You’re not trying to tell me that you’re a veterinarian?” And I said, yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. And she was obviously doubtful. And she said, “Well, I’m not sure I can write that down.” I said, well, you don’t have, you don’t have to prove it. You can give me the form and I’ll fill it out. Anyway, I had several instances with her every time we walked in, she delayed the delivery of our goods because she didn’t believe it. I finally had to go overhead to even submit the application.

There were several other times that I had problems with her. The story closes full circle. About six years after that, one of the local veterinarians referred her to me for an IV disc disease, she had a dachshund, and when she came into the clinic, he had told her, you only want to see Dr. Nelson. I assure you he’ll take care of your hound. And so when she came in, she loved her dog immensely, and she gave the receptionist a hard time the moment she walked in, she walked in and she said she wanted to see Dr. Nelson, that she had an appointment. And the receptionist was very kind and said, just have a seat and I’ll have him out as soon as he swings with his present client.

And our practice was to send students out first and have the students bring the dog here, and then to do the workup. When the students came out, she refused to give them her dog because she only needed to see Dr. Nelson. They finally convinced her of the procedure and that they were working with me, et cetera. And they got in. And so when I walked in the room, I had my white coat, and I recognized her immediately. She did not recognize me because of the white coat syndrome and because of the concerns she had for had for her dog.

Did you say anything?

I introduced myself as Dr. Nelson and continued to work up her dog. I said nothing else about that I recognized her, that I knew her, et cetera, until the very end of the procedure, I then explained to her what I thought the problem was. I need to take radiographs, gave her my diagnostic plan, told her how much I thought it was going to cost, and her next response was, “I don’t have that kind of money.” And I said, well, we’ll work that out. I said, I’m going to take you over to our account manager and I’m sure we can work out a payment plan for you, et cetera. And that’s when I finally said, “Do you not recognize me?” And suddenly her eyes just lit up, and she looked at me and I could see fear in her eyes, and I regret it even.

I regretted having made myself known immediately because that was not my intent. And so I told her, I grabbed her by the shoulders and said, I don’t want you to worry. We’re going to take the best care of your dog that we can. And it’s clear that you love your dog and it’s clear and the prognosis is good. You’ve brought it in early because your veterinarian is taking such a good job, and I want you to keep in touch with him. I will call you this afternoon and let you know what the plan is. Right now let’s go take care of your financial arrangements. After that, I’m not going to say we became friends, but service approved at Sears, let’s just put it that way.

Wow. Did she ever apologize?

No.

Wow. Well, so you were at Mississippi State twice.

Yes.

And I’d love to hear the rest of your career story. So where did you go from there?

So I left Mississippi State after one year after a residency in small animal internal medicine, and went back to Tuskegee to in part some of the things I had learned at Mississippi State. I’m a very loyal Tuskegee alum, and I went back as a professor in internal medicine and taught at Tuskegee for five years. During that time, I realized that I enjoyed academia, I enjoyed teaching, and that I hadn’t thought of the fact that I could have the best of both worlds. I could have a clinical practice in an academic setting. I could push the envelope and I could teach. I didn’t know I enjoyed teaching, I didn’t know I would enjoy it as much as I did. And I enjoyed improving learning techniques. I enjoyed it when the students enjoyed it.

So I then realized that I needed to have the academic capital that would allow me to move forward, to continue to matriculate through the academic ranks. And at the time, my intent, when I was at Mississippi State, my intent was to become board certified in internal medicine. But there was some unfortunate circumstances that occurred there that I’d rather just not go into right now. But needless to say, at that time, there were no Black internist, aborted internist in the nation. And there was an incident where some of the cases I was preparing for my submission for my boards were taken and submitted for others. And at that time, minorities in academia in a majority of environment were so few that our demands, our academic demands, were complicated because of the desire to spread diverse opinions across a diversity setting.

So imagine if you have a university that has 2% African-Americans, and you want input of a diverse group, you find yourself serving on a lot of committees, which takes a toll on your advancement. It was something that we had to learn as a society and something that I had to learn as an individual in terms of how to protect yourself from the complications of an ill-gotten paradigm. So at the same time, board certification was not necessarily recognized as the equivalent of a PhD. There was actually a discussion which is better. And I think we finally determined that neither of them is better, they’re different. But at that time, particularly among faculty ranks, we really didn’t know how to reward board certification versus PhDs in an area.

How interesting.

Up until that point, our clinical experts had PhDs, most of them had PhDs, and board certification was seen as a practical clinical PhD, if you will. But the academic terminal degree was the PhD, and that was the discussion. I didn’t want the question of whether or not I decided that I didn’t want anybody questioning my terminal degree, the value of my terminal degree along with my race. And so I decided to get a PhD instead, and I went to North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine to get a PhD in immunology.

So you were the second dean of Western Veterinary School after Dr. Shirley Johnson, who was the first female dean of a veterinary school. And I know you wanted to talk about Shirley, so let’s go there first.

Okay, sure. So, once again, Western University decided to have a veterinary school, and they selected Dr. Shirley Johnson, who was a third geologist from Minnesota, University of Minnesota College Veterinary Medicine, dynamic individual, and the first female dean in the veterinary profession. When you’re starting a new school, there’s a solid phase. So I note that’s why you probably didn’t know that I’ve been there 18 years. I was Dean for 16 of those years at Western, but there was a seven-year period prior to that that Dr. Johnston shepherd it. And of those seven years, three of them were probably, nobody even knew about her until it was announced that Western was going to establish a veterinary school. During that time, however, she visited a lot of the schools so that she could gather insight on how she wanted to form her new curriculum.

And at that time, Mississippi State had gone to a problem-based curriculum because of the efforts we had made previously. When we were counting those objectives, we realized at that time that it might be better if we focused on learning behavior rather than content memorization, and that it was better if we could create graduates who were lifelong learners and knew how to fill the void of ignorance on their own rather than being dependent on memorized facts that we’re going to go out of date in three to five years. Anyway, one of the things that I tell my students is that half of what I’m teaching you right now is wrong, I just don’t know which half.

Well, what was it like following Shirley as a second dean at Western Veterinary School?

It was difficult because it was Western. Dr. Johnson moved up to Vice President for development, and so she was always there as a resource. The difficulty had to do with the profession accepting the Western University, the College of Veterinary Medicine. First of all, at the time, the profession was very insular, and it felt that it was being threatened by diversification, it felt that it was being threatened by competition. It was at a time when salaries had stagnated for practitioners. It wasn’t growing very much. As a matter of fact, when Mississippi State was established, one of the arguments against establishing a veterinary school in Mississippi was that the veterinary profession was growing to that point historically by one veterinarian a year when you accounted for death and retirement.

Wow.

And so the conclusion was, we don’t need any more vets. And if you’re going to graduate 32 veterinarians a year, where are they going to find jobs? And why would Mississippi invest in that if you’re only going to send, if you had to send 31 of them out of state? Well, it showed our ignorance of the market, number one. We didn’t know how to measure the need for veterinarians, and what was actually happening is, at the time, Mississippi State started veterinary school, Mississippi had one city, Jackson, every other amalgamation of population were considered towns because they didn’t have 200,000 people in them at the time. The whole state of Mississippi had three million people in it, but those small towns didn’t have veterinarians. And if you needed a veterinarian, in many cases, some members of some towns had to travel 50 miles to find a veterinarian. And so you either did what you did or you traveled or you did nothing.

Therefore, we didn’t know what the demand was because we were training just mississippians at first. Those graduates went back home, they knew that there was no veterinarian in their town. They put up the first veterinary clinics in their town, and suddenly the distances shortened dramatically. And we discovered that we had people in Mississippi like everybody else, like every other state, that wanted to take care of their animals for a reasonable price. And we had veterinarians who knew how to survive in Mississippi because they grew up in Mississippi. It was one of the first lessons I learned about marketing at the veterinary profession through academia.

So why do you think there was this ignorance of the market? You talked about not knowing how to measure the market demand, and how do you see that that’s changed now?

Oh, I think it has evolved dramatically now. What I’m about to say is totally observation, and I have no data to back it up, but if you take my story, for instance, I knew about veterinary practice before I got into academia. I learned from Dr. Powell and what Dr. Powell knew about veterinary practice, he learned from his clients. He was a member of the Mississippi VMA, but he wasn’t a welcome member by most of the VMA. And the VMA did not necessarily discuss economic issues, they shared their approaches to disease, et cetera, but they didn’t look at the profession as a profession or as a service to society.

They talked in secret about how they might make money off a rabies vaccine or how much they might charge for a surgical procedure. They supported each other that way, but the business of veterinary medicine wasn’t necessarily discussed in a systematic scientific way. And a lot of assumptions were made without data to prove it, and that wasn’t just Mississippi. I believe that I faced the same ignorance in California as well, and heard some similar stories out of Texas as well, to the point that the status quo seemed to always be threatened. And as a result, we went through a period of stagnation where we were afraid to grow because we were afraid to try new things.

And it was more concerned about our perceived threats than it was about expanding and growing the profession. Even now, our discussions about our labor shortage, our national discussion that we’re having about our labor shortage seems to be more based in making sure we don’t throw the baby out with the bath water, then looking to see if there’s a bigger tub. We still have that one. And I’m not suggesting that we throw the baby out with the bath water. I’m just suggesting that we need to have more fryable edges to look for growth.

Do you think there’s more of a scarcity mindset versus a growth mindset?

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, what advice would you give someone who has aspirations to be a dean of a veterinary school?

First, I would say that they need to know their constituents, and they should have realistic goals for each of those constituents. And when I include constituents, I mean the demographic constituents within the college as well as those in society. I believe faculty in general should understand that higher ed is one of the key tools that moves society forward. And it is the development and the ultimate development of society is the ultimate contribution that members of higher ed make on this globe. That is nothing to sneeze at. And we forget that when we’re at football games or when we’re fighting for the next grant or when we’re trying to get our next raise, I think that is our higher purpose. That is what we should never forget. Everything else serves that goal. So whether you’re a president, VP, a dean, a faculty member, you are part of that machinery that if done well, advances society.

Well, what has been the most surprising thing to you during your career in the veterinary profession?

That’s a good question. I think probably the most surprising thing is how well we are able to mask the contributions of education. I am probably most surprised at the, I can’t say the word, the diminishment of the importance of scientific technique, data management and creativity. I am extremely perturbed by the tendency to think that anybody can run a university, that anybody can teach in public schools, that anybody can fill in the ranks of faculty, be they in an elementary school or in a high school or in a university setting, just because they’re alive. And with that standard, the first people who are attacked during controversial national discussions tend to be the eggheads, and I use that word very advisedly. And it is what underdeveloped countries begin with. They tend to target the smartest people in their society violently in order to gain some self-serving purpose, which is the opposite of advancing society.

And so I am surprised that how shallowly we have buried that tendency in ours. I’m surprised when I see interference from people who have not even hidden agendas who seek to restrict the advances of education of medicine. Now, please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying. I believe that everybody should be held accountable, but we are going to have some difficult decisions as a result of these advances. We still don’t, don’t have a complete handle on managing atomic energy, and yet we have benefited from that knowledge as much as we have suffered from the mismanagement of it. That’s what comes with, that’s the risk that comes with new knowledge.

Well, Phil, how have you seen the profession change over the years?

I have seen the profession change dramatically over the years. For some of us, it has not changed fast enough. But there was a time, first of all, as you know, Stacy, the veterinary profession has been characterized as the whitest medical profession in America. In the 1950s, less than 1% of the veterinary profession was non-white in a country that was 11% African-American. It’s hard to understand how that would naturally occur, and we all know that it didn’t naturally occur. At this point, we’ve increased that percentage by a hundred percent, so now it’s two. That isn’t satisfactory to me. But when I entered the profession, I was told not to even talk about diversity.

The tenor has changed in the 40 years that I’ve been here, but it’s taken 40 years just to change the tenor. It seems that it’s going to take three times as long to change the data. At the time that I entered veterinary medicine, 10% of the profession was female, and now 80 to 90% of the student body is female. That is a dramatic change, but it also shows us the hierarchy of our problems. We will handle gender before we will handle race, or our biases are deeper about race is than it is for gender. And so we still have a lot to do. But there has been dramatic changes. There’s also been dramatic changes in the technological area for our profession, and there have been dramatic changes in social behavior and labor behavior that is a result of generational experiences.

The veterinary profession is much more collaborative than it used to be, and I think that’s a good thing. There are, but there are challenges in learning how to be collaborative. When I entered the profession, the standard goal, the standard vision, was you opened your practice with a partner or two maybe, and you had your corner of the market in whichever city you’re in. Clearly that has changed dramatically. There was no economic development section in the AVMA. There was no analysis of business data and publication of that business data on a regular basis. There was no consummation of that data and resultant action as a result of that data. There were several mega studies that was our first foray that were interpreted wildly by extremes on both sides.

I’m still not sure what the little study told us. I’ve read the little study four or five times, I’ve looked at it historically, and I can just tell you it was right and wrong. I can’t tell you that their analysis was absolutely accurate. I can tell you that the data supported certain things, but did not. But once again, just in the Mississippi story that I gave you, there was misinterpretation of some of that data too. And so I think that because we’re reading the hymnal on an annual basis rather than when we perceive a crisis is about to hit us. I think as a profession we’re more nimble and more-

What does… Go ahead.

No, go ahead.

Well, what does your crystal ball say about the future of the veterinary profession?

Yeah. Well, first of all, my crystal ball can’t go any further than five years with any type of reasonable expectations of correctness. But I will say that I think that as long as we are able to put our cards on the table, as long as we’re able to discuss our issues openly, I am positive about our profession. I am positive about how we’re going to address it. I think the power of our knowledge that we’re gaining in genetics and genetic interventions, I think the veterinary profession has a key part to play in the advances of science provided we can keep our political will under control, provided that we do not contaminate the application of our scientific method and of our data. But I am the person that sees the glass half full, and it’s all about applying appropriate principles in order to make sure that we continue to move two steps forward and one step back instead of the other way around.

Yeah. Moving things forward. And I’d love for you to share with our listeners about the kinds of projects that you’re up to today.

Well, I’ve actually just accepted a position as the founding dean of a new veterinary school.

Congratulations.

Thank you. We’re establishing a new veterinary school in Stockbridge, Georgia, and we’re in the process of getting a consultative site visit from the AVMA. Our dates have been set, but we haven’t published them yet. And we just wrote our curriculum that was improved internally this week. And we’ve identified a campus and we’re working on our construction plans.

How exciting. Well, what advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

I’d probably tell myself to be a little more confident and a little more assertive.

And what message or principal do you wish you could teach everyone?

Honesty. Honesty, candidness, politeness, and a civic based self-interest.

We need more of all of that. Well, some of our guests say that they’ve had a key book that they’ve read that really helped them? Do you have a key book in your life that has impacted you the most?

Other than the Bible, I would say Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy.

And you’ve got the mic, Phil, what is one thing that you want to share with our listeners of the People of Animal Health podcast? Before you drop the mic today,

You’ve asked a lot of introspective questions, and I want to make sure that some of my darker stories do not overshadow the fun I’ve had in this career. Work can be gratifying. I have been gratified in a number of ways, and I would like to say that despite our social and political ills, I have found that this profession has some of the best people in our society that have voted their time to veterinary medicine, which should not be surprising since we’re devoting our time to what some may consider the lesser of the species. And the fact that we are willing to give that time for those species is magnificent enough. So my hats off to this profession while I continue to fight for improvements.

Well, thank you so much, Phil. I am honored that you took the time to be here with me today to discuss your career, and with all of the listeners of the People of Animal Health Podcast, thank you so much for being here today.

And thank you for having me, Stacy, and thank you for treating me well.