Episode #34 – Dr. Michael Lairmore

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 in 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. Michael Lairmore. Dr. Lairmore is past dean of the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, where he created new clinical trials infrastructure, expanded student services, enhanced research productivity, shaped new global and One Health programs, fostered a culture of fundraising, academic excellence, communications and innovation. He has held numerous national leadership positions including president of the American College of Veterinary Medical Colleges and the American College of Veterinary Pathologists. One of the few veterinarians elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine. He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. He has authored or co-authored 190 scientific publications and has provided significant breakthroughs in the biology of human retroviral associated carcinogenesis. Welcome onto the People of Animal Health Podcast. And how are you Michael?

I’m good. Thank you so much for having me, Stacy.

Well, I’m so glad to have the opportunity to talk with you today. I know we’ve known each other for a number of years, but we’ve never had an opportunity like this just to really sit down and visit about your life and your career. And so I’m very excited to have that chance to do that with you here today. And I know that you have had so much success up to this point in your career, but I would like to start off at the very bottom and beginning of your career. What was your life like growing up and where did you grow up?

Yeah, well, thank you for having me. And one thing that I am very aware of is that the past really sets the stage for the future, and that’s a common theme I think when one reflects upon their career. I was born in Newton, Kansas, which is a small town just north of Wichita, Kansas. And my parents at the time were living on a very small farm and we had a subsistence income with goats and other animals, and my father did odd jobs in various companies around the region. And I lived there until about the age of three and then we moved to Independence, Missouri for better opportunities for my father’s employment. And I lived in that town until I went to college at the University of Missouri. So growing up in a lower middle class background, in a very modest background, fairly limited resources, although I didn’t feel it at the time. And I spent a lot of time outside growing up, playing in the yard, sports and various activities in nature.

When I was about two or three years old, one of the things that influenced my life while I was in Kansas, I developed a neurologic disease, meningitis. Probably from a virus, which is interesting because I ended up studying that for my career. And I went into a coma. I was only two or three years of age and they thought I was going to die in the hospital. My mother had a nervous breakdown and was also concurrently hospitalized at the same time, so I had to learn to walk all over again and things like potty-trained after I got out of the hospital and survived that. Terrible ordeal. But my aunts who took care of me throughout that ordeal, the rest of my life kept telling me I took care of you when you almost died. And this really imprinted upon me that I had a second chance at life, and so I didn’t need to screw it up.

I really was blessed. So my early memories living in Independence, Missouri in our rental house at the time was playing outside. And as I mentioned, a favorite activity was going outside. We had a nearby creek where I think I was exposed to nature as many young boys and girls are. And we didn’t have a lot of … Internet wasn’t invented back then, and so we spent most of the time in outdoors and came in afterwards. About the time I was in third grade, we moved again to a different house and again, a very similar lifestyle. But growing up in this lower middle class background, I had both good and bad memories. But one of those that was constant was animals both as pets and hunting dogs, and my father was a hunter and so we had a hunting dog so I was exposed to those. But also we were at the suburban rural interface and later jobs in farms such as hauling hay and other jobs exposed me to other types of animals as well. And so that influenced me and also appealed to me.

Animals were real to me. They reacted to their needs based upon biological drives and they weren’t deceitful or anything else. And so they needed to be cared for and fed and nurtured, and I was growing up. I was fascinated by I guess the honesty of being around animals, and it was very much influenced by the rest of my career.

Wow, those are some incredible stories. We have something in common, you mentioned you moved in third grade, I also moved in third grade. Those types of experiences teach you to be resilient. So you had the opportunity to grow up in nature and around animals. At what point did you figure out this is what you wanted to do professionally?

Like a lot of our students today, it was very early. When I was about 15 years of age, I went up to my parents and announced that I wanted to be a veterinarian, and they kind of looked at me and said, “Okay.” But they also had never gone to college, so I was a first-generation student. And they were very encouraging, but had no resources and no knowledge of even going to college at all, let alone professional school. I sought out my high school counselor in that time, walked into his office and anticipated that they would be very thrilled with my plan to go to college and become a veterinarian. And I figured that was a great way to start. When I got into the counselor’s office, I learned very quickly that he had no idea about college or what my plans were, or he knew about college but he didn’t really help me.

He said, “You’re going to have to get another plan.” Only about 20% of the students from my high school even went to college. And so he offered a vocational technical school and little else to help me. And so I walked out of his office very disappointed as you can imagine, and also very determined. So later, kind of flash forward, I went up and started volunteering. I think I started up at the age of 15 to volunteer at veterinary clinics. Got turned down a lot because I was too young for work at the time. And a principal in the high school took pity on me, and his name was Richard Franklin. And it says a lot that I remembered his name. He actually called a local practitioner, Charles Scanlon, and asked if they had any work for me because at the high school they really didn’t have any pre-college program, let alone a pre-veterinary experience.

And the interesting part was the veterinarian said, “Yeah, tell me what name is.” And Richard told me that it was me. And Dr. Scanlon said, “Well, yeah, he’s been here about three times looking for work.” So he did hire me though, and I eventually became Max Scanlon’s kennel boy, a super-duper pooper scooper as we called it. And he became one of my first mentors helping me understand how to study, what kinds of things to study, how to work hard. He was a very much of a taskmaster. So between that and various jobs on farms like hauling hay and mowing lawns, I had a background that allowed me to begin to think more about college and begin to save towards college because we had no scholarships or anything at the time. So it was a learning experience very early on. And Dr. Scanlon was a very good mentor until I get into college. Ironically, about the time that I got into undergraduate at the University of Missouri, he developed severe allergies to animals and he had to go back as well, to do a different career path.

And what he did was enroll as a graduate student at the University of Missouri in microbiology. And so he was kind of in parallel going to develop his graduate career after his DVM, and I was just starting as an undergraduate and eventually began to work in his laboratory.

Wow. And so that’s how you got into the microbiology area as well. Well, tell me about the beginning of your veterinary career from that point working with Dr. Scanlon, going to veterinary school and then starting your career in veterinary medicine.

Yeah, I think while I was a pre-veterinary student working in the laboratory, not a kennel boy but a laboratory assistant, I was exposed as I got into veterinary school to both the veterinary school life but also other career aspects. And it started to change my thinking. I initially wanted to be a small animal practitioner, and during veterinary school became very much enamored with the aspect of large animal medicine and switched during my sophomore junior year to really a large animal focus, in particular dairy focus. So when I graduated from the University of Missouri in 1981, which was a long time ago, I wanted to go into a mixed animal practice, predominantly dairy. And I did that. I was able to get a job in Southeastern Pennsylvania. And my hero was based upon James Herriot, All Creatures Great and Small, like a lot of veterinarians in my generation.

So I began that career in the Rolling Hills of Pennsylvania, very much like the Yorkshire’s as a dairy vet and really enjoyed practice. I enjoyed the community aspect, helping animals, learning a lot in that first two years of that clinical experience. And I would never have traded that for the world as a great start to my career. Along the lines of that though, and one of the themes in my career and many people’s career is, life happens as you’re making plans. And so after a year, my son was born and I became a new father. And with that, I began to think about time spent with family and other aspects. I had a desire from that early research experience, maybe extend my education. So I decided to go back to graduate school and applied to a variety of programs across the country. One of those that looked at my application was Colorado State University, which had a combined residency in pathology and a PhD program.

And I remember distinctly sitting on the back porch of the farmhouse covered with manure from a call, and getting a call from Colorado State asking me about that Phi Zeta project that I’d done in veterinary school. And that really made a big difference in my application to graduate school. And as I’m driving out the driveway, John Denver’s song was ringing in my head after I took the job. Took the application and successfully applied to Rocky Mountain High, the song on the radio said he was literally 27 years old going to a place he had never been before. And that was me. I’d never visited Colorado. I know very little about it. It just sounded like a great program and it certainly was. So I drove out and went on to Colorado State for the residency and their PhD program.

Love that song, Rocky Mountain High by John Denver. So then tell me about what happened after that, walk me through the rest of your career up to this point.

Yeah, my new life was now as a pathology residence and a PhD student. And I was interested still in ruminants. I was very interested in the whole animal, so to speak, and the role of immunology and pathology and animal diseases. And there was a laboratory there headed by Dr. James DeMartini at CSU that was studying malignant and bacterial fever, and lentiviruses and sheep ovine, progressive pneumonia. And I joined his lab as a graduate student. This was 1983, ’84, and it was a really unique time in the world. I was sitting in the laboratory meeting with other graduate students when my advisor brought in an electron micrograph of a virus particle, and he said, “What is that from?” And we all immediately identified it as a lentivirus, a member of the retrovirus group. That is a virus that causes of course, chronic wasting in sheep with ovine progressive pneumonia.

He said, “No, that’s from the first AIDS patient from San Francisco.” And so literally the world changed overnight. The viruses that we were studying in the laboratory that veterinarians knew a lot about, and it had for many decades in a variety of animals were now causing a major epidemic worldwide. Unlike what we experienced with COVID, except this was the AIDS epidemic. And so from that and having my PhD switch to really focus on retroviruses, I was very fortunate to be recruited to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta by Dr. Fred Murphy who was heading the Viral Disease Division at the time. He was a veterinarian from Cornell and understood the value of veterinarians who had comparative knowledge in virology and pathogenesis. So that’s how I got my job at the CDC and spent three years there after my PhD, which really set up the rest of my career in studying viruses as causes of cancer and chronic diseases.

You were the Dean of UC Davis, what was that experience like for you?

Well, I was very fortunate in my career to come up through the ranks of studying One Health, One Medicine in that field of virology and was following the CDC career. I was recruited to Ohio State University who had a retrovirus center at the time, and spent 21 years at Ohio State before becoming Dean at UC Davis. And at Ohio State, it was a great time in my life. I had my family raised and most of my kids were schooled and raised in Columbus. And that really helps set the tone for establishing a larger research group, eventually developing a group that was recognized by the National Cancer Institute with a program project grant. But because I was very comparative, I switched to study in HTLV-I, which is a virus closely related to bovine leukemia virus. And continued that comparative career at Ohio State, rose up to the ranks, so to speak.

And during that time period, there was a lot of interest in me being a leader, not from me volunteering for leadership positions but people coming up to me and asking me, “Would you like to be the graduate studies’ coordinator? Would you like to be the department chair?” And so I began to in parallel develop a leadership career, one that was influenced by a variety of areas. We had resources to take leadership training at the university and through national organizations, as you mentioned, the AAVMC as well. And that really helped me have a parallel track essentially, both as a research scientist. A veterinarian who was involved in research across campus with a medical school and studying human retroviruses, but concurrently having the benefit of an environment that recognized your ability to lead people. And that was how I got recruited eventually to UC Davis in 2011.

And that experience as the dean of the number one veterinary school ranked in the nation and the world was a game changer for me. It really allowed me to continue to grow as a person, as a leader, but also being immersed in that environment was incredible. The breadth and depth of programs there in a variety of areas, from clinical to agriculture research, to diagnostic labs, to the power of a worldwide infectious disease program, global health, a One Health institute was really I was a kid in a candy shop. I enjoyed helping these programs, developed help growing the programs, leading them through strategic planning to where they’re at today. And also concurrently getting to know the value of veterinary schools and veterinary medicine for the health of the nation.

And that was solidified as a dean because I was able to see the benefit of supporting programs that did everything from diagnosed diseases in animals throughout the California and throughout the nation, to developing cutting edge research that pushed the envelope of knowledge in clinical trials, comparative oncology in a variety of fields. So I was very, very fortunate to be in that position and very, very grateful.

You’ve done so many different interesting things, when did you first feel like you were truly beginning to gain traction with your career? Was there ever a point when you felt that way?

Yeah, I think the point was probably in my postdoctoral period at the CDC, that was where I was developing as an independent research scientist. And it was pretty clear to me the value and the importance of how a veterinarian could contribute. I was the only veterinarian in the branch at the time, and I had a lot of people come up to me who were mostly MDs and epidemiologists and ask me, “What are you doing here?” And of course, as a comparative virologist, it was easy to say how we had knowledge in the veterinary field of these viruses and how important they were for both people and animals. So that traction began probably about the time that my laboratory was selected by the Food and Drug Administration to help screen the nation’s blood supply for these viruses. And so setting up the diagnostic test for HTLV-I, I got interested in the pathogenesis of that virus.

And I realized my passion was really to understand how viruses affect immunology and affect the body. And as I told my students throughout my career, “It’s really not about us. It’s really about thinking like the virus, how does the virus affect the body?” And then later developing the type of tools and skill sets to dissect that pathogenesis using molecular clones and other type of skills. So at CDC early on, and that really set the tone for my entire research career and then as I mentioned later, as a leader,

Well, most successful people have both some highs and some lows as they go through their career. Walk us through the highest high and the lowest low of your career.

Yeah, when I think of the highest high I think sort of as a culminating thing in about 2010, I had some recognition through research awards at the campus and some national awards, but I was elected as a inductee into the National Academy of Medicine. And it really made me reflect upon my life as I mentioned earlier, that early life as a kid growing up in the fields of Kansas and Missouri picking up frogs and insects. Just being interested in animals to being a first-generation college student, to now eventually finding yourself in the National Academy of Medicine. And it was an incredibly rewarding, and I was very, very grateful not only for the fact of recognition but the role of the National Academy as it is advisory to the nation in terms of health of the nation. I was very proud that I was a veterinarian contributing to that aspect and to be recognized for that. So that definitely was a high, but really represented a culmination of many years of hard work and teamwork and a variety of people that helped me along the way.

And when you were at a low point, what did you learn most from that experience?

Yeah, I think one of the low points in reflecting on that probably would’ve been in graduate school, during my PhD research we had found that lambs infected with the sheep virus developed a similar lesion as what was being observed in pediatric AIDS patients. And so we developed a lamb model of the disease, and the model was very effective at understanding the pathogenesis of how the cells in the body and the lung infected and caused a particular type of pathology in the lung of pediatric AIDS patients. So my graduate work was to develop the various virus strains, develop the model and we had everything set up. We had all of the animals that were infected with these viruses getting ready to study in various groups. And there was about 24 animals in that study and the barn burnt down. The entire project went up literally in smoke, all the animals died.

It was a heat lamp that got knocked over in the middle of the night that led to that fire. So it was devastating. It was devastating for me to see the animals that suffered and died. As a result of that, my project was obviously halted and we had to regroup within a short period of time if I was going to graduate on time. My funding was running out. And so I had a small family at the time and needed the things to go better than that. And so we started all over again. We went out and replaced those animals, basically set the experiment back up and within a few months we’re back on track. And what that taught me was resilience. I think all of us that go through life understand that there’s going to be a lot of things that go wrong, a lot of negative things that can happen.

And certainly having your entire PhD project burned down was one of those, but also learning that resilience to come back, roll up the sleeves and get back on track. I think that goes back and ties back to my early point in life where I almost died from encephalitis and was told I had a second chance. Well, here in graduate school I had to have a second chance to restart the project and get back going again.

Yeah, it’s a sad story but it did not deter you from beginning again and starting the project over. So that is a great story of resiliency, how you overcame that challenge. I’m curious, what has been the most surprising thing to you during your career in the veterinary profession?

Yeah, that’s a great question. In terms of that, I’d say when I first started out my career as I mentioned, trying to be James Herriot in a large animal practice, I guess I was not really understanding and I’m surprised of the trajectory of careers and how they don’t follow a straight line. All of our careers as we go through our careers in veterinary medicine often take different pathways depending on opportunity, depending on family circumstances, depending on your passion and interest. And I told students throughout my career to follow your passions because you don’t know where they’re going to take you and to be open to new ideas. And certainly that was true in my career because I was surprised. And looking back on it that I would ever have changed from wanting to be a clinical veterinarian in a dairy practice to eventually being a researcher and a leader, an administrative leader. So I think my biggest surprise was how my career has changed and how the profession has changed over time.

It’s so true though, I often do not see the trajectory being a straight line, like you said. It follows different twists and turns that are unexpected. But I love what you said about following your passions, because if you’re passionate about what you’re doing you’re going to enjoy your life much more. I’m curious, how have you seen the veterinary profession change over the years that you’ve been involved?

Yeah, and of course I’ve been around a while, so I have seen a lot of changes throughout my career. I think one of those was mentioned on one of your previous podcasts, and that is the recognition of pets as members of the family. I think that that has been a wonderful change for veterinary medicine, but also society. The recognition of the human-animal bond, both as a scientific evidence of that but also just as a society. And that was pointed out by Mark Cushing’s interview very, very well during your podcast. So that was a big change, and I think that that was gratifying to see and we still see that reflected throughout our profession in the small animal side. I think the other thing that really changed perhaps from a training perspective is the skill sets needed by veterinarians. The skill sets as in interpersonal skills and knowledge and training in aspects of the human interaction that are needed to be successful and the recognition of that.

I think back in the late ’70s and early ’80s when I was going into clinical practice, it was more by mentoring and undergoing experiences of how we interacted with the public, how we interviewed clients. There was not a scientific approach to it. Now, of course in education we teach the skill sets of communication. We teach business practices, we teach about innovation in veterinary medicine. And I think that’s a wonderful change in the way that we approach educating veterinarians. That’s really worldwide, but also reflects of the need and the recognition of those interpersonal skills. Of course, the big thing we’ve seen naturally is technology, and this changed over the decades that I’ve been in my career and has influenced in a variety of ways from increased improvements in imaging to now artificial intelligence. And I think there’s a lot of interest and a lot of questions as there always will be with new technologies of how do they fit in, how do they change our lives, how do they change our ability to do our jobs, get better and more efficient at them or use them effectively in education to our clinical work as veterinarians?

I think another change that I’ve seen is the whole aspect of veterinarians and as One Health practitioners throughout the world, the recognition of our contributions to advance the health of animals, people and the environment. I think the COVID epidemic was a vivid example to all of us of how we need to understand animals, sources of threats to us in our environment and veterinarians. And the role of One Health is very vital, I think, to the future. And has been recognized by the WHO and other international health groups as a vital part of approaching problems in our world. The other thing that’s changed over time, I think, which is very important, is a recognition of mental health and wellness as critical factors in the training of veterinarians, veterinary specialist. And this aspect, I think I saw dramatically in 10 years as a Dean at UC Davis, where we had limited campus support for mental health in the early 2000s. And that’s an area I knew that we needed to bolster.

And through philanthropy and other means, we’re able to hire new counselors, able to have new courses and wellbeing, be able to recognize, and of course this was a national movement and has continued to do so. And approaching a major problem in our profession, which is suicide and mental health and wellbeing which when it’s not paid attention to, can be devastating for people’s careers. So I think that’s a professional change and should be continued, obviously to be emphasized throughout the profession.

A lot of positive changes. I love the technology piece that you mentioned. I always enjoy going to the Veterinary Innovation Summit. I know that’s coming up again in August. And my son, he’s attending college and he’s studying computer science and he’s studying AI and he’s always calling and saying what problems need to be solved in the veterinary industry, because I’m interested in using my AI and figuring out how to solve problems. Well, then that leads me to my next question. What does your crystal ball say about the future of the veterinary profession?

Yeah, I think we understand that we face daunting challenges for the future across multiple segments of that contribution that veterinarians make. And I think concurrent with that are factors facing our entire world, such as climate change. We need to think about how do we feed a hungry world and the role of veterinarians in the food supply and in agriculture. And that ever-changing political and environmental change that threatens animal and humans and environmental health. So I think we really need to think about and adapt the profession to the needs of society as it relates to our health and the planet. So I think the use of technology, as you mentioned with AI to whole genome sequencing for diagnostics, to novel approaches, to health challenges that we’re all going to face, I think veterinarians are going to play a vital role in that as future leaders in everything from the human-animal bond, One Health practitioners to diagnosticians.

It was wonderful to see during the COVID epidemic, for example, the role of veterinary diagnostic labs in helping communities test for COVID not only in animals but in people. And that was an example of how they can rise up in the area of public health during a crisis. So we’re going to continue to see these challenges. I think right now, a vivid example of that is the disasters of wildfires. It’s occurring in Texas but we had to deal a lot in California with that. And that’s exacerbated by climate change and the warming of our world and the management of the environment. So veterinarians play a vital role in helping save animals, help people get back on their feet who are animal owners in that kind of situation. A good example of how that changed during the time I was Dean, is that when we started we were a disaster relief volunteer organization that was mostly driven by students and volunteers.

By the time I left, we had a new program called CVET which is funded by the state, who regularly trained up and down California with a variety of groups, CVMA and other partners to advance trained people and volunteers in disaster awareness and helping animals in disasters, much like the Oiled Wildlife Care Network that was previously established. And it was recognition of donors as well as state senators that we were able to get funding for that program.

Well, I would love for you to share with our listeners about the kinds of projects that you’re up to today.

Now, thank you. Yeah, it’s been fun. I retired as Dean from UC Davis in 2022, and I’m now consulting with a variety of places across the country. Turns out that there is a certain value in helping other deans get started, and so I’ve been consulting with various deans across the country, especially those that are new deans. And as we know with the expansion of veterinary schools, there’s a need there for leadership training to help with faculty recruitment and retention, to all the things we learn as deans but maybe don’t necessarily have a particular workshop that they can go to. So I’ve been consulting across the country. Academic reviews, helping to evaluate colleges or programs in veterinary medicine and advise based upon my previous experiences. The other aspect is being able to help on the innovation side with companies that develop animal products. I’m working with a stem cell company, Galant Therapeutics in San Diego, which developed a stem cell therapy, an off-the-shelf uterine-derived stem cells from a concept that was developed at UC Davis to treat feline gingivostomatitis. A devastating disease of cats that stem cells have a unique role in.

And that’s fun because it really ties back into the innovation entrepreneurship side that I helped develop at UC Davis to help faculty with ideas get them to market. And so I’ve been doing consulting there as well. The other is as a volunteer with the AVMA, I’m representing the pathologist on the Veterinary Specialist Organizing Committee. That’s a group formed by the AVMA to help understand the needs of specialists. As you know, we have many specialists in our profession, and it’s been really fun to work with that committee to understand the future needs of helping grow that important part of our workforce. So we are in the process of a variety of projects through that volunteer work. I’m also volunteering with the American College of Veterinary Microbiology as well. The other and final project is writing a book. I have a book commissioned related to veterinary medicine in the area of One Health. So it’s been fun.

Do you have a book title yet?

We do. It’s tentatively called basically, Earth Doesn’t Belong to Us We belong to the Earth. And it’s basically an indigenous phrase used to show your appreciation for the natural environment, that instead of thinking that we own something about Earth is that we really are gifted Earth and we need to take care of it.

Well, you touched on this a little bit and I know you wanted to talk more about it, the topic of recruiting future veterinary educators. And you mentioned to me before we started this podcast that this is parallel to the workforce issues related to veterinarians and other staff. So let’s talk more about that, what are you seeing there?

Yeah, you’re very familiar with this because you’re part of your role is I know as a veterinary recruiter and helping people recruit to the profession. So we are very grateful for that in the job that you do there. What we are focused on, and this is really work coming out of the Veterinary Specialist Organization Committee of the AVMA, is to address the emerging need for veterinary educators to meet the need of the workforce. It’s been well recognized that the veterinary workforce needed to be expanded in the last decade. And currently there’s a lot of concern about veterinary services. There’s a lot of debate about data related to that, but it’s clear that there are a number of veterinary schools starting up as many as 10 to 12 over the next decade. This’ll increase the need for veterinary educators. These are both in a traditional role as what you would think in an academic setting, but also in the new distributed models.

These are the educational institutions that really rely upon outside clinics for their fourth year or their last years of clinical education. So because of that, there is a pressing need. This is expanded or exacerbated by the expansion and the need in the field to deploy that. So what we’re really involved in is thinking about what are the factors? Do we understand the factors of why somebody does not want to remain in academia or not want to go into academia? Part of it is compensation. Academics typically make less money sometimes as specialists than in private practice. And so there are a variety of models out there for compensation that need to be looked at to help make them more competitive, to allow them to make the living that other specialists have but remain in an academic setting. So there’s a variety of things important there. We know that compensation isn’t the only answer because there are a variety of benefits that are intrinsic to be in an educator.

Love of teaching is one of them, the role of education in helping the next generation of the future. So there are other intrinsic factors we need to consider also. But getting back into other factors, we need to understand what are the mental health stresses and pressures on academics. We found that a lot of professions in COVID where people that were trying to raise families, that were educators had a tough time balancing that act between family care and also concurrently doing their job as educators. And this is something that needs to be addressed in a holistic manner to help for their mental health and well-being to child care. And there’s a variety of ways that universities and organizations are trying to approach that. But also we need to think about the pipeline, the early recruitment of students right from the beginning of their careers in veterinary medicine to allow them to understand the various ways specialists are trained, the various contributions, the various benefits of being a specialist so that they’re thinking about that during their DVM curriculum.

And so I think there’s a variety of ways to do that, and we have good models out there. The Veterinary Scholars program was started a number of years ago with a very small number of institutions to allow veterinary students to be exposed to research. Now that’s grown into a meeting annually of seven to 800 people sponsored by places like NIH and major companies to help foster that area of veterinarians in research. We also have efforts by the AAVMC, the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges to help foster and understand the role of veterinary educators. They have an Academy of Veterinary educators. These are all individual or collective efforts that are going to pay off, but we need partnerships. I’m working through that committee at the AVMA, but clearly as I mentioned, the AAVMC. But there’s new groups being formed as well, such as a group that is a consortium of those in the distributed model to understand how they can best deliver the educational model.

So all of these groups, in addition to the individual specialty colleges are going to have to come together. So we feel that that’s a role for these partnerships to come together, think about new models, think about lobbying efforts with government to help understand the role of specialists in veterinary education, to loan forgiveness programs as we have in a limited way to help veterinarians pay off their loans and stay within the profession, and hopefully increase the workforce towards veterinary educators. So these are all very important topics, and I’m having a lot of fun with my colleagues around the country to think about how we approach that problem.

Well, it’s important work, and so good to see all the things that are being done in all the groups that you mentioned that are coming together. I’m curious, what advice would you give the younger version of yourself?

Yeah, I think that’s a great question. If you could go back and try to, I guess, make your younger self-aware, I think part of my advice would be similar to what I just talked about in terms of being able to really think about the broader aspects and be flexible. But also think about how could you develop skills earlier to help you, for example, emotional intelligence. I learned about emotional intelligence during leadership training later on in my career, and I think I could have benefited from it much earlier. That’s the aspect of listening, being compassionate, being a better listener for problem solving. I think that would’ve helped me in practice when I was first in practice as a young veterinarian, graduating at the age of 25 and not having a lot of those skill sets. So I think the advice would be to really develop those interpersonal skills, to enhance your technical skills and make you really more effective in your job.

And what message or principle do you wish you could teach everyone else?

That’s a great question. Sort of like that adage, if I could teach the world. Well, part of it I think goes back into the principles of the valuable role. When I talk to groups that are not veterinarians that I talk to, biomedical scientists or I talk to the public, for example, I try to educate them on the role and the interrelated role that veterinarians play in advancing the health of animals, the people and the environment. So I think if I could teach anything, it would be our interconnected nature. The value of transdisciplinary work, and it goes from everything from our households. The area of comparative oncology, for example, understands that our pets often have the same cancers as we do. They share our environment and educating the public on that, the human-animal bond to aspects of our food supply and the value of working together.

We can’t do this alone. It really does take a village of disciplines to solve problems. And I think in today’s world with our complex problems from climate change to understanding the food supply, we need all hands on deck. And we also need to work across disciplines. So teaching people to work together, I think would be an aspect that I would love to teach. I’m also involved in a group of people that are around academics, a university network of One Health educators who are trying to form a network to work together across universities. Again, to tackle tough problems, global problems such as major pandemics but also things like our environment, things that are related to that holistic aspect. So to teach the world to work together in a One Health fashion, I guess to summarize.

Do you have a key book in your life that has impacted you the most?

Great question. What comes to mind, I think for me is the Team of Rivals, which the subtitle is The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. It’s by Doris Kearns Goodwin. It’s a great book. It’s received a lot of recognition and I look at it as a leadership book. It’s reflecting and documenting after Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, how the country was in great turmoil, not unlike our country today. And with questions that were basic of how the democracy was going forward, what Lincoln did was masterful. He brought together people with talent and the rivals that were involved often wanted his job, but they had skill sets that the nation needed. And his cabinet that he formed included some really cantankerous people but were very talented. And how he managed to listen to those people, understand their motives and desires but for the benefit of the greater good, which was the country. And I think that book Team of Rivals, it really explains that very well, but it has applications to anybody that becomes a leader.

My oldest daughter shares Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.

Oh, fantastic.

Well, you’ve got the mic. What is one thing that you want to share with the listeners of the People of Animal Health Podcast before you drop the mic today, Michael?

Well, I think we learned a painful lesson in our world during the COVID pandemic. We faced unprecedented challenge. It disrupted everything from the way we work, to the way our societies approach and the political aftermath of that. So I think one thing that I would again go back to is how this is kind of an inflection point for the world in terms of that approach. There’s been a major effort by four international health organizations to emphasize collaboration and commitment across the country, to prioritize and implement One Health policies and plans and strategies. And this effort is a reflection of the dire need to work together for the health of our planet. And I think this inflection point really gives me a pause, but also hope that we’re starting to be aware that we have a very small planet. And we all play a role in the health of that planet, and we need to recognize that.

So I guess I would drop the mic by saying we all have a role in advancing the health of animals, people, the planet, the ecosystems, biodiversity that we live in. And I think veterinarians are uniquely positioned to contribute to that.

Well, thank you so much, Michael, for being here with me today. I enjoyed our conversation.

Thank you very much.