BRP Summary Report

College of Veterinary Medicine

Blue Ribbon Panel
Report to Provost and Senior Vice President Sullivan,
Senior Vice President Frank Cerra, and
Senior Vice President Robert Jones

October 1, 2010

Introduction
The University of Minnesota has been engaged in the “Transforming the U” initiative which is an ongoing strategic positioning process, since the fall of 2004. Phase 1 of this process began by developing concepts, vision, and a strategic direction for the University. Phase 2, which followed was the implementation of the recommendations following the conclusion of 36 task force reports. Now as part of Phase 3, the University is focusing on financing the future while building on the progress made to date. As part of this ongoing process the Provost and the Senior Vice Presidents for Health Sciences and System Academic Administration have asked each collegiate unit to establish a “Blue Ribbon Panel” to make recommendations to the dean for areas of continued and new investment as well as areas for cost reductions. Specifically the “Blue Ribbon Panel” was asked to address:

1)What programs and areas must be strengthened or expanded?
2)What programs must be maintained at current or reduced levels of support?
3)What programs and areas should continue, but be substantially reduced or consolidated?
4)What programs should be discontinued or eliminated?
5)How can academic programs and areas better leverage existing human capital resources, including rationalizing teaching loads; sharing new more energetic curriculum; consolidation; better use of classrooms and laboratories; and the development of new academic programs

The Provost and Senior Vice Presidents asked that “Blue Ribbon Panels” be established to solicit broad participation across the faculty, staff, students and external stakeholders. The intent was to go beyond only cutting budgets, and to also look for new investments and new collaborative opportunities that could yield new revenue streams or shared savings.

The College of Veterinary Medicine is highly ranked nationally and has many excellent programs that position the College as a national leader. The veterinary college has long been known for its strong veterinary public health, infectious disease and food animal programs and its busy teaching hospital. The College’s graduate programs were ranked highly in a recent report from the National Research Council (NRC). The College is also known for its unique admissions process that includes selection for behavioral traits that predict success in the profession in addition to academic ability, and its emphasis on professional development while our students are in the curriculum. The strength of our programs and our highly regarded admissions process continue to yield one of the largest applicant pools in the nation for veterinary colleges. The addition of a world class equine center has strengthened this program, greatly enhancing its national profile. The veterinary college has also emphasized partnerships and collaborations both inside and outside the University and this has enhanced our abilities in global food security, food animal disease control, comparative medicine and international emerging infectious diseases.
Despite these many successes, the last biennium was financially challenging for the College of Veterinary Medicine. The CVM experienced $2.8M in funding reductions/internal reallocations from the FY09 baseline, including a 12.4% reduction in O&M and 11.5% reduction in State Specials. In addition to the state funding reductions, the recession has had a major impact on the external clinical revenues in our large service units (Veterinary Medical Center and Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory), putting further pressure on the college’s budgets.

The college is facing structural deficit issues, and is projecting a budget deficit of close to $2M in FY11. The college has taken action to generate new revenues through an increase in the professional DVM program class size, raising tuition rates, offering new undergraduate and graduate courses, and increasing research and external sales revenues. Faculty and staff position reductions and other cost reductions have been required to offset the funding cuts, increasing compensation and other areas of cost growth. The expected reductions in state funding for higher education in the next biennium will require additional actions to preserve the financial well-being of the college. It was vitally important to the success of the CVM that the Blue Ribbon Panel and its subcommittees develop appropriate, achievable and focused goals and strategies to address the future financial planning and to have an informed, balanced approach to financing the College for the next two years and beyond.

Another challenge the college is faced with is rising student debt load. CVM has raised tuition rates an average 7.1% per year for the past seven years. Based on FY09 comparative data, UMN CVM ranked 6th of 28 (3rd highest public university) schools for resident tuition and 5th of 28th for non-resident tuition. CVM students graduated with an average debt load of $162,921, with national starting salaries averaging $66,000. The college cannot continue to increase tuition rates as we have to replace the lost state support without seriously jeopardizing the success of our graduates and long term viability of the DVM program.

These challenges, and the resulting self-assessment that was conducted in our Blue Ribbon Panel process, offers the college an opportunity to change the way we carry out collegiate programs and processes, and come through this period a stronger and more focused organization. Faculty and staff from around the college have come together to dialog about our activities, priorities, and strategies to achieve goals. The process has served to inform all parts of the College about the financial challenges that lie ahead and the need to work together on solutions.
The college was in a better position to respond to the Blue Ribbon Panel charge as a result of extensive work on the CVM’s strategic plan during the 2008-2009 timeframe. The plan was developed with significant faculty input and focused on our teaching, research, and service missions. Using a strategy mapping process, we developed collegiate goals, strategies, sub-strategies, and projects which are aligned with our tripartite mission. This strategic plan provided the roadmap for discussions on what is core to the CVM mission and where our areas of strength and opportunity lay. The mission of the College as identified in the collegiate strategic plan is to “Improve the health of animals and people by educating current and future veterinarians and biomedical scientists, discovering and disseminating new knowledge and skills and providing innovative veterinary services”. The full strategic plan is included in appendix A for reference. The collegiate strategic plan is also supported by individual unit (academic departments and centers) strategic plans. The collegiate strategic plan and that of the individual units build off the Academic Health Centers key priorities including the biomedical corridors of discovery. In addition, the collegiate strategic plan addressed issues identified in the 2006 Foresight Project report from the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC). Among these recommendations were the need for veterinary colleges in North America to look for opportunities to reduce expenses through sharing courses and facilities such as food animal centers of excellence, and the need to address important workforce shortages in areas such as public health and food safety. The North American Veterinary Medical Education Consortium (NAVMEC) was launched in 2009 to implement the recommendations of the Foresight Report and to ensure that veterinary medical education meets the needs of our changing society. Spearheaded by the AAVMC, NAVMEC is a comprehensive effort that takes into account educational models, accreditation, and licensing with the goal to create a workforce of next generation veterinarians who are ready to address some of society's greatest needs. As a key foundational concept, NAVMEC has identified core or foundational competencies needed by all veterinary graduates that include multi-species clinical expertise, public health/one health awareness, and many non technical competencies. The CVM is actively addressing these core competencies identified by our profession and positioning our graduates for success in their careers through our focus on interpersonal skills, our busy clinical and diagnostic services, our unique food animal teaching farm models and one of the best veterinary public health programs in the nation. The CVM’s proactive position on these national issues is a result of our strategic planning process.

The Blue Ribbon process was necessary for the CVM to determine how to finance its future and maintain its strategic advantage. The CVM Blue Ribbon Panel and its subcommittees were asked to refer to the collegiate strategic plan in their deliberations so that they could identify, inform and recommend to the dean where continued and new investments should be made, identify where new revenue can be generated including leveraging of multiple sources of revenue, combined with cost reductions for non-essential, non-critical programs or functions presently in place.

The following report describes the “Blue Ribbon” process and recommendations to date, including results of the final consultative process.

CVM Blue Ribbon Panel Process

After receipt of Provost Sullivan’s request for colleges/schools to conduct a Blue Ribbon evaluation of current programs and operations, the CVM Administrative Council (AC) discussed the best way to approach the assessment. In previous years, the college addressed the need for budget reduction on a unit by unit basis. Prorated reduction targets were given to each department, center, and administrative unit. The chairs and directors then needed to identify cuts to meet the targets. While the CVM successfully met the budget targets, it was not perceived to be a strategic approach that would strengthen the college for the long term.

After consultation with the CVM Faculty Council (FC), the decision was made to form a Blue Ribbon Panel (BRP), consisting of the members of the Administrative Council and the Faculty Council. It was also decided to use a subcommittee structure, with membership coming from administration, faculty and staff, similar to what had been recently done for the CVM strategic planning process. Subcommittees were established along mission lines, including Education, Research, and Service, with a fourth group focusing on Operational Efficiencies that support all parts of the mission. The mission based structure was selected in order to focus the improvement opportunities at a collegiate level, where decisions could be better aligned with the CVM strategic plan. Subcommittee leads, made up of members of the Administrative Council, were identified and the process was kicked off in February, 2010. Subcommittee members (35 faculty, 15 staff, and 1 student) were chosen to represent a cross section of faculty and staff from across the college. Budget improvement targets were given to each subcommittee to provide representative goals for generation of additional revenues or cost reductions for collegiate missions and operations.

Subcommittee membership was established as follows:

Education:

Dr. Laura Molgaard, Associate Dean (co-lead)
Dr. Mark Rutherford, Associate Dean (co-lead)
Ms. Megan Bandrick, Graduate Student
Dr. Jeff Bender, Veterinary Population Medicine Faculty
Dr. David Brown, Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences Faculty
Dr. Julie Churchill, Veterinary Clinical Sciences Faculty
Ms. Alicia Johnson, Staff
Dr. Jim Mickelson, Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences Faculty
Dr. Tom Molitor, Veterinary Population Medicine Chair
Mr. Andre Nault, Staff
Ms. Karen Nelson, Staff
Dr. Peggy Root Kustriz, Assistant Dean
Dr. Sri Sreevatsan, Veterinary Population Medicine Faculty
Dr. Sheila Torres, Veterinary Clinical Sciences Faculty

Research:

Dr. Sriram Rao, Associate Dean (lead)
Dr. Mike Conzemius, Veterinary Clinical Sciences Faculty
Dr. Scott Dee, Veterinary Population Medicine Faculty
Dr. Dick Isaacson, Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences Faculty
Ms. Karin Matchett, Staff
Dr. Jaime Modiano, Veterinary Clinical Sciences Faculty
Dr. Mike Murtaugh, Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences Faculty
Dr. Ned Patterson, Veterinary Clinical Sciences Faculty
Dr. Stephanie Valberg, Veterinary Population Medicine Faculty
Dr. Bruce Walcheck, Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences Faculty
Dr. Scott Wells, Veterinary Population Medicine Faculty

Service:

Dr. Jim Collins, VDL Director (co-lead)
Dr. David Lee, VMC Director (co-lead),
Dr. Rebecca Davies, Veterinary Population Medicine Faculty
Dr. Sagar Goyal, Veterinary Population Medicine Faculty
Dr. Bob Hardy, Veterinary Clinical Sciences Faculty
Dr. Robert Novo, Veterinary Clinical Sciences Faculty
Dr. Jerry Torrison, Veterinary Population Medicine Faculty
Dr. Micky Trent, Veterinary Population Medicine Faculty
Dr. Christie Ward, Veterinary Population Medicine Faculty
Dr. Robert Washabau, Veterinary Clinical Sciences Chair Operational Efficiencies:
Dr. Trevor Ames, Dean (co-lead)
Ms. Paula Buchner, COO/CFO (co-lead)
Dr. Al Beitz, Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences Chair
Ms. Deb Benda, Staff
Ms. Pat Berzins, Staff
Ms. Barbara Creswell, Staff
Dr. Morgan Hennessey, National Center for Food Protection & Defense Faculty
Ms. Lisa Hubinger, Staff
Ms. Laura Larson, Staff
Mr. Frank Liu, Staff
Dr. Laura Molgaard, Associate Dean
Dr. Julia Ponder, Veterinary Population Medicine Faculty
Ms. Nancy Rush, Staff
Ms. Sharon Staton, Staff
Ms. Linda Valeri, Staff
Ms. Kersten Warren, Staff

A consultant was retained to facilitate the process. She has extensive experience with transformational change and worked with the MN Extension Office during their restructuring. The consultant was made available to the subcommittees, and facilitated two retreats with the Blue Ribbon Panel.

The subcommittees each met between March and August, 2010. There were retreats with the BRP (Administrative Council and Faculty Council) held in May and July, 2010 for the subcommittees to report on the processes they were using, their ideas, any obstacles they were encountering or anticipating in implementation of recommendations, and areas that needed integration between the subcommittees. The retreats also focused on how to implement transformational change in an organization.

The subcommittees all gathered data on current activities, costs, and revenues associated with their areas of focus. Some examples of data gathering and analysis:

• ICR rates and distribution
• Faculty salary savings
• Research spending categories
• Research funding by agency/sponsor
• University cost pool expenditures
• Current CVM investments
• O&M and tuition distributions
• Faculty effort allocations for teaching and research
• Collegiate center support
• Sources of funding for salaries
• Service level volumes, staffing, and financial performance
• Administrative effort (FTE) by activity
• Processes requiring extensive manual effort, duplication, or handoffs between units
• Other cost cutting ideas

The subcommittees involved existing standing committees as subject experts in their discussions, including the Research Committee, the Graduate Program Advisory Committees (PAC’s), the Committee on Curriculum and Educational Policy (CCEP), CVM Educational Leadership group, VMC Hospital Management Team (HMT), and the VMC Leadership Team. Other individuals were consulted by the subcommittees on an as needed basis to provide data or input.

The CVM Dean’s external Advisory Council was consulted twice during the process to determine their needs from the college and concerns about budgetary reductions, and feedback was also received on the final report recommendations. The Council is made up of representatives from the major stakeholder groups for the college, including leadership of the Minnesota Veterinary Medical Association, the Animal Humane Society, the Minnesota Commissioner of Agriculture, the State Veterinary Epidemiologist, the State Veterinarian and Executive Director of the Board of Animal Health, the DNR wildlife health program coordinator and representation from all the major animal agricultural commodity groups. The college provides valuable research, diagnostic and clinical services to many of these organizations in addition to providing trained veterinarians and researchers to work in the profession.

The CVM Faculty Council has been involved at various stages in the process. In addition to their role on the Blue Ribbon Panel, several FC members were part of the subcommittees. In quarterly AC/FC meetings, the BRP process was discussed. Finally, the Dean met with the FC several times during the process to address their questions and concerns. The Faculty Council also served to encourage CVM faculty participation and feedback during the consultation process.

During the past nine months, the Dean has had multiple communications about the Blue Ribbon Process, including discussions at faculty meetings, departmental meetings, external Advisory Council meetings, and several written communications to the college’s faculty, staff, and students.

A summary report of subcommittee that detailed recommendations was sent to CVM faculty, staff, students, and the external Advisory Council in early September. A series of nine (9) consultation meetings were held to present the recommendations and have dialog with the participants. The meetings included faculty, staff and students.
A confidential, electronic survey was also sent out to faculty, staff, students and the dean’s external Advisory Council to get feedback on the process and specific recommendations. The response rate was 23.8% (without students), and represented all areas of the college. The responses indicated 63% agreement with the recommendations, with another 20% having a neutral response. The feedback also provided valuable suggestions for other opportunities for revenue generation or cost reduction. The feedback is summarized later in the report.

Recommendations:
Utilizing the information gathered, the subcommittees identified various opportunities for revenue generation or cost reduction. After discussion and prioritization of ideas, the following recommendations were submitted to the Blue Ribbon Panel by the four subcommittees. While further analysis and detailed implementation planning needs to be completed on many items, the recommendations provide a good roadmap for future action.
 

Areas to Strengthen - Research

• The CVM serves as the critical link at the convergence of animal health, public health, and the environment. The CVM Strategic Plan identified three research signature program areas: Emerging & Zoonotic Diseases (detection of new and emerging infectious diseases; investigate relationships between pathogens, their hosts, and the environment; and develop measures for disease prevention and control), Population Systems (promote health of livestock, wildlife, humans and the environment, and address the critical nodes where they intersect with one another and with the food system), and Comparative Medicine (develop and study animal models of human disease in the areas of oncology, inflammatory and chronic diseases, and molecular and genetic models of disease). CVM will grow research in these areas through the submission and award of additional research grants, contracts, and cooperative agreements, and through partnerships with industry and donors interested in funding research in these areas. Additional investments must be made in new research faculty, laboratory, surgery and BSL3 laboratory and animal containment facilities, seed grants, and core research support (bioinformatics, statistical support, imaging, genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics).

• To fund these additional investments, there will be increased emphasis on obtaining grants with higher indirect cost recovery and faculty salary support funding. To increase the grant award success rate, we need to strengthen processes of faculty mentoring, proposal peer review, and grant writing, as well as providing additional research support resources.

• Pursue opportunities in technology commercialization to generate royalties and licensing income.

• Increased collaboration with other researchers across the AHC, CSE, CFANS, CBS and other areas within the university to identify and pursue new grant opportunities. This collaboration could be further strengthened through use of joint faculty hires.

• Leadership or involvement in multi-institutional grants to pursue larger and more impactful research opportunities with NIH and USDA. Investments in infrastructure support would be needed to facilitate the more complex collaborative relationships.

• Growth in the CVM Clinical Investigation Center to facilitate veterinary clinical and translational research studies that may lead to new drugs, devices, procedures and treatments.

Areas to strengthen – Education

• DVM program should be strengthened through a comprehensive curricular review and revision that focuses on vertical and horizontal integration, problem solving, critical thinking and application of information to develop clinical competency. Curriculum.

• Teaching infrastructure, including modernized lecture/active learning teaching rooms and laboratories, teaching support for effective curriculum delivery, new teaching tools and technologies.

• The college will evaluate opportunities for new sources of teaching revenues, including undergraduate and graduate courses, veterinary continuing education, and new certificate programs.

• Additional endowment funding for teaching initiatives, scholarships and fellowships will be pursued.

Areas to strengthen - Service

• There were several areas identified for potential revenue growth in the Veterinary Medical Center and Diagnostic Laboratory based on an analysis of the collegiate and unit strategic plans, market demand, potential funding sources and profitability. Detailed implementation planning is in process.

• Investment in facilities, equipment and technology to increase efficiencies, provide higher quality of service.

• Areas to strengthen – Organizational Capabilities

• The subcommittees recommended changes in culture and performance measurement, including increased expectations for faculty revenue generation through tuition, service incomes, research salary savings and ICR’s.

• Financial measurement system improvements to better capture revenues and costs of various activities for decision making and performance measurement.

• CVM’s branding and relationships with external stakeholders – donors, alumni, industry and others – through focus on communications and engagement.

• Internal administrative knowledge and capabilities associated with grants management, human resources, and e-learning teaching support.

• Establishment of processes to identify, evaluate, and make decisions on activities that can be further reduced or eliminated.

Areas to maintain - Education

• Science-based veterinary educational programs, including the professional Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM), Comparative & Molecular Biosciences and Veterinary Medicine MS and PhD programs, and dual degree DVM/Masters of Public Health (MPH), to prepare students for leadership, life-long learning, and successful careers. Programs to train the next generation of clinical scholars and veterinary scientists for careers in basic, applied, and translational medicine research.

• Programs for the professional development of non-degree seeking interns, residents and post-doctoral fellows and trainees.

• Recruitment and selection of students with attributes that contribute to the success of the profession and can succeed in a curriculum that fosters problem solving and experiential education.

• Programs in leadership training, interpersonal skills, communication skills, and inter- professional education with other health science professional students.

• DVM professional program will be maintained at the current level of 100 students due to the capacity constraints of our classrooms and teaching labs. We will evaluate bringing in more transfer students into open slots in the second and third years of the curriculum, as well as continuing our affiliations with Caribbean veterinary universities to provide clinical training opportunities for their students.

• Areas to maintain - Research

• Seed grants to support research projects in the three signature programs through an internal competitive process. This investment is considered critical to maintain the focus on the programs.

Areas to maintain - Service

• Within the service units, existing services were evaluated for opportunities to increase profitability through changes in pricing and cost reductions.

• Use of cross-trained “float” staff model to provide flexible staffing for variations in caseload throughout the Veterinary Medical Center and the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab.

• Areas to reduce or eliminate

• The college spends a significant amount on teaching costs. During the past several years, the college has reduced expenditures though collaborations with dairy and swine farms to move teaching activities off campus. The college is pursuing additional collaborations with outside organizations for both large and small animal teaching opportunities. In addition, opportunities may exist to share course content with other colleges of veterinary medicine, allowing the UMN CVM to reduce teaching efforts in some areas.

• The Veterinary Medical Center and Diagnostic Lab have identified some service areas to be outsourced, reduced or eliminated due to low strategic value and low profitability. Faculty and staff positions have been reduced in many areas. Discounts to support certain groups are being reduced or eliminated. In addition, the VMC is evaluating technologies that will improve efficiencies and reduce cost.

• The college will review all CVM centers to evaluate future need, goals, and appropriate funding model. Inactive centers, or those with no clear future potential, will be eliminated.

• The College needs to limit its investment in research grants that do not provide indirect cost recovery or salary savings. While some of these grants will always be necessary to fulfill our land grant mission, a balanced portfolio is needed where a greater percentage of grants are submitted that provide resources to offset faculty and collegiate expenses.

• Reduce faculty effort in non-productive areas or where allocated effort exceeds that required to perform the mission.

• The College needs to carefully evaluate departmental and unit level support functions for service like facilities, human resources etc and eliminate those which could more efficiently and effectively be conducted at the central collegiate level. The college will evaluate other administrative structures in place within the University and elsewhere to determine the most efficient customer service model.

• The college spends 13.8% of its budget on University overhead cost pools. That percentage has grown since implementation of the budget model in FY07, and is a driver to raising tuition and service fees. Subcommittees recommended reductions in cost pools, or the ability to outsource some services to achieve cost savings.

• Expenditures on various activities have been reduced, including printed communications, events, travel, consulting, and other discretionary costs.

Ways to leverage existing resources

• The educational subcommittee discussed how to use existing course content and apply to new category of learners, including students from other colleges of veterinary medicine, practitioners, industry or regulatory personnel. Utilize recently installed lecture capture capability for distance education opportunities.

• Achieve greater efficiencies in clinical teaching rotations through scheduling changes.

• Improve success rate of grant submissions through faculty support in grant writing, mentoring, and proposal review.

• Use of existing laboratory facilities to provide spaces for more collaborative research.

• In order to achieve greater efficiencies by changing the way some administrative services are provided, the college may benefit from a different model of shared resources both inside and outside the college.

Consultation Feedback

The report and feedback survey were distributed to 140 faculty, 487 staff, 483 students, and 33 external stakeholders. There were 181 respondents, with a 15.8% response rate (23.8% without students). Responses were well distributed across the demographic groups. The faculty response rate was 40.7%. Of all respondents, 50% said they had some amount or quite a bit of knowledge of the Blue Ribbon process. Sixty-one (61%) responded that they believe the subcommittees involved the right people in the process, but there were suggestions for additional participants in future discussions.

Regarding specific subcommittee recommendations, 63% strongly or somewhat agreed with the recommendations, with 17% somewhat or strongly disagreed and 20% neither agreeing nor disagreeing. Specific feedback was received on concerns with individual recommendations that will be used as the college goes through more detailed implementation planning and decision making.

Concern was raised by faculty, staff, and students about the impact of expecting all to do more with less. Increased expectations, particularly for faculty, must be reasonable and integrated in all parts of the mission.

Summary

The Blue Ribbon Process has required a large time commitment from more than 50 faculty and staff personnel on the subcommittees, plus other members of the Faculty Council, Administrative Council, CVM committees, and individuals participating in subcommittee deliberations. All involved in the process viewed the challenge as daunting. Looking at the CVM through the mission orientation brought people together from different departments, centers, and administrative units. Integration of ideas across the subcommittees was particularly challenging. Data to answer the specific questions asked by the subcommittees was often hard to come by.

But despite the difficulties, the process generated good discussion on how the college is financially structured, issues with how we currently operate, and some out-of-the-box ideas of how we could do things differently. A great deal of learning occurred for the participants, with identification of some creative, non-traditional ideas on revenue generation and cost reduction. Through the cross-college focus on the education, research and service missions, we were able to look at changes in a more strategic manner than had been done before with unit by unit responses to targeted budget reductions. The process should yield good results for addressing the current fiscal challenges, plus provide a platform for additional improvement actions in the future.

Next Steps

The college will continue to evaluate the recommendations from the Blue Ribbon process, do more detailed implementation planning and make final decisions prior to July 1, 2011. Many actions will be targeted for implementation by July 1, 2011, but some may require longer time frames. There may be required investments to implement some actions, which will be addressed in collegiate budgetary discussions.

In addition, the college will be implementing a process to evaluate ideas from across the CVM on activities or expenses that should be discontinued to save time and money. This “what not to do” initiative will focus on identification, evaluation, and decision making on ideas from faculty, staff and students.

APPENDIX A

2009-2014 Strategic Plan

Vision
The College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) serves as the critical link at the convergence of animal health, public health, and the environment. Firm boundaries do not exist between animals, humans, and the environment, and this interconnection will be an ongoing challenge as we strive to protect all species within a global system. We can’t predict all the diseases or problems of tomorrow, but we can train the best and brightest to think critically to anticipate and respond to issues that create solutions in the best interests of society. These leaders continually pave the way to healthier people, animals, and environment.

The College will select students who can succeed in a curriculum that fosters problem solving and experiential education. We will invest in research that will push our scientists to seek solutions to the multifaceted issues of the day by focusing on the College’s core scientific areas of infectious disease, populations systems, and comparative medicine. We will be of service to people, animals, and the environment by understanding the complexity of these problems while providing the best science, diagnostic tools, proactive disease surveillance, advanced therapeutic options, and research-based approaches to problems.

The College will expand its impact by capitalizing on the synergies within our organization and successfully utilizing all the resources available through collaboration within the University of Minnesota and partnerships with our key stakeholders. We will accomplish all of this through the knowledge, innovation, dedication, and compassion of our talented faculty, staff, and students.
 

Mission
To improve the health of animals and people by discovering and disseminating new knowledge and skills, educating current and future veterinarians and biomedical scientists, and providing innovative veterinary services.

Values
Science and knowledge.
We are first and foremost about the discovery, integration, and application of new knowledge.

Teaching and learning.
We educate undergraduate, graduate, and professional students and veterinarians by delivering the most up-to-date scientific information in effective ways, encouraging leadership, facilitating experiential learning, and using technology to enhance the learning process.

People.
We respect and support our colleagues; we are dedicated to developing skills, expertise, and diversity.

Engagement.
We proactively develop and support partnerships with individuals and organizations that share our scientific, professional, educational, and policy interests.

Accountability.
We hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards; we take responsibility for our actions in all facets of our work; we strive continuously to enhance our programs and services; we measure our effectiveness; and we report on our progress.

Leadership.
We lead by influencing and contributing to science, animal welfare, food animal agriculture, the veterinary profession, animal health, and public health.
 

Goals
Goal 1: Discovering and disseminating new knowledge to improve health and well-being at the interface of animals, humans, and the environment

• One Medicine, One Science: Develop the concept of one health at the interface of animals, humans, and the environment
• Research Culture: Stimulate a research culture • that energizes faculty leaders, develops core research facilities, and recruits, retains, trains, and rewards outstanding faculty and staff
• Signature Program in Emerging and Zoonotic Diseases: Detect new and emerging infectious diseases; investigate relationships between pathogens, their hosts, and the environment; and develop measures for disease prevention and control
• Signature Program in Population Systems: Promote the health of livestock, wildlife, humans, and the environment, and address the critical nodes where they intersect with one another and with the food system
• Signature Program in Comparative Medicine: Develop and study animal models of human disease in the areas of oncology, inflammatory and chronic diseases, and molecular and genetic models of disease

Goal 2: Preparing students, graduates, faculty, and staff for successful careers

• Provide an excellent, science-based veterinary educational program to prepare students for leadership, life-long learning, and successful careers
• Recruit and retain D.V.M. students with attributes that contribute to the success of the profession
• Promote and facilitate D.V.M. student participation in the dual-degree D.V.M./M.P.H. program 14
• Expand learning opportunities for faculty and staff to achieve personal success and to advance the organization
• Promote an efficient infrastructure to support graduate program, faculty, student, and CVM needs in graduate education
• Advance the quality of the graduate programs • to meet the needs of the student, the mentor, the CVM, the health professions, and industry
• Create and implement programs to recruit and train the next generation of clinical scholars and veterinary scientists for careers in basic, applied, and translational medicine research
• Promote research scholarship and professional • development of non-degree-seeking interns, residents, and post-doctoral fellows and trainees
   

Goal 3: Apply core competencies to meet the needs of our external stakeholders through dynamic public engagement that advances animal and public health

• Veterinary Medical Center.Advance animal health while supporting excellence in teaching and discovery in a state-of-the-art, sustainable, market-driven veterinary medical center
• Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (VDL). Protect and promote animal and human health through early detection and monitoring of animal diseases
• Veterinary Continuing Education (VCE). Advance the Collegiate mission through veterinary continuing education
• Center for Animal Health and Food Safety/Global Initiative for Food Systems. Anticipate and develop solutions and strategies to manage emerging issues in animals and food systems that impact public health
• The Raptor Center. Ensure the health of raptors and the world we share through teaching, research, and service
• National Center for Food Protection and Defense (NCFPD). Defend the safety of the food system through research and education
• Clinical Investigation Center (CIC). Facilitate veterinary clinical and translational research to benefit animals and humans alike