427: New Jersey's first veterinary school from a student's POV

And a little bit more about you, Paul.

Um, so you're really involved with the, the community as well as with your class, and, uh, which is also a great opportunity, the fact that you can build these clubs, you know-

Yes

... kind of make them your own.

And so you are in charge or president, correct me if I'm wrong, community engagement club?

Yes.

So-

Tell me about that.

So it's a SATMA affiliated club, um, but it is not a student chapter like other clubs are.

So, um, it's, it's a spin on a shelter medicine club, so it's not under the shelter medicine student chapter.

I knew I wanted to make a bit of a m- more broad club, especially since we're a newer school and there's, we only have so many hands, so I wanted to try to encompass as much as I could into one club.

So this is a shelter medicine club at its core, but it's encompassing all of community engagement.

Um, so of course service work, but also I, I'm trying to prepare veterinary students to engage with their community in all ways possible.

Um, I'm very aware that social media is growing, and I love it.

Um, I know a lot of people are intimidated by it, but I think that the important thing to realize is social media isn't going anywhere, and I think that we need as much veterinary advocacy on there as we can, um, because we want to, we want pet parents to be as best informed as they could be.

Um, so another component to this club is exposing vet students to social media etiquette, preparing them to best interact with their communities in any way possible.

So we'll definitely be doing that, um, on the shelter medicine side of things as well.

So we're gonna do service work, um, we're gonna do clinical skills training, we're gonna try to get some more surgeries under students' belts, and then we're also gonna invite mentors to teach us about contextualized care, how to best approach, you know, um, people in any situation.

So we might invite social workers, um, we might invite social media veterinarians such as yourself.

[laughs]

Um, and just, you know, I'm trying, we're trying to make- Well-rounded veterinarians, um, especially with Rowan's One Health approach.

Yes.

We're trying to acknowledge the human-animal connection in every way possible, so I'm really, really, really excited about this club.

It- it's phenomenal, and I wanna shout it out for the people in the back that didn't hear Paul, again, uh, the fact that y- you recognize the power of social media in veterinary medicine, and I speak at this, a conference, but sometimes it gets glazed over like, "Oh, this isn't a thing." It's a thing.

It's a huge thing, and it's gonna get even bigger by the time you get out of school.