Students receiving support from the Bovine Education Trust this year include (from l to r) Stephanie Cukier, Kristen Edwards, Rebecca Cornell, Kim Painter, Shari McGuirl, Kristin Ferguson, Paisley Canning, Kyle Bushee.
Ontario Veterinary College students will continue to gain invaluable hands-on clinical experience caring for dairy and beef cattle thanks to a generous bequest to the Bovine Education Trust.
Recently, the trust received $450,000 from the estate of Bruce Reynolds, who died in 2008 at the age of 90. Reynolds was a retired Ontario dairy farmer who wanted to encourage more young veterinarians to take up rural practice.
“Through this generous gift, the Bovine Education Trust will be able to continue to support students in gaining experiential learning opportunities to better prepare them for a career in bovine veterinary medicine,” said Dr. Kerry Lissemore, OVC associate dean academic.
Established in 2010 by the Ontario Association of Bovine Practitioners and OVC with start-up funding from the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food, the trust builds upon a long-standing tradition of veterinary practitioners mentoring students.
It helps provide student veterinarians with the real-life skills and experience they need to launch careers in rural communities by providing financial support for summer placements, external electives and extracurricular learning opportunities.
Recipients of Bovine Education Trust bursaries this year include Kristin Ferguson, Kyle Bushee, Paisley Canning, Rebecca Cornell, Stephanie Cukier, Kristen Edwards, Shari McGuirl and Kim Painter.
For example, the funding enabled three OVC students to attend the Summer Dairy Institute, a specialized training program at Cornell University for fourth-year DVM students and recent graduates interested in the dairy industry.
Participants learn from leading dairy experts and gain experience through hands-on workshops and visits to farms in New York State. It’s also a great networking opportunity, said Shari McGuirl OVC 2014.
“When we go into practice, these connections will be very important and will help us stay current in dairy veterinary medicine,” McGuirl said. “The experience also reinforced our plans to be a rural vet, because it showed new perspectives on the variety of services we can provide to clients, and provided solutions to some of the difficult problems faced by producers.”