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The Texas Tech University System's Board of Regents on Friday authorized Tech President Lawrence Schovanec to execute an agreement with the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation relating to the proposed Tech School of Veterinary Medicine.
The regents' vote on the vet school came after an executive session as part of the board's regular two-day meeting in Lubbock.
The Amarillo EDC pledged up to $69 million toward the completion of the $90 million veterinary medicine facility.
As of late April, private funding commitments for the veterinary school project were $21 million, on top of $15 million that had been previously committed by the Amarillo EDC in Sept. 2016.
After the regents' vote to allow the university to enter into the agreement with Amarillo EDC, Schovanec said, "This is a very big step in moving forward with plans."
Schovanec described the Amarillo EDC's support as "a very pleasant development."
"That only materialized in the last couple of weeks," he said.

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With an agreement now in hand guaranteeing the Texas Tech University School of Veterinary Medicine concept here would come to fruition, University officials said they are now focusing on the next phase, which is securing the facility's operational funding.

Earlier this month the Amarillo City Council approved an arrangement supporting an Amarillo Economic Development Corporation pledge of up to $69 million toward the completion of the $90 million project. Council members voted 5-0 to authorize the EDC to enter into an amended Local Incentives Agreement to establish a veterinary school in Amarillo, in partnership with Texas Tech University and the Texas Tech University System.

"We can now go to the legislature and demonstrate we have the resources while also emphasizing there is a need," he said. "We will work with our legislative leadership to convince the appropriators that this is the thing that needs to happen. We have a good model we are following that has been tested and at the same time we have a strong west Texas legislative delegation. We feel good that their strategy will prevail on this and we'll do what they would have us to do. You still have to proceed with purpose and we're excited about the opportunity Amarillo has given the immediate area, as well as the state."
The legislature previously granted funding for a $4.1 million feasibility study regarding the veterinary school concept, providing insight into historical perspective, workforce analysis, educational demand, academic feasibility, philanthropic opportunities and financial feasibility.

The study referenced since 1990, the number of licenses issued by the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners has increased from 120 per year to 450 noting in the early 1990s, graduates of the sole existing veterinary program in Texas accounted for almost 80 percent of the licenses issued annually. However, in a period of 25 years, per the study, graduates of the existing program now account for only 24 percent of the licenses issued.

Another element of the feasibility study references the health of the veterinary job market is expected to expand and remain robust well into the future, adding Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) predict the nationwide demand for veterinary employment to grow 18.1 percent through 2026. Meanwhile, officials said of the 6,635 licensed veterinarians in Texas, 27.7 percent are over the age of 60, many will leave the profession in the next decade and DVM graduates predominantly move to and practice in major urban and suburban areas.

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Flexbone said:

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Love how invested Andy is in something totally irrelevant to his life. Even if this happens it's going to be a fallback option for anyone going to vet school. A&M bought one of the worst law schools in Texas and in 4 years has it ranked 40 spots higher than Tech's. Tech simply doesn't have the funds to compete.

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M.D. said:

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Hi guys

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Report on veterinary education
The race to increase the number of veterinary graduates in the state is nothing new. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has long received questions as to whether Texas needed a new veterinary school and whether workforce needs could support the production of more large animal veterinarians. The board had researched the topic in 2002 and 2009. In both instances, the board reported there was no need for a second veterinary college; however, in 2009, it said that Texas A&M's veterinary college could increase enrollment to meet future state needs.
As a result, Texas A&M invested $120 million to construct a teaching complex, which opened in 2016, and increased its enrollment by about 20 students, up to 155 per class. That same year, anticipating its expanded capacity for enrollment, the veterinary college announced partnerships with four TAMU System institutionsWest Texas A&M University, Tarleton State University, Prairie View A&M University, and Texas A&M University-Kingsvilleto encourage underrepresented minorities and rural students to pursue veterinary education.
An initial focus was placed on the partnership with West Texas A&M, where the veterinary college established the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Center in 2016 and hired Drs. Dee Griffin and Dan Posey to build a program to address regional industry needs and enhance interest among students. Those students, officials hope, will return to rural areas in West Texas to work as veterinarians. In 2017, WT sent nine preveterinary graduates to A&M, according to a TAMU news release.
The coordinating board revisited the issue of veterinary educational needs in the state and released a new report (PDF) in July 2016. It said, "No new college of veterinary medical education that primarily produces small animal veterinarians is recommended at this time. The high cost of establishing a new veterinary school would outweigh the potential benefits to the state, given the small to moderate workforce demand and the issue that building a new school would not guarantee that any of the graduates would practice on livestock, which is the state's principal area of need, but there are more cost-effective ways of addressing the need for medical care for food animals in Texas."
Specifically, the report recommended addressing the pending shortage of large animal veterinarians in the following ways:

• Fund the Rural Veterinarian Incentive Program created by the state.
• Create undergraduate programs in veterinary science that allow a greater scope of practice.
• Consider a proposal designed to produce large animal veterinarians in an innovative, cost-efficient manner that does not duplicate existing efforts.

The Texas A&M University System Regents March 8 revealed plans for a $22.8 million building on the West Texas A&M University campus for veterinary education, research, and workforce opportunities in the Panhandle as part of almost $90 million in new commitments to the state's agriculture industry.
Texas A&M University's new Veterinary Education, Research, and Outreach Center will be built adjacent to West Texas A&M University's new Agricultural Sciences Complex and the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory facility, currently in the process of being relocated from Amarillo to Canyon, according to a university press release.
Once the VERO Center is completed in 2020, students from Texas A&M's veterinary college will be able to take courses, participate in externship programs, and conduct research there. Opportunities for research and collaboration with faculty and staff at the TVMDL, West Texas A&M's Agricultural Sciences Complex, and the veterinary college's VERO Center will be available to students from both Texas A&M and West Texas A&M. The TAMU campus in College Station is located about 520 miles southwest of West Texas' campus in Canyon.

Meanwhile, the Texas Tech University System continues moving ahead with building its own veterinary school.
In 2017, Texas Tech's proposed School of Veterinary Medicine received a $4.2 million appropriation from the Texas Legislature for planning purposes. Texas Tech officials have estimated the total cost at $80 million to $90 million; they have committed to not asking the state to cover construction costs. This May, the Amarillo Economic Development Corp. committed to a minimum of $15 million and up to $69 million toward the school's construction. One requirement is that Texas Tech continue to raise construction funds to offset Amarillo's commitment. Already, other philanthropic commitments have helped the institution to reach its goal.
Plans are to build a main veterinary facility on the Texas Tech Amarillo Campus near its Health Sciences Center. Another facility would be built less than 2 miles away for clinical skills training on production animals, Dr. Guy Loneragan, professor of food safety and public health at Texas Tech University, told JAVMA News.
Tech officials have argued that because the veterinary school would have a distributive clinical education model rather than an on-site teaching hospital, students would get clinical experience in Texas Panhandle veterinary practices and be more inclined to stay in the region.
Texas Tech reached out to the AVMA Council on Education for a consultative site visit, which is scheduled for spring 2019. The program's feasibility study (PDF), released in May. From there, the veterinary school anticipates a comprehensive site visit in spring 2020. Should it receive a letter of reasonable assurance, Texas Tech could enroll students as soon as fall 2021. Dr. Loneragan said the program has engaged the services of two former veterinary college deans to guide it through the accreditation process.
Annual tuition at the proposed veterinary school is estimated to be $21,165.

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Aggie1 said:

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Even the DMN agrees...

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/06/28/texas-doesnt-need-another-veterinarian-school

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"If there is some kind of rivalry between Tech and A&M, somebody forgot to tell us."

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Andy Farmer said:

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Aggie1 said:

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Even the DMN agrees...

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/2018/06/28/texas-doesnt-need-another-veterinarian-school

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Written by Sharp?

Shocking.

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Texas does not need another veterinarian school to train rural veterinarians. Texas needs to find a way for more rural veterinarians to make a living.

In a Dallas Morning News column on June 27, Jay Leeson, a radio talk show host and columnist in Lubbock, perpetrated a false narrative, cherry-picking facts to champion the idea taxpayers should pay for a Texas Tech University vet school.

In 2016, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board concluded that no new veterinary school was needed in Texas, reiterating its 2009 findings. The board added that it would look at innovative approaches that did not duplicate Texas A&M's efforts to address a "pending" shortage of large animal veterinarians. That's it.

The study suggested three possible ways to address the issue, but Tech proponents ignored cheaper suggestions such as student loan forgiveness programs for rural vets that more directly addressed any pending shortage.

Those pushing for Texas Tech to gain funding to build a new veterinarian school also ignore what A&M has done since 2009 to address the needs of our state's agricultural industry. Leeson implied that anything Texas A&M is doing on the veterinary front is in response to Texas Tech's announcement in December 2015 that it wanted to create its own veterinary school.

The fact is, our regional plan had been in the works for years. In 2010, West Texas A&M had submitted to the Legislative Budget Board an appropriations request to enable West Texas A&M, in collaboration with Texas A&M, to prepare students to practice in veterinary medicine with a specialization in large animals. It wasn't funded, but the request is a public document with the Legislative Budget Board if anyone cares to look it up.

Here are the facts behind Texas A&M's plan for veterinary education:
In 2009, when the Coordinating Board study first said there was no need for a new veterinary school, it also asked Texas A&M to enlarge its class size.
National accreditors, however, told us we could not increase enrollment without new buildings.
In 2011, we asked the Legislature for $115 million for the veterinary education building, but no higher education facilities were approved that session.
We then spent $125 million of Permanent University Fund money to build a state-of-the-art facility in College Station. It recently was finished. If needed, we could increase the size of the vet school by hundreds of new students.
In 2015, a food-animal track was added at the vet school in addition to our long-existing large animal specialty.
In January 2016, Texas A&M unveiled its plan to expand its veterinary efforts to four Texas A&M System universities, including West Texas A&M University in Canyon, just south of Amarillo. And it is succeeding.

We had been planning Texas A&M's veterinary outreach to regional schools for several years. In 2015, we talked to Texas Tech about it. Texas Tech Chancellor Robert Duncan asked me to make Tech one of the schools. But since West Texas A&M was only a short distance away from Tech, it was not cost effective.

Duncan announced his veterinary school "plans" days later, knowing we were a week away from announcing the five-school collaboration, which we had been planning for more than two years.
Earlier this year, the Texas A&M University System announced about $90 million in ag-related construction on the campus of West Texas A&M. Leeson repeats that Texas A&M is just responding to Tech when actually the Legislature had partially funded our plan earlier. It had nothing to do with Tech; it was aimed at meeting the needs of the agriculture industry.

The only thing we added was the veterinary research and education center an idea that dates back to that 2010 legislative request by West Texas A&M. Although it wasn't funded by the Legislature, we did it with money from the Permanent University Fund. Again, it had to do with serving the agriculture industries in the region.

If there is one thing Texas taxpayers should know, it is this: Veterinary education, if done well, requires significant investment. From outside gifts and subsidies, we have subsidized our veterinary school millions of dollars every year. So, yes, we are concerned about diluting state appropriations when there is no real need to do so.

We have done everything the Coordinating Board asked of us, to the letter. So if Tech has an "innovative" plan, then take it to the Coordinating Board, and let it vote.

Our mission at the Texas A&M System is to do what the Coordinating Board and Legislature expects of one of the finest veterinary schools on earth. And that's exactly what we are doing without throwing tax dollars away on something that is not needed.

If there is some kind of rivalry between Tech and A&M, somebody forgot to tell us.

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South Platte said:

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I think we have 6-7 medical schools in this state and a number of law schools. Why is TAMU threatened by Tech to add only our 2nd school in the state? A&M has been churning out vet med grads for 100 years, seems silly to be worried about Tech's program.

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"If there is some kind of rivalry between Tech and A&M, somebody forgot to tell us." - John Sharp -

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Andy Farmer said:

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I am certain there was no redundancy when TAMU took over Texas Wesleyan Law....

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Federale01 said:

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Andy Farmer said:

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I am certain there was no redundancy when TAMU took over Texas Wesleyan Law....

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We took over an existing law school because the Coordinating board denied our plans for a new one. They said we had enough law schools in Texas. They said the same thing about vet schools.

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Federale01 said:

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Andy Farmer said:

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I am certain there was no redundancy when TAMU took over Texas Wesleyan Law....

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We took over an existing law school because the Coordinating board denied our plans for a new one. They said we had enough law schools in Texas. They said the same thing about vet schools.

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Flexbone said:

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Federale01 said:

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Andy Farmer said:

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I am certain there was no redundancy when TAMU took over Texas Wesleyan Law....

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We took over an existing law school because the Coordinating board denied our plans for a new one. They said we had enough law schools in Texas. They said the same thing about vet schools.

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Andy, in 5 years, A&M has taken what used to be one of the worst law schools in the country and made it high ranked than Tech and LSU. This is a totally different situation. I'd have no problem with Tech having a vet school if a second one was needed, but all the evidence indicates it isn't. Adding one will only increase competition for limited state funds, which will actually dilute veterinary education in this state.

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Andy Farmer said:

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I am certain there was no redundancy when TAMU took over Texas Wesleyan Law....

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Texas Tech University officials gathered in Amarillo Friday to express gratitude to donors who have contributed $46 million toward the institution's School of Veterinary Medicine.

"When Texas Tech was established in 1923, the vision was that it would serve and support the needs of all of West Texas," Schovanec said. "The scope of the University has grown well beyond West Texas, as we serve the state, the nation and the world...

In May the Amarillo City Council voted in favor of an arrangement guaranteeing the Texas Tech University School of Veterinary Medicine concept would come to fruition, supporting an Amarillo Economic Development Corporation pledge of up to $69 million toward the completion of the $90 million project. University brass took advantage of Friday's opportunity to extend kudos to the City and the private donors.

Officials said one such donor is Cactus Feeders, which they said was established in 1975, with beef and pork production locations in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, noting the 800 employee-owners of Cactus Feeders are dedicated to finding ways to produce more food while using fewer resources at a lower cost. Cactus Feeders Co-CEO Paul Defoor said the company is honored to be a part of the initiative.

"There are a lot of things I can say philosophically about the importance of access to a high-quality, affordable education and the impact that has on our society," he said. "But what I should say more directly is an affirmation of the needs that are present today in veterinary medicine and an affirmation of the demographic challenges that await us tomorrow if we don't act today. Cactus is one of the largest food production companies in the world and we see the need. We need leaders who understand the science behind their decision making, but also have a comprehensive understanding of the impact on food production and animal well-being. We complement everyone on the success we've had so far and on behalf of Cactus Feeders, we pledge not only our monetary support, but we pledge our help as well. We will work any way we can to provide an experiential setting for these students to come and learn."

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