Lab animal electives at your school

[tlavinder]

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Hello, I am a current Ross student and next semester I submit my choices for clinical placement. My interest is in laboratory animal medicine, thus I would like to be placed at school that offers a few laboratory animal medicine and/or primate medicine electives. I have reviewed each school Ross is affliated with as much as possible, and do have an idea of which schools to consider. I would greatly appreciate any feedback, especially from current 4th years or recent graduates. Thank you!

 

[Minnerbelle]

As long as you can do offsite things, you can also extern outside of the institution you're doing your rotations in. I spent some time at both Yale and MIT and they were awesome! MIT in particular


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[Lab Vet]

Hello, I am a current Ross student and next semester I submit my choices for clinical placement. My interest is in laboratory animal medicine, thus I would like to be placed at school that offers a few laboratory animal medicine and/or primate medicine electives. I have reviewed each school Ross is affliated with as much as possible, and do have an idea of which schools to consider. I would greatly appreciate any feedback, especially from current 4th years or recent graduates. Thank you!

I'm a committed lab animal student at NCSU. For Lab Animal Focus students at this school, there is one on-site required rotation in LAM. Other than that, students head 'off-site' to acquire their LAM experience. Lucky for the Research Triangle, as there are several facilities within close proximity where this experience can be found. UNC, Duke (both the university at large and the Primate Center), and NIEHS are within driving distance. Wake Forest is another site where students can travel to get LAM experience, although this facility is quite a haul (at least 60 minutes) from NCSU. In my clinical year (I'm currently finishing my second year), I intend to use my off-site slots to travel to those institutions that house my ACLAM residencies of choice (outside of NC). I will likely complete the required NCSU LAM rotation as an elective third year, which will free me up for more off-site time when 4th year rolls around.

As an aside, one of NCSU's clinical LAM veterinarians is a Ross grad, double boarded in LAM and Tox. Great guy.

Below, I have included the link for the description of the LAM focus area (track) at NCSU. Good luck. Feel free to contact me should you have any questions.

https://cvm.ncsu.edu/dvm-students/curriculum/focus-areas/laboratory-animal/

 

[tlavinder]

As long as you can do offsite things, you can also extern outside of the institution you're doing your rotations in. I spent some time at both Yale and MIT and they were awesome! MIT in particular


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Thank you for your suggestions! I greatly appreciate them 🙂

 

[tlavinder]

I'm a committed lab animal student at NCSU. For Lab Animal Focus students at this school, there is one on-site required rotation in LAM. Other than that, students head 'off-site' to acquire their LAM experience. Lucky for the Research Triangle, as there are several facilities within close proximity where this experience can be found. UNC, Duke (both the university at large and the Primate Center), and NIEHS are within driving distance. Wake Forest is another site where students can travel to get LAM experience, although this facility is quite a haul (at least 60 minutes) from NCSU. In my clinical year (I'm currently finishing my second year), I intend to use my off-site slots to travel to those institutions that house my ACLAM residencies of choice (outside of NC). I will likely complete the required NCSU LAM rotation as an elective third year, which will free me up for more off-site time when 4th year rolls around.

As an aside, one of NCSU's clinical LAM veterinarians is a Ross grad, double boarded in LAM and Tox. Great guy.

Below, I have included the link for the description of the LAM focus area (track) at NCSU. Good luck. Feel free to contact me should you have any questions.

https://cvm.ncsu.edu/dvm-students/curriculum/focus-areas/laboratory-animal/

Thank you very much for the detailed information!

 

[Kpowell14]

I don't know the specifics but Mizzou offers on-campus lab animal rotations on an elective basis.. We have the potential of doing 10 weeks of LAM if we so choose.. Plus time off campus to do additional time.. I am not sure how much elective time our Ross students get, but you could definitely get lab animal in here on campus. Mizzou also has a lab animal residency that I hear from the lab animal people is a well known / established program with a good reputation.

 

[Lab Vet]

I don't know the specifics but Mizzou offers on-campus lab animal rotations on an elective basis.. We have the potential of doing 10 weeks of LAM if we so choose.. Plus time off campus to do additional time.. I am not sure how much elective time our Ross students get, but you could definitely get lab animal in here on campus. Mizzou also has a lab animal residency that I hear from the lab animal people is a well known / established program with a good reputation.

Mizzou has a fantastic LAM residency. In the top 3 nationally 🙂

 

[KCgophervet]

Mizzou has a fantastic LAM residency. In the top 3 nationally 🙂

Top three? Since when are the residency programs ranked? And based on what? I only ask because while I know Mizzou has a great program (I did a 4 week externship there last year), I've never heard of programs being ranked.

 

[KCgophervet]

Oh and to answer the OP directly, Minnesota is probably not the best place for you to go. They seem to be trying to get better at the lab animal stuff, but they are taking 2 steps backwards and 1 step forward in my opinion. I can go into more detail if you're interested, but you're probably not 😛

 

[Lab Vet]

Top three? Since when are the residency programs ranked? And based on what? I only ask because while I know Mizzou has a great program (I did a 4 week externship there last year), I've never heard of programs being ranked.

Hi kcoughli,

You're totally right. I should be careful about making statements like this. There is no formalized rank list for LAM residencies (I'm not actually sure if there is for any specialty- other folks would know better than I). LAM residencies are so different (in programmatic offering, focus, and structure), that it would be hard to put together a list.

Here's my criteria for evaluating programs. This is by no means a complete list, but it does highlight aspects of a program that are important to me. Mizzou gets high marks in all.

-Program history (How long has it been around? Have its faculty streamlined the art of training LAM vets? How well connected are the program faculty within the LAM community?)
-ACLAM board pass rate
-Graduate success rate (Are their grads still in LAM post-residency completion? What type of jobs do they have?)
-Program structure (LAM residencies tend to fall into one of two camps, structured and unstructured. I'm more of a structured fan myself, so this is important to me)
-Quantity of ACLAM/ACVP boarded vets on staff
-Caseload: Quantity and diversity of species
-Concurrent residents: This isn't really a reflection of 'quality' per se, but is something to consider. Many LAM residencies take 1 student per year. I know of one (the GSK residency in K of P, PA), takes 1 only every 2-3 years. Mizzou accepts multiple residents into its first year cohort each cycle.

Hope that you had a good experience there while visiting. I plan on completing an externship with the Mizzou group my fourth year, and will schedule as soon as rotation dates are available.

 

[tlavinder]

I don't know the specifics but Mizzou offers on-campus lab animal rotations on an elective basis.. We have the potential of doing 10 weeks of LAM if we so choose.. Plus time off campus to do additional time.. I am not sure how much elective time our Ross students get, but you could definitely get lab animal in here on campus. Mizzou also has a lab animal residency that I hear from the lab animal people is a well known / established program with a good reputation.

Thank you! I completed an externship at Mizzou this past August, and thoroughly enjoyed the program and Columbia. i believe I will be listing Mizzou as one of my choices. 🙂

 

[tlavinder]

Oh and to answer the OP directly, Minnesota is probably not the best place for you to go. They seem to be trying to get better at the lab animal stuff, but they are taking 2 steps backwards and 1 step forward in my opinion. I can go into more detail if you're interested, but you're probably not 😛

Duly noted! Thank you 🙂