Starting a Pre-Vet Club -- Ideas?

[deleted705154]

Hi everyone! This is my first time posting and I thought I'd turn here for some advice.

I am a rising sophomore at a rather small liberal arts college...at the moment, we don't have a pre-vet, pre-med, or pre-health club. I intend to start a pre-vet club in the fall if I can find enough people that are interested (I also have a faculty sponsor in mind).

Has anyone else founded a pre-vet club at their college? Or more generally, belonged to a pre-vet club? I have a few ideas for activities to organize but not nearly enough to take me through the semester.

If anyone has ideas or previous experience with this I would love the help!

Thanks

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[Gwenevre]

Might be ambitious, but my pre-vet club had an awesome Halloween party one year. One of the best things I remember is that our party planner had brought in different animal parts, (i.e. tongue, liver, heart, stomach) put them in a box and we had to identify them for prizes.
Other things you might do that are simpler is get members involved at shelters. Fundraising to buy supplies, volunteering time. Maybe even contact a ocal vet or two to come in and talk. A more recent graduated vet would have great advice on applying and what school is like.
Maybe even get a financial advisor to come in and talk about debt. That's something I wish my pre-vet club had done more often instead of LOOK AT ALL THE COOL SPECIALISTS WE HAVE TO TALK TO YOU.
And do things that aren't vet related. A movie night. Ice skating event. That stuff's cool too.

 

[heyyimhayley]

Following this thread because I'll be president in the fall and need to plan my meetings......

 

[dvmhopeful2018]

I founded our pre-vet club. The hardest part for me was all the bureaucracy I had to deal with within the pre-vet (Vet Heath Sciences) department, not with the university as a whole.

Our first year we met once a month and would talk about applications and such. We did a bake sale and pet adoption day with three local shelters-raffled off donated food/toys/wellness visits etc.

I moved on to vet school after the first year, but the next president really was able to get the club going since we had worked through a lot of trial/error as far as dealing with admin issues and the like. They did 2 adoption events, went to a local zoo, had LMU-CVM come talk, etc.

I would recommend starting slow your first year or two, since you're going to run into unexpected problems when you plan events (big or small) the first time. The second and third adoption days went off much better because they figured out ways to improve after our first one. Don't feel like you have to do everything your first year. As the club grows and gets more members and people willing to invest time, events/labs/guest speakers will happen.

 

[Jess Monster]

If you're from a small school, maybe you should capitalize on the lack of pre-professional medical clubs and create a "one-health" club instead. That way you can increase your rosters and provide a wider range of students with opportunities to hear speakers and engage in community activities. Plus more member dues means a healthier discretionary budget for travel, decoration, food, club scholarships, etc. Within a group like that you can create specialized offices too so more people can take on active leadership roles, like representatives for pre-vet and pre-med.

 

[WildZoo]

Our prevet club was really involved with one of the local shelters. They organized a day for everyone to go to volunteer orientation together. And then we would do collection drives for things the shelter needed - old blankets, cardboard boxes, etc. They got school representatives to visit to talk to us, and some specialty vets from the area. I think they also did a couple horseback riding and zoo trips.

 

[Beagleholly]

Some ideas:
-We bought expired suture material and had a vet come in and teach us basic suturing on bananas.
- See if you can get vet school recruiters to drop in to talk about their schools (and buy you pizza!). If they can't actually make it to your campus, we've done Skype calls (just make sure you know how it works beforehand!)
- Get local volunteer organizations come talk about volunteer opportunities, or other pre-vet students to talk about their experiences.
-Use your members' connections. Many people know/work for awesome vets, who can come in and go over interesting cases or talk about their experiences/jobs. We had an ER vet go through some common types of cases, a zoo vet give us a tour of their facilities, an acupuncturist etc.
-If you go to school somewhere with a bunch of events/programs, have a group newsletter/facebook/whatever so people can share interesting events with other members and even coordinate carpooling/find other people to go with.

One thing we did that I really liked is a mentorship program. We had Junior/Seniors paired with Freshmen/new pre-vet members, and throughout the year, you'd meet with them to get help/help them with classes, study habits, getting a job, etc.

 

[MantisCat]

Those sound like great ideas.

Where does one buy expired sutured materials from?

 

[dvmhopeful2018]

Those sound like great ideas.

Where does one buy expired sutured materials from?

Search shopmedvet.com for "research suture": http://www.shopmedvet.com/search?q=Research+suture&go=

You can get 50 or 100 packs of variety suture. Many of my classmates got these to practice with.

 

[MantisCat]

Awesome. Thank you : )

 

[MantisCat]

Hi everyone! This is my first time posting and I thought I'd turn here for some advice.

I am a rising sophomore at a rather small liberal arts college...at the moment, we don't have a pre-vet, pre-med, or pre-health club. I intend to start a pre-vet club in the fall if I can find enough people that are interested (I also have a faculty sponsor in mind).

Has anyone else founded a pre-vet club at their college? Or more generally, belonged to a pre-vet club? I have a few ideas for activities to organize but not nearly enough to take me through the semester.

If anyone has ideas or previous experience with this I would love the help!

Thanks

I just noticed you're in CO! I'm starting a Pre-Vet Club at CU Denver this fall : ) If you're in the Denver Metro area at all, I'd love to chat and swap ideas with a fellow pre-vet student. Send me a PM.