Starting a Pre-Vet Club

[Mikeomorph]

Hello! I'm a new member on the forums, and I'm very much enjoying all the discussions and advice available here. I'm planning to apply during the next admissions cycle (class of 2017!), and am hoping to glean as much valuable info as I can here, while hopefully contributing something of substance as well.

Anyway, I'm posting this thread because I am currently in the process of resurrecting the long-dormant Pre-Vet Club at my university and could really use some advice, as I've never undertaken anything quite like this. I'm not really sure how to best build a viable pre-professional student organization from scratch, and I want to be sure that this club is successful in providing relevant resources for my fellow pre-veterinary student peers.

So, my questions to all of you who have either been a member of a pre-vet club, or wished to be, are:

What sort of activities, resources, or other aspects do you look for in a pre-vet club? Are just regular club meetings and social get-togethers enough, or do you look for a club with more community involvement and opportunity for hands-on experience? For anyone who has been a part of such a club, how were all these aspects successfully integrated and managed? Did your club have help from faculty or a certain department that had programs already in place to help with shadowing and volunteer opportunities? If not, how did you manage it all by yourselves?

I'm open to any and all suggestions from anyone who has ever been in a successful (or unsuccessful!) pre-vet club. Thanks for your help!

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[Trilt]

Here's a couple older links on starting (or events occurring within) pre-vet clubs:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=664722
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=476559
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=585764

I'd first try and contact whoever serves as a pre-vet adviser (if you have one!) at your school, because they should be able to facilitate contacting other pre-vet students in the community. Otherwise, hit up listservs for common pre-vet majors (at my school it's biology, zoology, animal sci + poultry sci) and try and get emails or contact info for interested students. Fliers in buildings with common pre-requisites also wouldn't hurt.

Activities-wise, my pre-vet club usually had vet speakers and opportunities presented at each meeting, and would sometimes hold special events about admissions or volunteer with community animal organizations. They have been sort of eh in usefulness throughout the year. They have a great president this year and are really ramping up the community associations and programs offered, though, so I have high hopes. There's a bunch more ideas on the links I posted, and I'm sure others will chime in.

My biggest piece of advice if you do go through and start the club, though, is to try the hardest you can to avoid it getting clique-ish. Here, there has always very much been the officers and the members, and the co-mingling is sparse (at least in a club context). Members just sort of go to meetings/events and leave, without forming relationships in them. If you can facilitate a little more fun and have club members make friendships through it, that would obviously be better.

 

[Kylana]

Hey! I was in a similar position as you a few years ago and decided to start up a Pre Vet Club at my university after it had been deconstituted a few years before that.

I was able to initially get members by making an announcement at a vet school admissions talk. I also went to classes that had a high number of pre vet students (like Animal Welfare) and made announcements advertising the club. Also, I sent out a mass email to everyone in the Ag faculty.

I started by having a general meeting for interested members and getting an idea of things they would be interested in doing (later, we decided to hand out forms when people joined that asked them to tick boxes of types of events they would be most interested in, like fundraising, volunteering, social events, wet labs, guest speaker, etc). I also talked to a lot of faculty members who researched and taught in various animal related fields to get ideas of events and to network (that is how I found some of the guest speakers!)

Some things we did were go out for dinner (we were a pretty poor club so we basically picked a restaurant and time and just met up and paid for our own meals), hold fundraisers for various animal non-profits (or for the club itself), went on a tour of a marine mammal rehab centre, a raptor rehab centre, a research animal facility and a big vet specialist hospital. We also had people from a few vet schools come to talk about admissions. We ended up being a "Pre Vet and Animal Welfare Club" since there was a big animal welfare program at the university and we wanted to include all the animal welfare students. We had a few Animal Welfare grad students give talks about their research and one of the Animal Welfare visiting professors gave a talk as well. One popular event was holding a pet first aid course for club members - we had an instructor come in and teach pet first aid on a Saturday. We also had various workshops like animal behaviour or animal restraint.

I don't take credit for coming up and running all these event, many were planned and run by other pre vet students in the club - which brings me to my next piece of advice: find a good exec team! We had Fundraising Coordinators, Social Coordinators, and Event Planners in addition to typical exec positions (pres, VP, treasurer, secretary). Initially we didn't have the most productive team, but we just kept allowing other members to join the exec until we had a solid group of people who reliably attended meetings and helped organized events, and the people who didn't help much eventually stopped coming. We found it was good to meet at least every other week, if not more. You don't have to be the one to come up with all the ideas (though you'll probably have to plan the first event or two pretty much by yourself unless you have a bunch of pre vet friends already) - people will have connections in the community of people who know lots about nutrition or behaviour or dairy cows or poultry or bandaging or wildlife rehab or something else and soon enough you will have plenty of suggestions of speakers and workshops and tours. Oh and start a facebook group for all club members - on ours, people will post vet or animal related jobs or relevant lectures in the community.

Good luck with starting the club! Let us know how it goes! And if you have any questions, let me know and I can try to help. It is definitely daunting to start a club, but it is worth it in the end - plus it is a ton of fun and I met so many amazing people who were pursuing the same career path as me, which was pretty much the reason I wanted to start the club in the first place

 

[hottchoclat]

Hello! I'm a new member on the forums, and I'm very much enjoying all the discussions and advice available here. I'm planning to apply during the next admissions cycle (class of 2017!), and am hoping to glean as much valuable info as I can here, while hopefully contributing something of substance as well.

Anyway, I'm posting this thread because I am currently in the process of resurrecting the long-dormant Pre-Vet Club at my university and could really use some advice, as I've never undertaken anything quite like this. I'm not really sure how to best build a viable pre-professional student organization from scratch, and I want to be sure that this club is successful in providing relevant resources for my fellow pre-veterinary student peers.

So, my questions to all of you who have either been a member of a pre-vet club, or wished to be, are:

What sort of activities, resources, or other aspects do you look for in a pre-vet club? Are just regular club meetings and social get-togethers enough, or do you look for a club with more community involvement and opportunity for hands-on experience? For anyone who has been a part of such a club, how were all these aspects successfully integrated and managed? Did your club have help from faculty or a certain department that had programs already in place to help with shadowing and volunteer opportunities? If not, how did you manage it all by yourselves?

I'm open to any and all suggestions from anyone who has ever been in a successful (or unsuccessful!) pre-vet club. Thanks for your help!

I am glad you asked this question. I am trying to start up a Pre-Vet Club at my univeristy as well

 

[Mikeomorph]

Thanks for the replies - I'm definitely getting some good ideas!

I got a faculty sponsor/advisor on board today and turned in the initial club recognition paperwork to my university, which will hopefully get us some funding. Next, I think I'm going to start by making some announcements in classes, as was suggested, and also put up some fliers, email the pre-med/pre-health society, make a facebook page, etc.

I think ultimately I'm going to have to end up cold calling a lot of animal-related organizations/businesses in order to make some contacts and set up some guest speakers and club activities. I'm not really sure the best way to go about doing that, but unfortunately my university doesn't really have any animal-related programs or related faculty that might get my foot in the door, so I think that may end up being my only option.

Again, thanks for all the suggestions. Keep 'em coming!

 

[scb44f]

For the cold-calling, it would be worth it to dedicate some type to writing a nice letter explaining the organization, that it's new, your goals for the program, how you'd like them to support your efforts by doing X for the club, how it will subsequently help your group and possibly the other party as well, with your name and position/contact info at the bottom. Basically you're asking them to donate their time, so it will follow the format of a donation/sponsorship request letter. Once that's done (and personalized to the business/vet/etc.), hand-deliver it to the person of interest. They will remember you better than just calling, and then they'll have a letter to remind them too. You can also follow up on that if they don't respond soon.

Of course, that's assuming the place/person you're asking is nearby. If they aren't, definitely use other convenient means to communicate.

Good luck!

 

[Mikeomorph]

For the cold-calling, it would be worth it to dedicate some type to writing a nice letter explaining the organization, that it's new, your goals for the program, how you'd like them to support your efforts by doing X for the club, how it will subsequently help your group and possibly the other party as well, with your name and position/contact info at the bottom. Basically you're asking them to donate their time, so it will follow the format of a donation/sponsorship request letter. Once that's done (and personalized to the business/vet/etc.), hand-deliver it to the person of interest. They will remember you better than just calling, and then they'll have a letter to remind them too. You can also follow up on that if they don't respond soon.

Of course, that's assuming the place/person you're asking is nearby. If they aren't, definitely use other convenient means to communicate.

Good luck!

Great idea, thank you!

 

[doxiegirl92]

I am in the same boat as the original poster. I am finishing my pre-reqs Spring 2013 and in the meantime I wanted to get as much experience to help me stand out to the vet school.

My school doesn't have a pre-vet club so I decided I was going to start one. All I need is one more interested student and a faculty advisor, so Im pretty close. I've seen a few ideas on here so I wanted to post on here what i was thinking for my club, and see if I could get some input on it from you guys!

I was thinking bimonthly meetings; I would pick an initial date for the 1st meeting and at that meeting I would handout a poll so we can decide the best day and time to hold our meetings, that way everyone who wants to participate can.

I think the first meeting would also mostly entail meeting and greeting everyone, and then deciding what we want to do as a club. One of the things I want to do is fundraise for non profits, and to find our club, so maybe everyone could pick a non-profit they'd like to help out and we can decide which ones to go with for the year. I was also thinking of taking a poll to see who they want to hear from. That way I can contact the vets that the members are most interested in first.

As far as meetings in general I hope to get a guest speaker for each one or at least every other one. There are many vet specialists in the portland area to choose from so it would be great to hear from all of them. But i would also like us to hear from other memers in the field of vet med, like the techs, and office managers, because being pre-vet doesn;t mean youll get into vet school and it would be nice to hear about other options in the field. I personally would like to hear from a zoo vet and a wildlife vet because I am considering those as options for my future

I would hopefully be able to get a lot of the members to get into an officer postion so that ALL of the planning doesn't fall on my shoulders. Like fundraiser, event, volunteer, and guest speaker cooridinators to pick a few. I realize starting a club (and hopefully being the president) will entail a lot of work, and I'll have to plan a lot of these things in the beginning, but help would be great right?)

I thought some field trips would be cool. Closer field trips for us at WSUV would be the oregon zoo (any ideas on how to get a private tour???) and various farms ect. But I'd love to be able to get the club to Pullman for the vet school open house, and maybe the tacoma zoo too.

I'd also like to plan club volunteer events. You can't really do that at the humane society (they make you get picked as individual volunteers and go through training) so I need to figure out where we could volunteer as a group like once or twice a month for a few hours at a time, or a couple larger scale ones every couple of months.

I also thought it would be good to dedicate some meetings to discussing the pre-req differences among diff vet schools as well as options for gre prep. We have a pre-health professional club that we can join for other workshops like resume writing, letters or recomendation, and personal statement.

do these sound like good ideas? are they enough for over a year of meetings? or too much (doubtful lol)?

thanks a ton!

 

[Mikeomorph]

Thought I should give an update to this thread:

This is now my second year as our pre-vet club president, and I'm very proud of all we've been able to accomplish! For anyone out there who may be considering starting up or taking over a pre-vet club, here are a couple of suggestions based on my experiences:

First, become very,very familiar with your school's funding policies and procedures! Knowing how to get meetings and activities properly organized and paid for can save you a ton of headaches in the long run. If your school offers any sort of club leadership orientations or seminars take advantage of them - not only will you gain a greater understanding of funding procurement and allocation, but you will make connections with the university officials in charge of these areas and demonstrate to them that you are a serious, worthwhile organization.

Utilize technology to keep your club members connected. As we all know, pre-vet students are a busy bunch, often juggling school, jobs, volunteering, and about a hundred other things on any given day. Because of this, scheduling club meetings at times that are mutually agreeable for a large group of people is a task that will likely cause you to run screaming into the night! So, if physical meetings aren't feasible, use resources such as facebook, sureveymonkey, chat clients, and all manner of social technology to keep your club members connected and involved. I have used a regular e-newsletter and web surveys to keep all of my club members informed and to help them actively participate in event selection and planning.

These are just a couple of small tips, but I hope they may be helpful to anyone out there just starting out.