Maryland HBCU moves closer to opening veterinary school
The University of Maryland Eastern Shore will accept 100 students in its inaugural class next summer
By Malinda Larkin
The University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) School of Veterinary Medicine will begin admitting its first cohort of students next summer after receiving a letter of reasonable assurance from the AVMA Council on Education (AVMA COE).
The council’s decision permits UMES to begin recruiting applicants. Reasonable assurance does not confer accreditation of any kind for a developing veterinary college, but the program may gain accreditation in the future if it shows the AVMA COE that it continues to develop and implement its plans in a way that meets all the standards.
The university is located in Princess Anne, Maryland, about 90 miles south of Washington, D.C. It will be the second historically Black college or university (HBCU) to offer a veterinary program, with Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine being the first HBCU to do so. UMES also will be the first stand-alone DVM program physically located in Maryland, as the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine is based in Blacksburg, Virginia.
Dr. Stanley Robertson, dean of the UMES veterinary school, said in an announcement, “By drawing on the Eastern Shore’s agricultural setting and a network of clinical partners, we intend to graduate confident, practice-ready veterinarians sooner and strengthen the workforce serving animal health, agriculture and public health in Maryland and the Mid-Atlantic region.”
Curriculum
The veterinary school had a consultative site visit from the AVMA COE in July 2024 and a comprehensive site visit this past June.
During the most recent site visit, the evaluation team reviewed the veterinary school’s planning and readiness across the AVMA COE’s 11 Standards of Accreditation, including organization, finances, facilities, clinical resources, curriculum, faculty, students, research, and program assessment.
UMES has developed a year-round, three-year program delivered across nine consecutive semesters. The curriculum is similar to the one at the University of Arizona (UA) College of Veterinary Medicine, where Dr. Robertson served as associate dean of clinical relations for almost two years.
UMES’s program will integrate didactice lectures, case-based instruction, simulation, clinical-skills training, and supervised experiences across university-operated and affiliated clinical sites that are part of its “semi-distributed clinical model.”
Dr. Robertson told AVMA News they are building relationships with corporate and private veterinary practices, the Maryland Department of Agriculture’s Salisbury Animal Health Diagnostic Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, and government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture. So far, the school has secured nearly 80 clinical sites, many in the Delmarva and Eastern Shore regions, and they are working on more, including specialty clinics and large and mixed animal sites.
UMES veterinary students will complete six core rotations within the Mid-Atlantic region: small animal community practice, large animal ambulatory, shelter medicine, diagnostic medicine, small animal general practice, and small animal specialty practice. Dr. Robertson said the first four rotations listed will have faculty embedded at the sites who will directly oversee students. Trained clinical educators will teach students at the last two rotation sites and all elective sites.
So far, the veterinary school has about 10 faculty and two staff members. More positions will be posted by the end of the year, he said, with an expected 40 faculty total and a full complement of staff.
Dr. Robertson, who was the clinical relations veterinarian at Lincoln Memorial University (LMU) Gillespie College of Veterinary Medicine from 2016-23, was formative in setting up the program’s distributive model. He said UMES’s clinical education model is modeled after both UA and LMU in many aspects.
“Most of the current distributive schools are patterned after LMU, but I would say this is version 2.0,” he said. “It’s based on the lessons learned from the challenges we had.”
Faculty and students
UMES’s veterinary school anticipates accepting 50 students from Maryland and 50 students from out of state each year. The annual tuition and fees for in-state students will be $41,841 and for out-of-state students it will be $76,791.
UMES already has established agreements with universities with preveterinary programs, such as University of Maryland-College Park and the University of Delaware, Dr. Robertson said. They are currently working on agreements with Pennsylvania State University and West Virginia University.
UMES’s veterinary school is also working with other institutions in the HBCU network, including Delaware State University and Southern University and A&M College, and developing pathways for undergraduate students at those schools.
The agreements vary, from allowing early admission for qualified applicants to dual programs to allotting a certain number of seats for qualified applicants, Dr. Robertson said.
UMES has its own preveterinary program through the Simon A. Haley School of Agriculture & Natural Sciences, housed under the Department of Agriculture, Food, and Resource Sciences.
Facilities
UMES received approval in December 2023 from the University System of Maryland to offer a veterinary school, according to a university announcement.
Months earlier, the university had announced a $60 million financial campaign—the largest in the school’s nearly 140-year history. Part of that funding will help fund the construction of a dedicated building for the veterinary school, Dr. Kimberly Braxton, an associate professor at UMES, told USA Today in a February 2024 article.
An additional $1 million for the development of a DVM program at UMES came from a federal funding package passed in November 2025.
The veterinary school plans to use existing infrastructure from the Haley School of Agriculture and Natural Sciences as well as the university’s School of Pharmacy and Health Professions classroom and laboratory spaces. In addition, UMES is renovating space on campus to repurpose for the small animal clinical skills facility and another space for anatomy instruction.
Starting next summer, a more than 100,000-square-foot facility will be constructed, which will house the veterinary school and one or two departments in the School of Pharmacy and Health Professions. A new large animal clinical education center will also be built.
Leadership
Dr. Robertson (Mississippi State ’84) became the UMES veterinary school’s first permanent dean on July 1, 2024.
He began his career in private practice, eventually owning and operating Northwest Rankin Animal Clinic in Brandon, Mississippi for 18 years.
Dr. Robertson first joined academia in 2001 at Mississippi State University College of Veterinary Medicine, holding multiple positions and eventually serving as clinical professor in the Department of Pathobiology and Population Medicine.
He switched back to clinical practice in 2008, becoming chief of staff for Banfield Pet Hospital clinics in Spanish Fort and Mobile, Alabama, and then medical director for its Dallas and Mid-South markets.
Eight years later, Dr. Robertson became a part of the veterinary faculty at LMU and Arizona. Then the opportunity at UMES came along.
“I felt like it was a great opportunity to build a program based on what I’ve learned and build team and culture of like-minded people. It’s a lot of work but it’s very exciting,” he said.
Fonte: https://www.avma.org/
