Category Archives: Careers in Veterinary Medicine

Thinking Outside-the-box Proves Valuable to Fieldwork

Roxann with lambFormer VSTP Pfizer Fellow Roxann Brooks Motroni on thinking outside-the-box for career options and appreciating California’s cattle ranchers

Roxann Brooks Motroni – a Veterinary Scientist Training Program (VSTP) Pfizer Fellow – holds a PhD in Comparative Pathology (2012) and a DVM (2013) from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. She was an important part of the team working on developing a vaccine to prevent foothill abortion in cattle under Professor Jeff Stott.  She sat down with us by phone recently to share her experiences at the school during a pivotal time for the foothill abortion vaccine and what she is doing now as an AAAS Fellow for the Department of Homeland Security in Washington DC.

Tell me a little about your background. What got you interested in veterinary medicine?Like every other veterinary student, I wanted to be a vet since I was three and never thought of anything else. I’m originally from Virginia. At 16, the state of Virginia offered a ‘Governor’s School of Agriculture’ at Virginia Tech that gave me the opportunity to work in a research lab. Through participating in this program I realized I really liked research. It was my first time thinking outside-the-box about my career choices and I pursued every research experience I could. I ended up with a full scholarship to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where I studied biology. This was the time when West Nile Virus entered the U.S., and it got me thinking about infectious diseases and the wildlife-livestock interface. For example, how wildlife management protects livestock and how cattle can graze without effecting wildlife.  Continue reading →

Student’s Journey to Food Animal Medicine

By Monique Garcia Gunther

michelle with cows 2When Michelle Schack was seven years old, she was dissecting squirrels. At 17, she helped raise nine guide dogs.  In college, as an undergraduate resident manager of an animal sciences barn, she lived with pigs for two years. Today, in her final year of DVM training at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, you’ll find Michelle outdoors working on a dairy farm diagnosing cattle pregnancies or treating a sick cow, as part of a rotation in dairy production medicine.

A city girl drawn to the farm

You might think Michelle grew up on a farm. Instead, she was raised in the traffic-filled suburbs of the San Francisco Bay Area where 4-H Clubs were hard to come by.

From an early age, Michelle said she knew she wanted to be a veterinarian and sought out opportunities to work with animals. But she was keenly aware that becoming a veterinarian involved more than a love for animals. While she owned dogs, a tortoise, a bunny and a bird as pets, she also possessed an inquiring mind, a strong sciences and math skill set and good communication skills. When she reached high school, she took anatomy and physiology to prepare for college. Continue reading →