July 2025

Summer is here! The work that my colleagues and our students here at the School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) and UW Veterinary Care do continues to astound and inspire me, but I also hope you’re finding time to step away. While summer presents a ripe opportunity to pursue research and prepare for teaching outside the demands of the academic year, it can be a good time to recharge and reset. Taking time to breathe is an important way to prepare for the fall. I’m enjoying canoeing on Lake Mendota and I’m looking forward to family trips to Chicago and Lake Geneva as my family continues to get to know the Midwest.

We’re entering the final stages of strategic planning efforts, with draft objectives and key results being refined this month following feedback from our internal and external communities. Conversations across the school and with our stakeholders and supporters have been instrumental to forming this plan, which reflects our shared values and ambitions. I also want to thank everyone who participated in our strategic planning town hall on June 9. It was an engaging conversation, and I believe it helped improve the plan. We remain on track to complete strategic planning work later this month. I encourage you to visit the strategic planning website for updates and to share your feedback.

Across campus, we will be experiencing a major operational change on July 7 with the implementation of Workday. I understand this will have significant effects on some members of the SVM family. Please be patient during this transitional period. Information and resources about Workday are available on the school’s intranet site: https://intranet.vetmed.wisc.edu, which is reachable while on campus at the SVM or via connection to the SVM VPN. If you haven’t already, please complete the training courses that have been shared with you in advance of the go live date. If you have any questions identifying your funding, please reach out to an administrator in your department to confirm your Workday funding information.

Until next time…

On, Wisconsin!

Jon

UWVC News

UW Veterinary Care’s (UWVC) new, state-of-the-art oncology service space is open and seeing patients. The renovated suite quadruples the space available to UWVC clinicians to see cancer patients and doubles the hospital’s space for chemotherapy treatment. It’s also home to PET-CT, an advanced diagnostic tool that is redefining how diseases are diagnosed and treated in animals.

Currently, UWVC’s oncology team is seeing about 100 patients per week. The new space will allow clinicians to see more patients and reduce wait times. It also offers more room for veterinary students, clinicians, and hospital support staff to interact and collaborate as they deliver best-in-class oncology care for UWVC clients and their pets.

Please also join us in welcoming the following new team members to UWVC:

Jennifer Fitzsimmons joined as the hospital’s new continuous improvement internal consultant.
Angela Alfonso joined as UWVC’s new small animal hospital kennels and facilities manager.

UWVC’s veterinary technician training program was recently spotlighted in a video feature by Spectrum News 1. Hospital Director Christopher Snyder and team members Jill Medenwaldt, Melinda Carmody, Lindsey Hernke, and Samantha Flint are all quoted in the story. Watch it here.

SVM News & Updates

A team of researchers, including the SVM’s Marulasiddappa Suresh (John E. Butler Professor in Comparative and Mucosal Immunology and associate dean for research and graduate educations) and Jorge Osorio (Department of Pathobiological Sciences), has been awarded a Research Forward grant by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research. The funding will support their work to create mRNA vaccines that can be stored at room temperature and accessed by patients worldwide. Congratulations!
Megan Mickelson (’09 DVM’13) is returning to the SVM and UWVC to focus on surgical oncology. She returns to Madison, where she did her surgical residency, from her most recent position at the University of Missouri, where she served as an assistant professor in surgical oncology. Mickelson will build on UWVC’s strength in medical and radiation oncology. She will also bolster an already best-in-class surgical team and help streamline comprehensive care for our veterinary cancer patients. Her first day back at UW-Madison is July 27.
Congratulations to Lisa Forrest (Department of Surgical Sciences) on her retirement! Her final day with the SVM will be later this month and her final day in the clinic was June 13.
Congratulations to Christopher Snyder (associate dean for clinical affairs and director of UW Veterinary Care) on being formally accepted into the European Veterinary Dental College at its May annual conference in Oslo, Norway. At the conference, Snyder also summarized his research on anatomic predisposing factors causing jaw fractures in dogs.

Congratulations to Freya Mowat (Department of Surgical Sciences) on her selection for the Melita Grunow Family Professorship in Companion Animal Health. The appointment is from July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2030. Grunow was a great friend of the SVM and UWVC and a former board of visitors member. The award supports a faculty member whose research is focused on improving companion animal health.
Bobby Kapolnek is joining the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association as an associate director of development in support of the SVM. His first day is July 7. Welcome, Bobby!
Thanks to the Department of Comparative Biosciences for sharing an impressive list of recent publications and awards:
Research Associate Lindsey Felth Tanaka in the lab of Kimberly Keil Stietz (PhD’14) received a five-year NIH K12 training grant to study urinary tract function in a mouse model of autism. More information about the K12 training grant is here.
Karen Hershberger-Braker’s (DVM’10) abstract has been accepted for oral presentation at the upcoming 75th annual meeting of the American Association of Veterinary Anatomists. The meeting will be hosted by the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan.
Nick Burgraff released new episodes of the popular podcast, Neuro Network. Find the latest episode here.
Karen Hershberger-Baker (DVM’10), Jessica Rippe (DVM’18) and McLean Gunderson (’97), represented their department, school and college at the UW Faculty College in May 2025. The faculty college theme was “(Re)Orienting SoTL: Rooting Inquiries in Your Identities, Purposes, Artifacts and Communities.” It was a valuable learning experience that all three are excited to share more about
McLean Gunderson (’97) has been hard at work creating a new model which will be used for at least four brand new Active Learning Exercises (ALEs) in Phase 1. Allison Klein and Jessica Rippe (DVM’18) helped develop the model along with Jesse Darley from Engineering. Gunderson, Rippe, and Karen Hershberger-Braker (DVM’10) have created the ALE documents, and will be presenting on this at VetEd Bristol in July. The images for this new model and ALE's can be found under the “Instructional Models” tab on Gunderson’s website.

From left to right: Hershberger-Braker, Gunderson, and Rippe.

SVM Media Highlights

A team led by Joan Jorgensen (’88 DVM’93, Department of Comparative Biosciences) recently had a manuscript accepted for publication in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper focuses on key aspects of development for male fertility and virility throughout life. Read it here.
Kyle Bartholomew (DVM’17; Department of Surgical Sciences) discusses with DVM 360 the importance of creating “individual protocols” for each patient clinicians see. “While it's easy to create standardized protocols for every patient that you have, make sure to treat your patients individually,” he says. The interview comes after he served as a continuing education instructor on small animal anesthesia at the 2025 North American Veterinary Community SkillShop in Orlando.
Lauren Trepanier (Department of Medical Sciences) is quoted in Yahoo! Life in a story discussing a potential link between certain lawn treatments and cancer in dogs.
Tatiana Ferreira (Department of Surgical Sciences) in DVM360 discusses how inhalant anesthesia can be used for any procedure. The interview comes after she co-presented a lecture on inhalant anesthesia vs. total intravenous anesthesia at the 2025 North American Veterinary Community SkillShop in Orlando.
Peter Muir (Department of Surgical Sciences) and Mehdi Momen (Comparative Orthopaedic & Genetics Research Laboratory) were recently featured on the Veterinary Vertex podcast to discuss their article, “Polygenic risk score prediction of complex diseases in companion animals: prospects, opportunities, and challenges in.”
The SVM turned out for a recent episode of WPR’s “The Larry Meiller Show.” Christopher Snyder (associate dean for clinical affairs and director of UW Veterinary Care) discussed caring for pets’ teeth and mouths and Lyric Bartholomay (PhD’04, Department of Pathobiological Sciences) talked ticks.