Dear friends and colleagues -
Last weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the SVM’s Celebration of Excellence event for the first time and all I can say is – wow! Nearly 300 students, faculty, staff, and friends of the school gathered at Union South to celebrate the end of the academic year and recognize the efforts of the exceptional people who work and learn here. My sincere congratulations to this year’s award recipients.
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I’m also excited about the work the strategy teams have been doing to develop the school’s next strategic plan. I encourage you to visit the strategic planning website for updates and to check out draft objectives. While there, you can also submit comments about the objectives to the strategy team consultants or team leads. Work continues on key results and tactics to meet the objectives, which will be shared with our school community later this month. Along with that, we’ll provide information about gathering feedback and proceeding with next steps, including a schoolwide town hall. I appreciate the hard work that has gone into this effort and I’m happy to report we’re on track to meet our goal of completing the plan this summer.
As we've been sharing, starting in July all Universities of Wisconsin campuses will begin using Workday to standardize and streamline finance, human resources, and research administration processes, including accounting, time off, payroll, and closing out research awards. In preparation for this change, please refer to the SVM intranet for important information about critical deadlines related to purchasing, hiring, and research grant administration. These deadlines will be firm so it’s important to plan ahead to minimize disruption. The intranet also includes other key information about Workday. Please continue to watch your emails for information about Workday training and work closely with your department administrators on cutover deadlines and reminders. Thank you in advance for your patience with our research, finance, business services, and HR teams, as they work to learn and support Workday implementation in addition to their other responsibilities.
Finally, congratulations to all the May 2025 grads out there, within our DVM and graduate programs as well as across campus. Best wishes on the next chapter in your journey!
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As part of the UW Science Expeditions in early April, we were thrilled to welcome the community to an open house, offering many people a first look at our new state-of-the-art SVM North small animal hospital and its collaborative research and educational spaces. What a fun day and fun way to connect with young people who might be the next generation of talented researchers and veterinarians!
Also, please join us in welcoming the following new team members:
- Alisyn Ledermann joined the ECC team this week as a vet assistant
- Rylann Williams, CVT, joined the ECC this week as a veterinary nurse
- Mateya (Teya) Christensen joined the reception team as a client services specialist
- Kristin Foster, CVT, joined the large animal hospital as a veterinary nurse supervisor
Finally, we’re excited to welcome our incoming Class of 2026, for whom the traditional “blue coat ceremony” in April marked the start of their 4th year clinical rotations (photo below).
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In an effort to share and streamline resources, a new online form is helping catalog sharable lab research equipment, such as qPCR machines, perfusion pumps, specialized microscopes/cameras, microtomes, flow cytometers, and fluorometers. We encourage faculty members to complete this form to help foster collaboration and community while at the same time maximizing everyone's budget.
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Kudos to the One Health Club for their recent bake sale and donation drive. The group collected a whole carload of items – more than 250 total! – and donated these needed supplies to four local Madison shelters: Dane County Humane Society, Shelter from the Storm, Madison Cat Project, and Angel’s Wish. Donations included more than 50 bags and cans of food as well as treats, toys, beds, blankets, exam gloves, cleaning supplies, leashes/collars, food/water bowls, yarn, and scratchers.
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Cool Science Image Contest
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To celebrate the exploratory and aesthetic value of the photos, renderings, videos, images, art, and more made in the process of fulfilling curiosity and advancing science, the 15th annual Cool Science Image Contest is now soliciting the best visuals from members of the UW-Madison community. We have had several SVM winners in the past and highly encourage submissions from the incredible work done here!
Winning Image Spotlight: Congratulations again to Serena George, graduate student in Veterinary Medicine and Molecular and Environmental Toxicology, for her winning entry in UW–Madison’s Cool Science Image Contest 2024 (image above). Featured in the October 2024 Message from the Dean, her image captures sheets of cells migrating from the edge of four scales taken from fathead minnows.
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Good Luck to Sydney Niewiedzial!
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She’s a vet student by day, but that’s not all that keeps Sydney Niewiedzial (DVMx’27) busy. Trinity Irish Dance Company is a Chicago-based, globally celebrated professional repertoire company that blends Irish dance with contemporary innovation. Sydney will be performing in the upcoming world premiere of “The Sash” choreographed by Mark Howard, Chelsea Hoy, and Stephanie Martinez at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago May 16-18. Learn more and buy tickets here.
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Congratulations to those recently promoted to Clinical Associate Professor: Ryan Breuer (DVM’12; Department of Medical Sciences), Lorelei Clarke (Department of Pathobiological Sciences), Seth Eaton (Department of Surgical Sciences), and Samantha Loeber (Department of Surgical Sciences). All very well-deserved!
Lauren Trepanier (Department of Medical Sciences; Assistant Dean for Clinical and Translational Research) won the annual Faculty Achievement in Research Award from the American Association of Veterinary Clinicians. As Dr. Trepanier approaches her retirement later this year, we are thrilled she has received this honor.
Ruthanne Chun (BS’97 DVM’91; Department of Medical Sciences) will present at the 2025 UW–Madison Teaching & Learning Symposium on May 15 at Union South. The session is titled “Evolution of and Lessons Learned in an Interactive Interprofessional Communication Skills Training Scenario.”
- PhD student Monica Ridlon and her team in the Keil Stietz Lab published the manuscript "Developmental polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) exposure impacts on voiding physiology persist into adulthood and influence sensitivity to bladder stimuli in mice" in Current Research in Toxicology.
- DVM/PhD student Serena George published the manuscript "In vivo verification of fish keratocyte explant culture for use as innate immunotoxicity screening assay: 2,4-Dicholorphenoxyacetic acid induces non-monotonic dose response in fathead minnow (Pimephales promelas) keratocyte cell sheet migration" in Chemosphere.
- Keer Jiang, recent PhD grad and current post doc in the Jorgensen Lab, published the manuscript “Single-Cell Resolution Uncovers a Collaborative Microenvironment For Optimal Testosterone Production During Fetal Testis Development” in PNAS.
- Marcela Ambrogi, former PhD student, and her team in the Vezina Lab as well team members in the Keil Stietz and Kumar Lab, published the manuscript “A 5-HT-mediated urethral defense against urinary tract infections” in PNAS and the manuscript "Effects of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors and Ondansetron on Urinary Tract Infections in Pregnancy” in Reproductive Sciences.
- Brandon Scharpf, a PhD student in the Vezina Lab, in conjunction with the Arendt Lab, published the manuscript ‘Prostatic Escherichia coli infection drives CCR2-dependent recruitment of fibrocytes and collagen production” in Disease Models and Mechanisms and his art was featured on the journal cover.
- Allyssa Fogarty, a PhD Student in the lab of Fei Zhao, was awarded the Zoetis Award for Research Excellence by a Graduate Student, for her project ‘GATA2 is an essential transcription factory for epididymal morphogenesis.’
- Zirui Fu, a recent undergraduate in the Jorgensen Lab, was awarded an NSF graduate research fellowship, and Tayler Muralt, a scholar in the PREP program was awarded an NSF GRFP. Jessica Lysne, a former scholar in the PREP program, was awarded Honorable Mention for the NSF GRFP.
- Joan Jorgensen was awarded a $10,000 grant from Solving Science and the UCSF Propel Program to support the PREP program.
- Akhil Pidikiti, an undergraduate researcher in the Vezina Lab, was awarded a UW-Madison sophomore research fellowship.
- Jessica Rippe will begin a new track as Assistant Teaching Professor.
- Jessica Rippe, Karen Hershberger and McLean Gunderson have been invited/accepted to the UW Faculty College in May to (Re)Engage with the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning. They are 3 of 8 representatives from UW-Madison and are excited to represent the veterinary school and UW-Madison as they get to know our teaching colleagues from across the state.
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Regenerative Medical Center - Featuring postdoc research associate Portia Smith and her acceptance into the SVM’s Comparative Biomedical Sciences program
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