Story by Rachel Knight
The veterinary profession is a vocation of service. While many who become veterinarians naturally have a desire to serve, the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS) is committed to helping shape Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) students into both day-one ready veterinarians and leaders in their communities.
To help achieve this goal, the VMBS offers the elective Veterinarians Impacting Their Communities to second-year DVM students. With Dr. Leslie Easterwood ‘90, ’92, ‘94 as their guide, students practice using their new veterinary expertise in their community service efforts while also learning to bring service into their future careers.
A SERVICE-ORIENTED PROFESSOR
Easterwood wears many hats as an associate clinical professor of equine community practice; she cares for patients, teaches future Aggie veterinarians, and volunteers both within the campus setting and beyond.
“Service is the key to our mental health,” Easterwood said. “Service puts life in perspective. It’s easy to get lost in our careers and the little chasms of what we do, but service helps us see that what seems like a huge thing in the office is really a little thing on the spectrum of problems that people face.
“My goal with this class is to teach students that they can do little acts of service at home,” Easterwood shared. “They don’t have to travel around the world to serve someone in need. They can do little things every week or every month in their home communities.”
Easterwood’s community service-oriented curriculum also provides hands-on learning opportunities that combines the students’ passion for veterinary medicine with service.
“Veterinary students, and especially Aggie veterinary students, come into the DVM program with a heart for service,” Easterwood said. “It’s a part of who they are and it’s important that we show them how to continue connecting with that part of themselves, especially as life and their veterinary careers get stressful from time-to-time.”
Danyelle Reskind, a future Aggie veterinarian who took the class in 2024, said she appreciated Easterwood’s approach to the class and sees her as a role model.
“Dr. Easterwood helps us become not just veterinarians but veterinarians who enjoy being veterinarians,” Reskind said. “She does a lot of community service herself, so to be exposed to a veterinarian like Dr. Easterwood, who is a very successful veterinarian but also takes the time to fill her bucket by giving back, is an incredible opportunity.”
BUILDING NEW AGGIE TRADITIONS
Veterinarians Impacting Their Communities was originally designed so that students could arrange a vaccination or wellness clinic in their home communities. With her connections across campus, however, Easterwood decided to take the class in a new direction.
In 2013, an undergraduate student organization called BUILD was started with the aim to combine the comradery formerly associated with building Bonfire and the Aggie core value of selfless service.
BUILD achieves its ambitious goals by transforming commercial shipping containers into medical facilities that can be shipped to communities in need. Each BUILD container is dedicated in honor of an Aggie, with their first campaign creating 12 medical units in honor of the 12 Aggies who lost their lives in the Bonfire collapse in 1999.
BUILD’s Fallen Aggie Hero Project campaign began in 2018 and ultimately connected the organization with Easterwood.
“In 2012, I lost a classmate and childhood friend, Roy Tisdale, at Fort Bragg,” Easterwood shared. “In an effort to honor him, we started the Ring It Forward program, where we give Aggie ring scholarships to current veteran students in the name of each of the Aggies we’ve lost since 9/11.
“In BUILD’s Fallen Aggie Hero Project campaign, their goal is to dedicate a clinic in honor of each of the 37 Aggie veterans killed on or after 9/11,” Easterwood shared. “Because of my work with the Ring It Forward program, the BUILD students contacted me when it came time to start reaching out to the families of the 37 Aggies they were working to honor.”
CONNECTING SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES
“After learning about the organization, I really wanted to do a veterinary clinic with BUILD, and when I took over teaching Veterinarians Impacting Their Communities, it just all melded together,” Easterwood said.
The first year Easterwood taught the course, eight groups of students pitched different clinic ideas to a panel of VMBS faculty and leaders.
Designs for BUILD’s first veterinary clinic were special; like the human clinics BUILD was accustomed to making, the veterinary clinic designs were confined to the dimensions of a commercial shipping container, which meant every inch of space had to be maximized. Unlike the human clinics, however, the veterinary clinic needed to consider the unique needs of furry, four-legged patients.
As such, before submitting the pitch to BUILD for their consideration, the eight groups of students presented their ideas to a panel of judges that included faculty and leaders from the VMBS, including Dr. John R. August, the Carl B. King Dean of Veterinary Medicine. The winning pitch was then shared with BUILD for their consideration.
“The project that won was designed to provide a spay and neuter clinic to a nonprofit organization in Corpus Christi,” Easterwood shared. “The organization had been working out of a motor home, but the BUILD project gave the organization and the animals they serve their first permanent location, which really made all the difference in their efforts to help the local pet population. It allowed pet owners and animal lovers to easily locate their clinic and bring their animals to the veterinarian, which reduced travel time for the veterinary team and expanded their availability to meet with clients and serve patients.”
After that, BUILD decided to create a new animal-centric dedication campaign for the containers turned into veterinary clinics. They dedicated the first veterinary clinic to Reveille I, Texas A&M University’s first live mascot that officially assumed the role in 1931. They anticipate continuing to dedicate the veterinary clinics to Reveilles who’ve crossed the rainbow bridge at a pace of one per year with help from Easterwood’s class.
SETTING THE COURSE
In 2024, Easterwood began having all students work on one BUILD pitch. Inspired by the first year’s project, the class pitched a veterinary clinic that would serve the underserved in South Texas.
“Our goal for the second container was to have a unit that could be set up on a local high school’s grounds,” Easterwood said. “South Texas, like most rural areas in the state, has a veterinary shortage and an abundance of animals.
“The container clinic would help address the immediate need of patient care by providing a place for veterinarians to practice when visiting the area,” she said. “Its location at a local high school sets it up to also provide a more long-term solution to the veterinary shortage by exposing students to veterinary medicine and introducing them to veterinary mentors, inspiring them to pursue careers in veterinary medicine either as veterinary technicians or as veterinarians.”
Using the container as a clinic, high schools also could implement the Veterinary Science Certificate Program, which empowers students from age 12 to adults to become certified veterinary assistants.
“When students complete occupational certificates, it’s a triple win,” Easterwood explained. “The school district in which they complete the certificate gets a little money from the state, the student gets to explore career opportunities while also becoming certified with an applicable skill set, and the local community is more likely to attract a veterinarian, either because they have hirable help already trained and ready to serve or because the students who complete the certificate feel called to continue serving their community by becoming a veterinarian.”
BUILD accepted the second class’s pitch and will begin building the new clinic this fall; this clinic will be dedicated in honor of Reveille II before shipping it to South Texas in the spring of 2025.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
As Easterwood prepares for her third year in leading the course, she plans to continue working with BUILD while also introducing new opportunities to serve into the curriculum.
“I’d like future classes to place a container in South Texas in honor of each Reveille,” Easterwood shared. “Now that we have the model pitch down, future students will be able to build off that to help serve communities across South Texas in need of a veterinary clinic.”
Easterwood said she also plans to add new service opportunities by partnering with local organizations such as the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Brazos Valley.
“Before the COVID-19 outbreak, I had started doing a program with the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Brazos Valley, but once the pandemic began, we had to stop,” Easterwood said. “Next year, I want to get that program going again.”
That program, called This Is How We Role, is designed to help kids in kindergarten through fourth grade learn about career opportunities in the veterinary profession directly from veterinary students.
“In 2020, when we first started this program, the first day we asked the kids what they wanted to be when they grow up. It really struck me that not a single kid said they wanted to be a veterinarian,” Easterwood said. “When I asked if they knew what a veterinarian was, they said ‘no.’ They’d never had the opportunity to take a pet to the vet.
“Our goal in this program is to expose them to vet students and the veterinary world,” Easterwood continued. “Similar to the Veterinary Science Certificate Program, this gives these kids the chance to see themselves serving their community as a veterinarian in the future and it opens up a whole new world of professional possibilities.”
Reiskind said Easterwood’s approach that strives to better the future for generations to come evokes the Aggie spirit.
“In the Aggie community, giving back is just a part of who we are,” Reiskind said. “We see what generations of Aggies did before us and how that benefited our experiences. Now it’s our turn to make life better for the next generation.
“Aggie veterinarians have an extra dose of the desire to serve,” she continued. “We go into the veterinary profession because we care about animals but also because we care about people and we know they benefit from the human-animal bond. This class was great, because it allowed us to connect with our desire to serve in new ways. I’m excited to see how the class continues to serve in the future.”
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Note: This story originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of VMBS Today.
For more information about the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, please visit our website at vetmed.tamu.edu or join us on Facebook, Instagram, X, and LinkedIn.
Contact Information: Jennifer Gauntt, Director of VMBS Communications, Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences; jgauntt@cvm.tamu.edu; 979-862-4216