Sept. 9, 2024 - Dr. Nicholas Frank

On this first ever episode of the Vet Med Cast, Wade the Website guy interviews the Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University, Dr. Nicholas Frank.

Associate Producer: Caroline Griffith
vetmed.msstate.edu

Transcript

Wade Leonard  

Wade. Good morning or afternoon or wherever you're listening to this. I'm Wade the website guy here at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University, and you are listening to the vet medcast, or whatever I end up calling it for September 9, 2024. So the idea here, is this show will allow you to keep up with everything that's going on and everything that's coming up at CVM. So we think of this as like an announcement board with hopefully some cool additional stuff, like long form interviews with faculty, staff, students and alumni of CVM. In fact, the carrot you get to listen to this inaugural episode is an interview I conducted the other day with the dean of the vet school himself, Dr Nicholas Frank. That's coming up a little later. My goal here is to condense all the news and events going on at the vet school into a weekly podcast that you can listen to while you're working out or doing the dishes or spending an hour trying to find a parking spot at the wise center or whatever. For those of you who hate reading this is for you, the first big piece of news this week is that the Alumni Weekend is coming up on october 25 alumni can buy tickets and get a full schedule by visiting vetmed.msstate.edu, and scrolling down to the events section of the website. Awards day is scheduled for November 13. These awards honor the work of the faculty and staff here at CVM. Nomination forms are forthcoming, so check your inboxes for that. Congratulations are in order for Dr Alicia Olivier, who was recently named the permanent Associate Dean for Administration. Congratulations, Dr o there's big news on the scholarship front. Last week, Governor Tate Reeves signed a bill creating the DR Elton, Mac Huddleston rural veterinarian scholarship program. The scholarship is designed to help the state encourage more students to become rural veterinarians. The first two recipients of the scholarship are Natalie Garcia and Gabby Walters, congratulations to you both, and that is in the only scholarship recently founded, the Mary Beth and Billy Baldwin vet tech scholarship is a new employee funded scholarship that will provide $5,000 to vet tech students. The scholarship was established by the CVMs own Assistant Director of Development, Marybeth Baldwin and her husband Billy. If you'd like to contribute to the scholarship fund, give us a call down in the Dean's office, we've got some new additions to the vet school. Dr Camilla massarenas joined the CVM faculty last week after completing your training at Auburn. Welcome aboard. Dr Michael Panayiotis has become the new department head for the Department of comparative Biomedical Sciences. Dr Panayiotis will be joining us in January. Welcome aboard, sir. And that is all the news I have in my inbox. So if you have things you want people to know about, please let me know, and please tell everyone about the show and tell them that it's better than it actually is. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Dr Nicholas Frank. You know, Dr. Frank, I think the question that everybody's asks you relentlessly over and over again, and maybe this is your chance to answer it for the last time, is England to Mississippi State? How the heck did that work?

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

Well, that's a long story. Wade it. It started back when I was 18, and at that time, I had applied to veterinary school in the UK. And for those of you are not familiar with the system in the UK, you apply to veterinary school straight out of secondary school or high school. And so I had applied, I was lucky enough to get an offer, and that offer was that if I did reach the level that they required, then I would automatically go into veterinary school. And so the subjects I was taking at that time were biology, chemistry, maths and physics. And so I made it through, except for chemistry, and the chemistry proved to be very difficult, and I did not meet the mark on that and so at that time, it was give up my hopes of being a vet or look for a different path. And so I was very fortunate to be able to come over to the United States, and had the opportunity to go and spend a year riding around with a veterinarian in rural North Carolina. And that led to me having the opportunity to go to the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. And so I did my bachelor's of signs there. And then again, another really fortunate situation where Purdue University veterinary school opened up two positions for international students. And so since I was an international student, I applied. And. And was able to get into vet school at Purdue, that's my alma mater. And so I did my doctorate of Veterinary Medicine at Purdue, and then I graduated, went into practice for a while, and then came back to Purdue University and did my residency in large animal internal medicine, and then my PhD, and then after that, went to the University of Tennessee as a faculty member. Worked there for many years, and then was able to go to Tufts University, entered into administration there as a department head, and went from being a department head over the years to being an Associate Dean, and then applied for the position here at Mississippi State. And so arrived here about a year ago, September 1 of 2023 I started in my position as dean here. 

Wade Leonard  

Yeah, congratulations, by the way, you know, one full year knocked out. Let's, you know, hope you stick around for a few more. So, you've been in the US most of your life? 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

Then, yes, now I have, yeah, yeah. 

Wade Leonard  

Youu know, chemistry, by the way, gets the best of us. So don't sweat that too much. I know, for instance, that your wife is also a veterinarian. 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

She is. 

Wade Leonard  

You've got two sons I have, one of whom I think, is a vet. The other is an aspiring vet. Is that right? 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

No. One is a veterinary student. And so he's in a second year of vet student veterinary school. And then the younger son is still doing his bachelor's degree, but has an interest in veterinary medicine.  Yes, so, nature or nurture. Dr Frank? Are you all just genetically predisposed to being vets? I don't know. I don't have any veterinarians in my in my ancestry, and neither does my wife. So, I think I'll go with nurture on that one. 

Wade Leonard  

So large animals is your is your specialty? What got you interested in doing that? 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

Yeah, so when I first started becoming interested in veterinary medicine. I should have gone one step further back and say that, you know, my family actually comes from the north of England, and they they were Hill farmers. So they raised sheep and cattle in the Yorkshire Dales. And so my first interest was, first of all, to become a farmer. And so I've always been more interested in the large animal side. And then once it changed into a interest in veterinary medicine, it always stayed with the large animals. And so that's been consistent throughout my my life, and it's so when you were practicing, were you practicing with, with mainly large animals, I was it was primarily a horse practice, but with some small ruminant work and a few cattle. 

Wade Leonard  

How do you decide, or how did you rather decide, you know what area specifically that you were going to focus on? I believe that your PhD is in equine endocrinology?

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

 It is right, yeah,

Wade Leonard  

because, you know, I'm new to the vet world, and the delineation between small animal and large animal seems slightly ridiculous to me. But So how do you focus it down into Okay, the endocrine system of the horse is specifically what I jive with. 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

So for me, my research interests really came out of my clinical work. So I when I was in practice, I was seeing horses with endocrine or hormonal diseases, and they're actually really quite common in in horses. So one endocrine disease affecting older horses is seen in more than 20% of horses once they reach the age of 15. So I was seeing them on a regular basis, and was at that time, we just didn't know that much about these diseases. And yet, the diseases themselves can cause a really painful, devastating disease of the foot of the horse that causes tremendous pain. Horses are prey species, so they spend all of their time orbit. A few minutes a day they spend on their feet ready to run away. That's what a prey species is designed to do. And so the horse, when it has a very painful condition of the feet, doesn't really want to lie down and remain standing. And this is a incredibly painful situation. So I had seen these horses, worked on them, tried to save their lives, and found that, you know, what we had available to us at that time really was inadequate. We didn't really even know how to diagnose the diseases properly, let alone treat them well. And so it was very much out of that situation that I became interested in trying to understand the diseases first of all, then understand better how to diagnose them and ultimately, to treat them. So. That I would hope my goal, of my whole research endeavor has been to try to reduce the likelihood of a horse getting this disease, because once they get it, it's very difficult to get it under control. They're very painful. And because of the pain and the damage caused to their feet, they either are not able to do what they should do, and that's run around because they're they're lame, they're very they're very painful, or in many cases, it becomes so severe they have to be put to sleep, have to be euthanized. And so to me, it was all about trying to stop that from ever happening, so that we wouldn't have to euthanize horses because of laminitis, that's the condition of the foot. 

Wade Leonard  

How successful or far down the line with that research in terms of practical application? Did you get? 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

Yeah, so, you know, I, I would say I, I was among a group of researchers and clinician researchers who were still looking at these animals on clinics. Um, and together, we've seen just an amazing explosion of research in this area. In my career, it's been one of the most amazing developments, really, to see how many people became interested in studying these diseases. And I would say, you know, with my own contributions, but with the contributions of a lot of other people, we've really advanced in terms of our ability to diagnose these diseases and to treat them. And so if I look back from when I graduated to where we are today, we've come along in huge amounts through this research, and it really shows you the power of research and the importance of research, that we can really make a diff difference. So I played a part in that, but I won't take too much credit for that. A lot of other people worked on that. Well, look, I come from the humanities world, and so when someone you know has a practical application of something they've done, it just sort of boggles my mind. So the What led you getting away from your practice then and getting back into the world of academia? Yeah, so that's a great question. I think two aspects of that. One is that feeling that I wanted to understand more, I wanted to do the research to understand, go to a greater depth of understanding of the diseases I was seeing, and that led to me wanting to do the the specialty training in internal medicine, so so that I would have a much more advanced skill set, much more of a deeper understanding of the diseases. But the other main factor was that, as with many practitioners, I had students riding around in the truck with me, and I found how much I enjoyed talking to them, quizzing them, asking them questions. And so for both of those reasons, you know, it was, it was funny. I think I would have been described as one of those students when I graduated, who've never thought they would return to academia. And sure enough, a few years later, I show back up again, wanting to learn more and wanting to do more. 

Wade Leonard  

And so now you're here at Mississippi State.  This might sound like a stupid question, but what exactly does a dean do? What does it mean to Dean? What's your day like? 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

Well, my day is hugely variable. You know, you're, you're, you're really trying to work with a team that is keeping the college running in all of its many functions. So you know, we have the three parts to our mission, which are teaching and service and research and all that's going on every day, and many people engaged in those important parts of our mission. So it's keeping that moving, keeping that going in a way that's, you know, going to to help us get where we want to go, which is not just to deliver what we're doing today, but also to think about, how do we meet the challenges that we're encountering. And, you know, the challenges that are to come and and to always be thinking about, you know, what can we do better? What else do we need to try to address? What other challenges do we need to address? And you know, how do we make sure that as we're doing all of that, that we keep a good focus on our people, and that we make sure that people are coming to work every day, wanting to come to work, finding satisfaction from working with one another, and ultimately, really believing in this idea that each of us have our individual contributions, but when we work together, we can achieve A lot more than just working alone. 

Wade Leonard  

Okay, so with that in mind, what is it about the College of Veterinary Medicine here at Mississippi State that you find differentiates us from other vet schools? I mean, Tufts is a great school where you came from. But what is it that makes us special? 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

Yeah, so it's a good question. I mean, what makes us special is, I feel as though we have our focus on on the most important parts of veterinary medicine and veterinary medical education. So, you know, first of all, we are really, really good at training veterinary students to be able to go out and and address the challenges they need to address when they go into their first job. We really pride ourselves on our students being practice ready, and a lot of lot of colleges will say that. But you know for us, it's really very much that if we haven't graduated students who can meet the needs in practice. We we have not accomplished what we set out to do, so we have a clear focus on that. As students are extremely well trained in surgery, which is one of the most challenging parts of being a veterinarian, as students need to be both competent but also confident, because they've got to be able to go out and do these surgical procedures right away. And as students graduate with a large amount of experience, they begin their surgical training in the second year of the curriculum, whereas in other curricular they might not do their first surgery until the third year. By the time they graduate, they're graduating average for the class of 2024 last year was over 90 surgeries. So that's a huge number of surgeries that our students done, and that really gives them that competence and confidence. So we do a really good job at training veterinarians. We do a really good job at having a veterinary medical technology program. So we're training veterinary technologists, sometimes referred to as vet techs. Not all colleges of veterinary medicine have a vet tech program. We have one. It's a very good one. And again, we are also training our students to be ready to go out to practice, so we have the fundamentals down really, really well at Mississippi State. The other parts, though, that are, I think, huge draws to this college are that we are out there trying to tackle some of those problems that I was discussing when I was saying how I got into research, that we are sort of seeing where the need is, and then we're getting into the lab, we're getting into the research to try to address those needs. And so it's relevant research, it's research that's really addressing the needs of the state region, but also the country and the world. And we have programs that are in areas that are incredibly important. You look at some of the areas that we're in research, environmental toxicology, environmental health. When we look at our Global Center for aquatic health and food security, we're looking at aquaculture systems. We're looking at being able to provide food, to feed people, to manage the food scarcities that we see. We are looking at research that is examining diseases that are affecting our livestock in the state. So these are all components of this College of Veterinary Medicine. And I think to get to the essence of your question, why this college, we do all of those core parts of our mission well, and we are well focused on it. We know why we're here. We're hardworking, and we're going to get the results that we need to help in all those different areas. 

Wade Leonard  

So sort of a big picture question. You know, human medicine is kind of the the importance of that's self evident, right to most people. I'm not sure that's necessarily the case with with veterinarians, because I think the the impression that most people have of veterinarians is they take care of puppy dogs and they take care of kitty cats. They're sort of like doctors. I don't mean that disparaging, but I think most people probably have that in mind. What is the what is the big picture case for veterinarians? What are they doing that people may not know that they're out there doing? 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

I think that is one of the challenges with veterinary medicine, is it's so multifactorial that you know, you tend to see it through the lens that that you have having met a veterinarian, or your experience with a veterinarian, as you said, you know, many people have small animals, they've taken their dog or cat to the veterinarian, but clinical medicine, you know, extends into the whole world of agricultural industry. And you know, when we look at our role as veterinarians, in in detecting disease, protecting our food sources. You know, poultry. The poultry industry is, is the number one industry within the state of Mississippi, chicken, of course, we, many of us, eat on a regular basis. You know this? Safety of those the food that we eat, whether it's chicken or beef or catfish, you know, whatever we eat that's come from an animal source. Without veterinarians and veterinary medicine, we would really be in trouble in terms of disease detection, surveillance and and eradication. So So many times I say that, particularly with our diagnostic lab system, because this college has a large diagnostic lab system with labs throughout the state, and they are focused on disease surveillance, we may not recognize them as much. They may not be as high profile as some of the other areas what we do at this college, but without them, it would be high profile if we had disease outbreaks, and we just have to look at highly pathogenic influenza and recognize how devastating it would be if it went through our poultry industry. Right? Without those labs, we would see the headlines. The fact we don't see the headlines means that labs are doing a really good job, doing a good job, right? So, so so there's that aspect of it. The The other aspect of it is that when we think about caring for our pet animals, there's obviously the medicine that goes into that. And, you know, I don't think we should underestimate the challenges there are when you're looking at multiple species. So, you know, we have to advance our medical knowledge, not just in one species, in other words, humans, when we're talking about human medicine, but we have to advance it across multiple species. And those species different differ a lot in their physiology, their anatomy, how diseases manifest in one species versus another, and all of that is what a veterinarian has to learn and has to be able to differentiate and diagnose and treat diseases across all those species. The other part of this that you know is harder to wrap your hands around is, you know, there's somewhat intangible benefits of the human animal bond. You know that most of us who have animals can can say, you know, we have them because we love them. We we gain benefit from them. And I think that you know, that's where you know we have to think about veterinarians supporting something that is contributing to the well being of animal of humans because of the human animal bond. And so these are many of the facets that we have to think about. Lastly, you know, as we think about the roles of veterinarians, we tend not to think about veterinarians in a lab situation, but the research that we do. I'm, you know, this is sometimes referred to as dual benefit research, because if we understand a disease in an animal, that contributes to the understanding of a disease in humans, and the flip side is also true that, you know, we understand a disease in human we can apply that to animals, so we can do research. And we have researchers here at the college who are funded by the National Institutes of Health that are doing research that is focused on human diseases, but we are able to you do comparative research so that we can understand animal diseases and human diseases at the same time. And by comparing them, we often gain better understanding of how those diseases start, how the mechanisms are involved in those diseases are occurring. 

Wade Leonard  

You know, it's interesting. You brought that up because I really didn't think about till I started working here. But with a human medicine, like you said, you've got the one species. One species delineation for veterinarian is, yes, the rest of them, 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

That's right, that's, that's absolutely true. There's a fair few number of T shirts that point that out that are worn by veterinary students. 

Wade Leonard  

Yeah, I never occurred to me. I was talking with a colleague of yours, and, you know, he was telling me war stories about his practice and things, right? And, you know, dogs, and I started asking about cats, and he was like, Look, cats are aliens. They're completely different. Nothing about a cat. And it was fascinating. It never occurred to me. So if someone, you know,a current student here think back the time when you were a newly forged veterinary student. What's something you wish you'd have known that might be, you know, useful for him today? 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

I think what I would say to, and I do say to first year veterinary students, is, you know, there's so much to be gained from the four year experience of going through a veterinary degree program, you'll never in your life be in an environment where you'll have so many experts, so much knowledge right there at your fingertips, right there in the people that teach you, the people that talk to you in the corridors and so soak it in. You know, find, find the. Those areas of veterinary medicine that are inherently fascinating. So that's one piece of advice, the other piece of advice that I give, and one of the the mainstays, really, of of what we do here at the college is to help students understand there's so much to being a veterinarian that goes beyond the knowledge or even the procedures that we do. The veterinarians are highly respected in their communities. They play an important role as community members. So we have a huge emphasis on community here at the college, and it's a community that benefits our staff and our faculty and our students, but we also really try to emphasize to our students that you know, learning how to communicate, learning how to handle those difficult days, learning how to be able to confidently answer questions when you're asked because they're going to go out and be part of a really relatively small profession, but a profession that has a significant impact. And so those are all parts of what I want them to learn while they're here. You know, obviously I'd love every student to get 99% on their exams. But I also think it goes beyond that to let's learn about all the other aspects of being a veterinarian and being a community member. 

Wade Leonard  

With that in mind, imagine you're talking to, and I'm sure you do occasionally, undergrads or or even high school students who are champing at the bit to become a veterinarian. What advice do you have for them? Obviously, they had to get good test scores and have good grades. But, yeah, what advice would you have for someone who's aspiring to get into that school besides pay attention in chemistry? 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

Well, paying attention to chemistry is important, you know, I think we all know that. You know, it's an academically rigorous program, so we do have academic standards to get in but, but we we also really pride ourselves in our admissions process, in looking at the whole student and looking at what they bring to the college and bring to the DVM program. And we ask of our students who are applying to to go out and experience veterinary medicine, experience working with animals prior to applying so that they have a good understanding of what this profession is. And ideally, we ask our students to get experiences in multiple with with more than one veterinarian in different settings. So perhaps some time working in a small animal hospital, but perhaps also spending some time with a large animal practitioner. And the reason we do that is that you know, you need to understand the profession that you're trying to get into. And so, so that's really important. We also, we also look for students to have engaged in in different activities, showing that they are able to commit to something and put energy into something. And so there's all sorts of ways that students can demonstrate that they can have, have had a job. And you know, we, we're very proud to to say that, you know, we have students of all different socioeconomic levels coming into our college and so if you had to work during the summer and you couldn't volunteer somewhere, that's okay, but those jobs that you did are going to demonstrate to us that you know you can come to work every day, you can commit to that you work hard, and those are all important parts of it, because we want to be sure that the students that are starting this program will be able to finish the program, and it's a challenging curriculum, as we said earlier. You know, you're learning about multiple species in four years, and so, so all of those traits are important for what we're looking for as we as we bring students in. 

Wade Leonard  

Is there a specific degree path that makes more sense than others, or well, that is not as important as people might think. 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

I would certainly say there's a lot more flexibility than people might think. You have to do the prerequisite courses to be able to get in. I and so, you know, wherever you go, whatever major you're in, you've got to make sure you can take those prerequisite courses, and they're all listed on the website, but they're the usual ones you might think of. You know, mathematics, English, biology, chemistry, physics and so on. So, so you've got to be able to do those but, but the major that you take is there is no predefined one. Now, some undergraduate programs have a pre veterinary major. Many of them have animal science, biology, biological sciences. So there's multiple different types of majors that students can can do and and we also. To you know, have in our program an early entry program where you can actually apply to come into veterinary school before you begin your undergraduate degree. A nd then if you've been admitted, then it's a question of making sure you've taken those correct courses to get in.

Wade Leonard  

 So, but even if you were to go down a pre vet track, that does not guarantee you a spot? 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

Oh, no, I'm afraid not. You know, we have many more applicants than than we have space for. 

Wade Leonard  

But it's also theoretically possible for like, a philosophy major or an English major or a history history major to get into vet, school?

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

 Yeah, yeah. And we have also have students who come to veterinary medicine as a second career, and so sometimes they've done a major, they've graduated, they've gone off and done another job, and then when they want to apply for vet school, they have to take the prerequisite courses. And they might do that at a online or community college, or come back to to Maine university to do that. But yes, there's definitely many different paths that people take to get into the program. 

Wade Leonard  

You mentioned earlier that we're not just about preparing vets for what's out there right now. It's also about helping them be prepared for what's coming. What's coming?

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

 Well, I think some of the changes that we're going to see are related to changes in disease distribution on So one example is, you know, if you if you look at some of the climate change impacts with warmer temperatures, you're seeing the range of mosquitoes, for instance, expanding ticks, and some of those diseases that are carried by mosquitoes and ticks are now having a much wider distribution. So we see Lyme disease over a much greater area of the United States than we did before. So you know, very there is nothing, I always say there's nothing in medicine that stands still. It is a dynamic field. It's one of the reasons why it's so interesting, is because it's never the same. You know, over time it changes, and so disease distributions are changing. You know, one of the big areas that I think we are all going to see in all walks of life is artificial intelligence. And, you know, that's not a disease we have to treat, but, but it's going to change the way that we practice medicine. It's already beginning to change the way we're practicing medicine. So, you know, how do we prepare students? And I think part of that is, you know, being on the cutting edge ourselves, so that we're talking about it. We just had a session yesterday talking about artificial intelligence, but also preparing somebody who is able to be a problem solver, somebody who's able to take a skill set and whatever comes their way, they can adapt, they can find solutions, and they can, you know, move on and address whatever needs to be addressed. That's part of what comes from, again, this rather challenging degree program we have, but also one that prepares you for being a problem solver. 

Wade Leonard  

Well, Dr, Frank, I appreciate you talking to me. Is there anything that you wanted to say that we didn't, we didn't talk about?

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

I would just say that one of the the the real positives of this college, of this university that I've come to appreciate in a way over the last year is is how we are really trying to increase access to education. And one of the statistics that I'm most proud of of our veterinary college, of our DVM program is the number of students who are coming in, who are first to college. And we've, we've also been very, very successful in our veterinary medical technology program with that. And as we look at addressing the needs of Mississippi. You know, the more people we can bring into veterinary education, whether it's the VMT program or the graduate program or the DVM program, the better. And so as we look at our role in the state, we need to keep thinking about, how do we engage with young people, even at the middle school or high school level, show them what veterinary medicine is and and try to generate interest. And whether it's in veterinary medicine or just in STEM education in general, you know, it's bringing people into education, using the community college system within Mississippi to get people off to a good start, having the ability for them to transfer into a four year institution and then ultimately bringing them into into veterinary medical education. When you ask me why Mississippi State and why this College of Veterinary Medicine, I'm when I go back to the very beginning. Think about my own family being from a rural area in the north of England. We have nationally, internationally, we have a shortage of veterinarians in rural areas. And so this college is and this University is committed to trying to address that issue. And so over the last year, we've been really focusing in on, how do we do more to get students into rural areas to practice, and that's led to the development of the Center for rural veterinary practice. And so we have established that center. We are creating a certificate program that center will have a physical location with our new buildings that we've received funding for for new large animal facilities, and we've most recently been so happy to have two students receive be the first recipients of the Dr. Mac Huddleston rural veterinarian Scholarship, which will pay for their veterinary fees and tuition for four years in return for them returning to a rural area of Mississippi to practice for four years. So we are really committed to addressing this shortage of veterinarians in rural areas. And it's been, you know, first of all, one of the areas that I was most interested in coming to Mississippi State to work on and secondly, we've in the past year, begun the journey of trying to make some some progress in this area. 

Wade Leonard  

And that specific scholarship itself, that was, that's something that's that's funded at the state level too, right? It is. But yes, Governor Reeves signed it. 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

Governor Reeves signed it just last week. I it was brought forward by Representative Vince Mangold, and that was one reason why it's called Dr Elton, Mac Huddleston, rural veterinarian scholarship is that Dr Huddleston, a veterinarian who's passed away now, was a member of the State House of Representatives. So so his colleague, representative, Vince Mangold, put forward the bill, and it received support through the State House and the State Senate, and was brought forward as a bill now and signed into law by Governor Reeves. 

Wade Leonard  

And the expectation of these students is they're going to go to whatever the definition of a rural area is, and practice for a given period? 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

Yes, absolutely great. And the definition is a population density of less than 500 people per square mile. So and so there are many, many areas of Mississippi to qualify. So So yes, and you know, one of our goals with this is really to not only get the students prepared for practice, but also to provide support once they're in practice. So one of the big parts of the new center is going to be providing coaching for these new veterinarians, so that they never feel as though they don't have somebody they can turn to for advice, not just on the medicine and surgery of being a veterinarian, but also on the community engagement and the business aspects of being a veterinarian. 

Wade Leonard  

I mean, you almost have to have an extra business degree to be a veterinarian, because so many of them are single or private practices? 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

Right. And you know, as we, as we look at that, we we try to do it the best we can within the four year DVM curriculum. But we also have a business elective. So the students who are going to receive a certificate in rural veterinary practice will do the business elective and they'll also receive a lot more information on small business management, HR processes, you know, some of those very basic questions, like, if you have a certain amount of money, which is which piece of equipment would you buy first, and How do you market your services and and, and also, how do you do that in a way that makes you sustainable and avoids burnout? And you know, we need to not just get veterinarians into rural areas, but we need to keep them there, and that retention will depend on, you know, how well they balance their work, work, home balance, but also how well they do financially. We know veterinarians can be very successful in rural areas financially, but it puts an emphasis on on well managed practices and financially viable practices that can survive. 

Wade Leonard  

Well. Dr, Frank again, thank you so much. I really appreciate you steering the ship straight for everybody around here, and thanks for letting me work here, man. 

Dr. Nicholas Frank  

Thank you very much.

Wade Leonard  

Have a good one. Thanks. Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation I had with Dr Nick Frank to learn more about the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University. Visit vetmed.msst.edu that's vetmed.ms Dot edu. And of course, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram, you know, all the things like and subscribe to the show guys. And seriously, if you would like to be on the VetMedCast, r you've got some news you want everybody to know about, please get in touch with me. Have a good one. Bye, ya'll.