Sept. 16, 2024 - Dr. Alicia Olivier

This week, Wade the Website Guy hangs out with the Associate Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University, Dr. Alicia Olivier.

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Associate Producer: Caroline Griffith
vetmed.msstate.edu

Transcript

Wade Leonard  

Hey, folks, Wade the website guy here for the vet medcast, the official podcast of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University. Hope you all had a good weekend and made it unscathed through all the hurricane and football related issues of last week, the response to the first episode of this show has been great. Lots of you have been downloading it from all over the world, and I sure hope we can keep that up. This week, I'm interviewing Dr Alicia Olivier, the newly minted Associate Dean of the vet school. Dr O is great, as I'm sure you all know, so I hope you'll stick around for that. In terms of news, we have a couple of presentations coming up. Leonard Jordan and Tom Campbell will be presenting their work Tuesday, September 17 at 12:30pm in the old freshman classroom here at the wise center, the American Association of laboratory animal practitioners will be having their first meeting on the 19th of September, 12pm in the old first year classroom, they remind you to bring lunch to that meeting. The World aquatic Veterinary Medical Association as a fundraiser. They're promoting they have t shirts that will be on sale through September 27 I looked at some of those shirt designs, and they do look pretty cool. I'll put a link to the sale in the description of this show on Thursday the 19th of September, the Christian veterinary fellowship is holding a meeting at noon in Tate Butler. They are providing Chick fil A and want to talk about chiropracty In celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. Flavors of heritage, a Hispanic cultural journey is going to happen on September 26 from 12 to 1:30pm in the Pegasus dining room of the wise center, they're going to have a walking taco bar, which sounds to me cooling in and of itself. Also, don't forget that Alumni Weekend is coming up just in time for the Arkansas game on october 25 and the CVM Career Expo is scheduled for September 27 also, while I'm thinking about it, there is a story on the website about the CVMs MRI capabilities, which was written by our very own Livingston Robinson. So please check that out. She had a good job on that story. Anyway, that's all the news I have in my inbox. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Dr Alicia Olivier.  So how was your weekend?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

That was great. It's good, okay. It was very rainy, but it was great. 

Wade Leonard  

It was super rainy. Didn't watch that football game, did you no so first of all, dr, Olivia, congratulations. 

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Thank you. I Appreciate it. You've been, you've been interim deaning for a while now, and now you're officially deaning. So that's great. I think the first thing I'd like to know, though, because I'm still, you know, a Novus, Novus novice when it when it comes to all things veterinary, but explain me a little bit about what it means to be a pathologist.  Oh, I could talk to you all day about being a pathologist. 

Wade Leonard  

Cool, exactly. Well, imagine I'm the dumbest person you ever met, and I don't even understand anything.

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Let's just put it in basic terms. Pathologist studies abnormalities in in body systems. So anything abnormal, so anything that is an alteration from normal. So if an arm was grown out of my head, well, let's not go there. That would be very interesting. But there's two types of pathologist and veterinary medicine, a clinical pathologist and an anatomic pathologist. I'm an anatomic pathologist, and so that means that I look at cells and tissues under the microscope to understand what the disease process is, whereas a clinical pathologist will look at cells on a slide, but not the tissue itself. Does that make sense? It does so

Wade Leonard  

So,  I guess the anatomical pathologist is looking at the whole system, as opposed to just a slice of the system?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Well, that's an interesting way to put it, but both, both types of pathologists are really trying to understand disease and provide information to the clinician to say, what is going on. How do we treat this disease? What is this disease? And so we do that very differently, one at kind of just single cell and the other at the tissue level.

Wade Leonard  

So my wife watches a lot of like, True Crime stuff. Like, there's a lot of murder happening in my house on TV. And I guess you know, the way I'm thinking about it is, you're sort of like the person in the murder show, who's trying to find a cause of death, who's trying to figure out what exactly happened. So when you're when you're looking at a system like that with an animal, where do you even begin to figure out what is abnormal and what isn't? 

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

So that's a great question. You have to know what's normal. And that's what we spend a lot of time teaching our students. They spend the very first year, saying what's normal. And so you have to know what's normal to know what's abnormal. And well, it really depends on what we're looking at. So pathologists may do a post mortem examination. We call that necropsy, but in human medicine, that's called autopsy. Or we may look at a lump and a bump a biopsy, so something that a veterinarian has. Removed to say what's going on here. So it really depends. If we're looking in the situation of a post mortem, we're looking at the entire system, what's going on. Why did this animal die? What information can we provide and understand about what's going on? If it's a lump or a bump or a biopsy, we want to inform the clinician, is this something that needs a treatment, like an antibiotic, or is this cancer? So those are the fundamental answers that we're trying to derive, and we do that by looking at the tissue with our eyes, but also under the microscope. And that's the fun of pathology. Looking at the cell level, what are the cells doing? What is the tissue doing? How can we understand the process based on what we see? 

Wade Leonard  

So in many ways, It's like an ever changing puzzle that you're trying to figure out? 

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

It's so fun. That's why I love pathology, because it's never just one thing. Biology is complex, so it's multiple systems. When you think about all the different species we look at, all the different ages and all the different disease processes we're understanding what is really going on. You could have a lot of different things, but that may not really impact maybe why an animal has died, or maybe why an animal is sick, or maybe why an animal has a lump or a bump or some alteration from normal. 

Wade Leonard  

Well, I know in your background, teaching has been a big part of what you've what you've done. I believe you've been here at the vet school since 2014 but you graduated from Mississippi State. Graduated from vet school here as well. But looking at your stuff, what? What about the teaching side of it appeals to you?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Everything. Well, let me just talk about teaching. Teaching is the most rewarding thing that I've done in my career. So you're shaping the next veterinarian or the next scientist. So I have the opportunity to really provide the fundamentals. So when I teach basic disease, mechanisms of disease, how disease works, I'm setting up the structure for that individual to understand disease for their entire career. So that's just very impactful. I love to see, as many teachers say, the aha moments, and it happens at a different time for different people. So sometimes, you know, and that's a lot of that is based on the understanding that the person comes with, like, what they've been exposed to, what their interests are. And so you're working with different individuals and trying to understand what is their background. How can you put what you're teaching into the context, context that they'll then understand, take it forward. And so that is really amazing. 

Wade Leonard  

Let me put you on the spot then. And remember, you're talking to a guy with a communication degree. How does disease work?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Well, that's a great question. I could talk to you all day about that 

Wade Leonard  

The short version. 

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

So the short version is there's only so many ways the body responds to injury, and that's the way I like to put it. You know, the body is responding to some sort of injury or some sort of stimulus, and there each tissue and each interrelated system, like heart and lung, there's only so many ways it can respond, and that's exactly what we're teaching students, is how what is the injury, what is the stimulus, and then how would the body respond? And that's fundamentally important. How do you intervene? How do you treat a disease? How do you give a client a prognosis? Maybe we're at the very beginning and we can impact that disease progression, that alteration from normal, but maybe we're not, maybe we're at the end. And so how do we inform the client or the owner to say we're this is as good as it's going to get, and sometimes that's okay, right? We you can think about this is where we're at in this disease progression, and that's what we talk about with the students all the time, is, you know, today, it may look different than it looked two weeks ago. And why is that? And that's based on, really what is perturbing the system. So thinking about diseases is a process, almost definitely a process, multiple processes, but a defined number of processes, and once you assimilate that information and understand the different processes, and then more interestingly, I think, is how the tissue itself works, like liver is different than heart is different than brain, and so that's where it's at. It's like understanding those processes and how those specific tissues respond to maybe an injury or a process, liver can regenerate, brain cannot.

Wade Leonard  

And I imagine you add an extra level to the complexity in that, you know, again, veterinarians are not looking at one specific species. You're looking at lots and lots of them.

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Exactly. Exactly. And as a pathologist, we're giving a piece of the puzzle, meaning, you know, this may look different in a dog, you know, but it's very similar to the way it would look in a cow. However, with that being said, different cells may respond differently. Liver cells in a cat are have different mechanisms as far as injury is related than a dog. So to understand those species specific to. Is where veterinarians really excel, and what makes it really fascinating and interesting every day?

Wade Leonard  

Well, what got you interested in all this to begin with?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Well, I always wanted to be a veterinarian. I can't even tell you a day that I didn't want to be a veterinarian. I think what's really interesting though, for me in my career path is as I transitioned through undergraduate, degree in biochemistry and molecular biology, I became fascinated with how diseases work, and then as I came to vet school and understood all the different areas that you could pursue and specialize in, I further refined my interest. I didn't come to vet school wanting to become a pathologist. I thought, Well, I would like to practice medicine. That's what I've seen. But as I, you know, had more of an understanding than I could pursue what I was most passionate about. And I think, you know, the veterinary curriculum allows that to try and see different things that you didn't even know existed, right?

Wade Leonard  

Yeah, and you're super prolific, too. Just looking at, you know, the stuff I was able to find on the internet almost like 50 articles, journal pieces that have your name on them, that were listed. I couldn't pronounce half of the that were on there. But it did seem to me to be like, wildly broad in terms of, like, what your research interests are so. So how do you decide what you're going to spend time working on to research?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Well I think I have a valuable skill set as as a pathologist looking at injury in multiple different tissues. So my favorite organ is the lung. So I love pulmonary research. I love unders understanding viral pathology. That's my my true love, but I really enjoy assisting and collaborating in multiple areas that could be in infectious disease research, that could be in cancer, understanding what's going on at the cellular level, and assisting in answering important questions that lead to understanding disease pathogenesis. So how, what steps do we need to get to this disease and then, more importantly, how can we intervene in that disease process to make animal health better and translate that into human health as well.

Wade Leonard  

What's your favorite or most surprising result you got doing some kind of research, or anything that just comes to mind?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Well, the most surprise, I think, I can state this, really in more of a general way, is that every research project has a hypothesis you you were thinking and proving, then what you you make a statement like this is going to be the outcome And and you do that based on, you know, information that you already have, right? And so then you go to prove it, and then when it comes out drastically different. But that's sometimes, you know, I think when we train scientists or PhD students, that's that's devastating to them sometimes, but it can lead to the most interesting next question, and so, and that takes time, and I think that that's when you really see you've really challenged the fundamentals. Like, okay, this is what we thought, but that's actually not true, right? And so I think that those are the most interesting results. They're frustrating at times, but really drive the next question to say, oh, that really challenges our belief about this and our understanding based on the data that we have.

Wade Leonard  

And science is fundamentally all about trying to knock down the walls that are in front of you, right?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Exactly, exactly. And you keep challenging that with question, and you derive good projects that fundamentally answer that question. And then you answer it, and then sometimes you're surprised, and then that will derive the next question to be answered.

Wade Leonard  

So I don't like to take for granted that people understand, even if they've been in an academic system for a long time, that they understand what anyone does or what any of these titles mean, what's an Associate Dean and what does, what does your day look like?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Well, so we can go back to associate, associate deans. And you know, there are many individuals that work together to run a college, and there's administrators that do that, and they're, they're important in really making sure everyone else is successful, and so that's that's what my day is all about. It's about supporting people, and that is really no different than when I was teaching, right? I'm supporting students in that mission. Now I'm supporting faculty and staff, and my goal is to make their lives better, right? To make this an environment that individuals want to work and be successful in the educational mission, Research Mission and Service mission that we have here. So my day is always different, and like you mentioned, I'm new to the full time role, so I'm I continue to see what it's like, and it's amazing. Amazing. This college is amazing. And I think over the last 10 months, I've really put together so many pieces around, wow. That's what that individual does? You get this perspective, sure that you you just can't have, I don't think in many cases, when you're really focused, you know, you can, you can have that? I should take that back, but it gives you a new perspective.

Wade Leonard  

Sure, and by the nature of the gig, you have to be a generalist too, right?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Yes, exactly. But fundamentally, we're all here for a reason, and and we all need to support each other in that, in that reason, and so I'm one part of that.

Wade Leonard  

So you said a second ago that this vet school or this college is is great. What makes it great?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Well, the people and the students that's that's an easy, easy question, but, you know, I did go to vet school here, so I am a little biased. I do think we're awesome, but you know, it's been interesting. I'll have graduated 20 years ago next year. And the opportunities that our students have here are endless, and the connections that they can make. Should they whatever career path they choose, their opportunities in the Two Plus Two curriculum. So they have two years our students have, our veterinary students have two years in in a clinical setting, which I think makes them practice ready and in high demand. So I think the opportunities that they have here are just amazing. And that's a surgical hours, yeah, and I think you know that goes back to that's because of the people that we have here that we couldn't do that without, without the people that are supporting them through this process and really driving them, our students to be lifelong learners, to understand, really the fundamentals, but they'll be growing throughout their career.

Wade Leonard  

So you know, in the event that one of those kids who was like you 20 plus years ago, who's always wanted to be a veterinarian and look into get into vet school. What advice do you have for someone who wants to do that?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

So be diverse. Be broad. We're looking for, you know, individuals that are passionate, that have a growth mindset. You don't have to have the most hours as as the person next door, I think, be independent. Be a thinker, be be passionate. So that could be in multiple different ways. You know, through undergraduate their undergraduate degree as well as their high school education, we're looking for that breadth of interest, but fundamentally, it's an individual that's resilient and has this ability to be persistent and self motivated and wants to see themselves grow. And so those are the individuals that we're looking for, because those are the individuals that will make good veterinarians, whether they're going into clinical practice or becoming a scientist or becoming a specialist and coming back into academia to teach.

Wade Leonard  

So, legitimately, a combination of academic success and experience is something that we're looking for.

There's no doubt that academic success is vitally important. You have to manage and make it through tough classes.

Wade Leonard  

You gotta pass physics, folks.

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Yeah, you gotta pass or organic chemistry, which was the challenge for me when I was an undergraduate student. But yet, we're looking for a well rounded person.

Wade Leonard  

And so once someone gets here, once someone is in vet school, you know, I imagine it can be quite the culture shock when you first get here. How do you encourage people to stick with it and to stay motivated and all that good stuff.

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Oh, I have so much advice for this. I think first piece of advice is build your community so your classmates are going to be your biggest supporters. It's no longer about who's the best. It's about working together. You've all made it. You're all in veterinary school. You don't have to be the most competitive anymore. It's really about building that community that's going to lift you up when you you know we will all falter, you know, it's just about how you handle that and the support that you have around you. I would also say that meeting and networking and spreading to whoever will listen what you want to do and what you're passionate about is important. I always say, knock on the door. Meet a faculty member that you're interested in, or you synergize with, or you know that will create opportunity for you to network and to meet really, your next goal, which is first graduation and then securing, you know, a job where you're you're very satisfied.

Wade Leonard  

Yeah, I would say the common denominator between just about every student I've ever talked to who went on to do something remarkable, whether it's vet school or somewhere else, is taking advantage of access to faculty. Office hours exist for a reason, and the people who develop those relationships tend to be the folks that I see wind up going and becoming, you know, like Rhodes Scholars and things like that. So say, "hey," to your teachers, people,

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Yes, they're people too, and they have if you're like me, I like to talk. I love when students knock on my door. I don't even have to. You don't have to knock on my door during office hours. I'm accessible anytime, you know, through messaging or through just seeing students in the hallway. And that's what I really enjoy about our environment is that we are very connected our building, while it's large, you can walk down a general corridor and see faculty and say hi, or see students and say hi, so you can be engaged if you want to.

Wade Leonard  

I've only worked here a few weeks, and it's absolutely true. People are super nice, and they say hello. And you know, I get lost in this building, and there's always someone who helps me figure out where I am. You know a little bit about your background while I'm thinking about it. You know, I know when I first met you, you told me that you're sort of from Ocean Springs Mississippi, but you didn't exactly grow up there. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Well, yes, I do claim Ocean Springs as home, but I grew up overseas in the Middle East with my family and that so I lived in Saudi Arabia for 10 years, and that's where my dad worked when I was growing up, and and I think that that fostered a little bit of my love of animals, because I wasn't allowed to have a pet because of all the quarantine, quarantine guidelines and and so I didn't realize, well, my parents didn't allow me to, but you could, sorry mom, if you're listening...

Wade Leonard  

Right under the bus!

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Right, right. Sorry. So I did a lot of pet sitting, and I always wanted to work on a farm and and so I had an opportunity when I moved back to Ocean Springs to work in a national park and to engage in local with local veterinarians and to have pets. And so that just furthered my interest. So I love Ocean Springs. It's a great place.

Wade Leonard  

I argue that government Street and Ocean Springs might be the best little street in Mississippi. 

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

It's so wonderful. 

Wade Leonard  

Well, that's cool. I mean, you spent that much time on the other side of the planet, and you said you pet sat for people?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

I sure did. I was like, Hey, call me. I want to pet sit. And so after, you know, coming back to Mississippi, and then be then I was in the early entry program to come to vet school. So as a high school student at high school senior, I applied and was enter, you know, accepted into the early entry program. And so then I my path was paved, but I would still say that there were plenty of times in that path that I thought, is this where I want to go? And every time I would say, yes, you know, I really loved my undergraduate degree. I found it fascinating. And I think that's what I tell students, is, you really don't know it's great to have this wonderful interest, but, you know, be open minded. Be ready to say, oh, that interests me more. I want to investigate that.

Wade Leonard  

Did you struggle? Ever? Was there ever a time where you you thought maybe this is, this is too much organic chemistry?

No. Not at all. I'm very persistent. So I was going to survive that, no matter what I think where I really struggled probably was in veterinary school, when not struggled academically, but struggled with understanding the next step. And I see students do this, you know, especially individuals that are going on sort of a non traditional path, whether it be to an area of specialization like pathology or internal Med, making that decision, this is the route, because it is a commitment. So for me, it was another five years after vet school of training and in anatomic pathology residency and PhD program, it's a huge commitment like this, is this exactly where I want to be and and so I had the opportunity to pursue several externships as a veterinary student to say, you know, to really investigate, does this? Does this match what I want to do?

Wade Leonard  

Yeah, I think more than ever, specifically over the past. You know what's happened over the past five years? I mean, you mentioned your interest was pulmonary and, you know, things jumping from animals to humans. I don't know if you've heard of a little illness that hit the world. Yes. So that seems more important than than ever. Did you do any work in terms of covid research when all that was going on?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Yes, I certainly participated in some of the collaborative projects that were ongoing, really, across institutions. So here at the vet school, importantly the vet school here did human covid testing. So I think that really just shows the translational aspects that, you know, veterinary diagnostic laboratories can be, can be prepared to act in in the face of an emergency, whether that's animal or human. And so that was really interesting to see, the first time I had seen that in my career, where the, you know, a Veterinary Diagnostic Lab serve the needs for human testing.

Wade Leonard  

And that's, and you mentioned collaborative thing. You know, it's not just right here in Starkville at Mississippi State, but it's, you know, we're doing research that's impactful across the globe.

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

100% across the globe, across the nation, making an impact on animal and human health.

Wade Leonard  

So if I'm a student. Here in the vet school, and I want to get involved in some of this rad, cutting edge research. What do I do?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Well, we have a summer research experience. So that's an experience where veterinary students can participate in research in the summer between their first and second year, and that can solidify for individuals, whether they want to go on to pursue either a master's degree or a PhD. We desperately need scientists in this world that that have veterinary training and the veterinary background. So I think it's, it's important for our students to have that opportunity also thinking about, you know, benchtop research, or clinically applied research.

Wade Leonard  

You said bench top research? I don't know what that is. So practitioners that, would you say benchtop research. 

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

So that is really where we're asking mechanisms of disease questions at at the benchtop.

Wade Leonard  

Oh. So it means what it means, like you're at a bench. Remember, I'm a communications major.

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Well, I maybe didn't communicate it well, but that's in so, so we think about research in in terms of bench top, like basic basic science or the fundamental right science, science topics, but then we can think about clinically applied research, so using natural disease as a model system and understanding how we can impact natural disease. So a population of dogs, for example, that have arthritis, how can you say a new therapy or a novel therapy is effective? So that would be clinical trial research with natural disease. You know, individuals or animals enrolled in this study.

Wade Leonard  

Tell me something about the vet school, or maybe something you do that you wish more people knew about.

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Oh, there's so many things I think pathology is fundamentally behind the scenes. So many people don't want to talk about that, or they think that might be not interesting. Even some of our students come and they they say to me, I really actually loved that that and I said, Well, yes, because you understand, you have an answer. And so I think that's an area in our diagnostic laboratory that we don't talk a lot about, because when you think of necropsy or post mortem examination, that's a little scary. It's scary, or it's not. I think what, what I find valuable about that is providing an answer, sure that can be an answer to an owner that that wants to understand why their animal was sick, and that provides solace to them. Of course, it provides peace. It could be providing an answer to a farm, you know, to a client that has multiple animals, and that's what we call a herd health issue. And so providing that answer benefits the whole so I think we do that every day, every day here. And so people are surprised. They're like, you do that here every day. And so yes.

Wade Leonard  

and while you're still an administrator, you're still doing rounds, right?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Yes, I will still be engaged in pathology as an administrator, because I think it's important to stay in touch, to stay grounded with what's going on in the college and what's going on in teaching and what's going on with our Diagnostic Laboratory.

Wade Leonard  

Dr Frank mentioned something in the last show I did, he said that what we're doing here is we're not just training veterinarians for now. We're training veterinarians for what's coming. What do you think is coming?

Well, every year we know more, so we are training and I think that's exactly right. We're training the veterinarians of the future to be lifelong learners, to be knowledge seekers. We what we knew 20 years ago isn't the same as what we know now. We know so much more. So our students need to understand the resources that they have available. I think we're going to drive continuous growth in bringing together data sets that will allow us to understand more. And while we don't need to talk about artificial intelligence at length, I think that's going to be a huge area that will transform life and medicine. And what I hope to see in my lifetime, and then the next 10 years, is that that improves it for the better, right? That aids us in understanding disease that we didn't otherwise understand, because we can bring together a large amount of data and understand more than we understand now. Well,

Wade Leonard  

Dr Olivier, is there anything we didn't talk about that you wanted to talk about?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Well, I have so much to say I'm trying to think about. Well, I just want to let you know that being on a podcast was on my bucket list. So I'm really excited about that. My other bucket list item that I have not met yet is to be have an image on the cover of a journal. So I'm still working on that. Like your picture, a picture, definitely not a picture of maybe a picture. The project, I really didn't get a chance to talk about the amazing teaching that we do for our interns and our residents. So I think that's a huge area of need. So we need specialists in veterinary medicine.

Wade Leonard  

Again, you know, not taking for granted, what's the difference between an intern and a resident?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

So an intern is is a veterinarian, and they have just graduated typically, and that is a one year position where the individual gets more specialized training, gets to investigate different areas of Veterinary Medicine, to make a decision, will, will I go into a residency program, which is typically three years after that? And so that's very intense specialized training. So we have specialists here that train the future, specialists of our of our field. So we have neurology, pathology, internal medicine, surgery, both small animal and large animal internal medicine. So these are, this is really important. This is important for the future. This is important for to have the specialists of the future to train our veterinary students? Sure, yeah. So I think that is what I have found, very rewarding as well. I've had the opportunity to train many residents in veterinary pathology, and they're now out in their careers, and they may be training others in academia, or they may be working in other types of industry.

Wade Leonard  

So it just remains, everyone stands on the shoulders of giants?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

Exactly, exactly. So I think I wanted to emphasize that.

Wade Leonard  

How many residents, interns at a time do we have here at the vet school?

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

I'm not going to put a number on it because I don't want to quote it wrong, but you know, upwards of 30 individuals pursuing interns, internships and residencies here at the vet school.

Wade Leonard  

And where was your residency? So

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

I trained at Iowa State University and their veterinary pathology department, and as I mentioned, I spent five years doing that and pursued a PhD at the same time, which is an option.

Wade Leonard  

A lot of folks around here have lots of letters behind we do well. Dr Olivier, I appreciate this. Thanks for hanging out with me. Thank you for being so nice to me since I started working. Oh, you're great. You're relentless. Positivity is something that I think serves this institution well, and I hope you like doing this, because you're 100% gonna have to do it again.

Dr. Alicia Olivier  

So I really enjoyed it and made it very easy. So I appreciate it.

Wade Leonard  

So thanks again, everybody for listening to the vet medcast For today, September 16, 2024 and I'll be back again next week. You know, we've had a lot of people who suggested folks to come on the show, and a lot of people who've asked to come on the show. So I'm really excited about that. So I'm just gonna leave it a surprise as to our guest will be next week, but subscribe, like all that good stuff, still working on getting this thing on Apple podcasts. Apple's always the problem. But until next week, guys, I've been weighed the website. Guy, we'll see you later.