Scholarship helps out-of-state students in their veterinary studies
Georgia Daniel and Elizabeth Logemann hail from states other than the two in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine’s name, but a scholarship that prioritizes out-of-state students is helping them work toward their dreams of providing veterinary medicine to rural areas.
Daniel, a fourth-year student from Blanch, North Carolina, and Elizabeth "Liz" Logemann, a third-year student from Hockessin, Delaware, are both recipients of the Garstang Dupre Scholarship, an anonymously funded award renewable for up to three years starting with a student’s second year of studies at the veterinary college.
Students from outside Virginia or Maryland who have demonstrated interest in food animal, equine, or mixed animal medicine are given priority for the scholarship, which is recommended by faculty members based on a student’s overall attitude, dedication to veterinary medicine, and positive interactions with the faculty, staff, and other students.
Daniel grew up on a tobacco farm not far south of the Virginia border, where her father also raised beef cattle and her mother worked in school administration. Daniel was seeking a more urban lifestyle in Raleigh, North Carolina, when she attended North Carolina State University, but her animal science major and work with pigs, sheep, and cattle soon pulled her back in a different direction.
"As much as I thought I wanted to move away from the rural lifestyle, I kind of fell back into it," Daniel said. "All these farm animals are so cool. And I actually do really like being in a rural community."
She met Jacquelyn Pelzer, former assistant dean of student support and admissions, through the American Pre-Veterinary Medical Association, and when it was time to apply to veterinary college, Pelzer encouraged her to apply at Virginia Tech.
Impressed with the veterinary college’s mobile large animal service and the collegiality of the faculty and students, Daniel made the decision to come to Blacksburg.
On a mixed animal track that focuses on small animals such as dogs and cats and food animals such as cattle, sheep, and goats, Daniel hopes to continue clinical practice after graduation with her longtime mentor, Laura Luffman, in the Danville area. Luffman’s practice serves a rural area where the nearest emergency veterinary care is an hour away and teaching hospitals are two hours distant.
"We're pretty much the first baseline place for most people to go," Daniel said.
For Logemann, growing up in Delaware meant that she knew she’d have to go out of state to pursue her dream of becoming a degreed veterinarian. She started with a double-major in pre-veterinary medicine and agriculture and natural resources at the University of Delaware.
“While I was there, I did my senior capstone in poultry production,” Logemann said. “Growing up, I was always super into animals. I got small animal veterinary jobs for a little while, and I worked in kennels. And then when I got to undergrad, I started really focusing on the food animal medicine.”
She got a job working at the University of Pennsylvania's dairy, where she did husbandry, milked cows, and cared for calves.
At Virginia Tech, Logemann is pursuing a food animal track with interests spanning dairy and beef cattle, small ruminants and poultry, even camels and alpacas. Her goal is to practice ambulatory food animal medicine in Pennsylvania or Delaware, working with diverse species and producers.
"I love being outside. I'm also very extroverted, so I like the idea of being able to interact with a lot of different people," Logemann said. "I'm a really big hands-on person."
For both students, scholarship support has proven crucial.
"These scholarships, these programs, these donors, are so, so helpful to students, because a lot of us are coming out of undergrad already with some debt," Daniel said. "It really helps ease the burden. Vet school is hard enough. You don't want to have to worry about financial stress in addition to academic stress."
"I had a lot of stress even just applying, knowing that I would be looking at out of state tuition at pretty much all the programs I was looking at,” Logemann said. “This has made it so I can actually explore different externship opportunities and look at trying to do other opportunities throughout vet school, instead of just having to really hone in on just the tuition.”
