How Tuskegee University Educates 70% Of African-American Veterinarians In The U.s.

By Ameera Steward

Not far from the main campus of Tuskegee University are four large barns that house horses, cows, goats, sheep, pigs—“common farm-animal species”—awaiting checkups and exams. The barn is about a 10-minute walk from a small animal hospital that provides emergency and critical care, dentistry, surgery, and other veterinary services. Outside the barn, slightly up the hill, stretch approximately 40 acres of pastureland for horses and cattle.

Welcome to the Tuskegee University College of Veterinary Medicine (TUCVM), the only veterinary medical professional program located on the campus of a Historically Black College or University (HBCU). The TUCVM has educated about 70 percent of African-American veterinarians and is recognized as the most diverse of all 30 institutions of veterinary medicine in the nation. Its students, who hail from the U.S. and several other countries, form a bond unlike any other.

“When I was here on the day of the interview [for vet school], it was like being welcomed to your family’s living room,” said Kaitlynn Pfeiffer, a first-year TUCVM student from Syracuse, N.Y. “It was just a very family-friendly atmosphere and somewhere you knew you would be able to thrive as a student.”Alums can be found serving in prominent positions throughout the U.S.—and in Birmingham, too. At Southern Research, a nonprofit research organization, Sheila D. Grimes, PhD, DVM, serves as an anatomic pathologist and oversees a team of pathology, histology, necropsy, and clinical pathology personnel. A veterinary pathologist with more than 30 years of experience, Grimes earned her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) and Bachelor of Science (BS) degrees from Tuskegee.

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