1. Summary: Global Veterinary Leadership
Four entering freshmen - Staci Murphy, Emmanuel Rollin, Gretchen Singletary, and I (Anusha Natarajan) had the wonderful opportunity to attend a Global Veterinary Leadership seminar in Mexico just prior to beginning the school year, in July 2003. We first met each other in Atlanta and then were greeted in Mexico City by 6 students from Texas A&M (TAMU) College of Veterinary Medicine. Two TAMU professors, Dr. Isabel Carbajal and Dr. Gale Wagner oversaw the program in Mexico. After we arrived in Mexico City, we drove about 2 hours east into the state of Tlaxcala.
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In this state, we spent time in the three cities of Tlaxcala, Huamantla, and Apizaco. Like many Mexican towns, Tlaxcala contains a town square next to a beautiful church.
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After our initial tour of Tlaxcala on Sunday evening we retired to our hotel, which was a renovated 13th century castle set on a large property.
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The second day we began our lectures on leadership and global veterinary medicine given by Dr. Carbajal and Dr. Wagner. Our classes were held in one of the classrooms at a small veterinary school just outside the city of Tlaxcala.
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The university was an old hacienda with a large courtyard. The dean and other faculty were kind in speaking with us and giving us a tour of their university. Dr. Ortega, a Ph. D student at Texas A&M, was on the faculty at the University of Tlaxcala. He was a wonderful host and extremely kind in shuttling all of us throughout Tlaxcala in his own vehicle.
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Our days there consisted of morning lectures and afternoon opportunities to learn about veterinary medicine in Mexico. We had the chance to visit a small animal practice as well as many farms. Dr. Narno, the small animal clinician, was a generous host, with a thriving practice in the town of Apizaco.
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We also had a chance to visit the largest dairy farm in the whole state. It was an impressive facility of 1200 cows that incorporated the newest technology, ran 24 hours per day, and employed their own veterinarian.
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We toured a sheep farm with about 1100 ewes.
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Also, two of us had the opportunity to see a swine semen collection facility.
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Other exciting experiences we had included attending a bullfight and tasting pulque, which is an alcohol derived from a cactus called magay.
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Our visit came during a festival for the Virgin Mary; all of the towns had a carnival every night for a week. The evening began with a mass, and was followed by dancing and other activities. We joined the celebration in the town of Huamantla and met many friendly Mexicans in the church yard.
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We had morning lectures on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Dr. Carbajal led us through the leadership portion, while Dr. Wagner gave us an introduction to global veterinary medicine. Dr. Carbajal gave us some materials and articles concerning leadership. One article we discussed is titled "The Law of the Few" and another article focused on the role of leadership (from a Bayer executive) in providing a treatment for river blindness in Africa. Aside from doing teamwork exercises we each took a survey for to determine our style of leadership. The book we received helped give each style of leadership a concrete description. This also enabled us to see our strengths and weaknesses. We were give guidance in how to maximize our strengths while working to improve our weaknesses. We finished up the leadership portion with survey that surrounded a situation: stranded in an avalanche while descending Mount Everest. There was both an individual part and then a group part to the exercise. This proved to be interesting because it was astounding how easily individuals were influenced by others or how persuasive one could be in coaxing the others in your response to the scenario.
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Dr. Wagner's lectures gave us a solid introduction to global veterinary medicine. We briefly discussed some points about bioterrorism, biosecurity, and agroterrorism. We also talked about the general importance of understanding herd health/food animal medicine particularly in relation to its economic importance. The group benefited a great deal from scenarios that Dr. Wagner proposed in terms of a veterinarian diagnosing a disease on a farm or explaining bovine spongiform encephalopathy to a client. We gained a new appreciation for the role of veterinarians as true officers of public health and education. This role, however, can only be maintained by knowledge of the world and current events. Dr. Wagner gave us many sources of information to which we can turn find such information such as the NY Times online, CDC website, and ProMed.
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