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Dear Friends of MSU CVM,
Welcome to this new iteration of Pegasus Press! We hope you find this digital newsletter both interesting and informative, and you will look forward to receiving it each month.
We are delighted to welcome several new faculty members to our community. Dr. Michail Panagiotidis has joined the MSU CVM as Professor and Department Head for Comparative Biomedical Sciences. Dr. John Allen Ferguson has also started in his position as Assistant Clinical Professor of Community Veterinary Services, and Dr. Katherine Raines is now an Assistant Clinical Professor of Pharmacy. We will soon welcome Dr. Andre Escobar as Associate Professor of Anesthesiology and Dr. Peres Badial as Assistant Professor of Anatomic Pathology.
We must also report Dr. Skip Jack retired Jan. 1 after serving on the faculty for many years. Dr. Jack is a highly respected educator who has had a positive impact on the lives of current and former students. We are pleased that Dr. Jack will be returning to teach histology this fall, and we hope to see him at many CVM events.
After 17 years, Dr. Bill Epperson is stepping away from his department head position to organize the new Rural Veterinary Practice Certificate Program. The search for a new department head for Pathobiology and Population Medicine has begun.
On a national level, Dr. Mark Lawrence has been elected as Vice Chair of the USAID Feed the Future Innovation Lab Council.
Within the college, we’ve established a new House Officer Committee, composed of faculty, intern, and resident representatives, focusing on improving these important training programs.
The hospital directors and service chiefs of the Animal Health Center (AHC) recently invested time in professional development by participating in a Dare to Lead workshop. If you missed the news about the leadership team in the AHC, Dr. Christine Bryan is now Small Animal Hospital Director, Dr. Heath King is Large Animal Hospital Director, and Dr. Michaela Beasley is Director of Hospital Business Operations. Certified Veterinary Technician Nancy Wilson is Associate Director of Clinical Staff Success.
Several faculty members have recently been recognized through our Coat of Excellence Program. Drs. David Christiansen, Cate Mochal King, Bryan Waldridge, Kevin Walters and Julie White received coats for their excellent clinical work in the AHC Large Animal Hospital.
Our students, including the following DVM Class of 2026 students, continue receiving prestigious scholarships from national programs. Erynn Black was the recipient of a Chewy Veterinary Leaders Program scholarship ($20,000); Talia Barnes received a Merck Animal Health Diversity Leadership Scholarship ($10,000); and Barrett Barksdale received an Anne and Richard Stirlen Foundation of the Horse scholarship.
There have been a lot of meetings with architects over the past few months as we have designed the new farm animal clinical facilities, funded by the $18 million investment from the state of Mississippi. The new outpatient cattle handling facility, farm animal hospital, and Center for Rural Veterinary Practice have been designed, and we will soon solicit bids from construction companies.
We’re making significant progress on several facilities projects, including renovating the library to create more study spaces for students, and improving the Bull Ring area by adding lights, repainting walls, and using art, banners, and monitors to tell our story.
This update would not be complete without some news about the transformative gift to the MSU CVM to establish the Nancy Link Laminitis Research Center. You can read more about the gift and new center in this newsletter, and the latest news is a search committee will identify three new researchers to join the faculty. We have also started meeting with the architects to design the new center and have chosen the location for the new building. We are incredibly excited about the opportunity to work on this painful and damaging disease of horses. I have been involved with laminitis research myself for many years, and this is the opportunity of a lifetime for the new faculty we are recruiting. They will be able to conduct whatever research is needed to find answers because of the huge financial investment made by Nancy Link. We are deeply grateful for her support, and many horses will benefit from the research we will do here in the coming years.
It’s an exciting time to be part of this community, and we hope you enjoy the digital version of Pegasus Press. It will be published monthly to keep you updated on all the exciting developments at the MSU CVM.
Dr. Nicholas Frank
Dean
College of Veterinary Medicine
Mississippi State University
