The Boehringer Ingelheim Veterinary Scholars program has helped 3,500 people in 30 years. Here are the stories of several of them.
The Boehringer Ingelheim Veterinary Scholars program has supported veterinary students for the last 30 years, granting stipends that provide insight into biomedical research.
Recipients learn about research techniques, ethics and career opportunities. They also get mentors. Most importantly, they get to formulate a hypothesis and do hands-on research to test it.
The goal? Veterinary research that helps clinicians, regulators, scientists and others protect animals and people from things like disease, obesity and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
More than 3,500 vet students have deepened their understanding of how research creates scientific evidence for discovery and development in the past three decades, including during the program’s legacy period under Merial, which Boehringer Ingelheim acquired about two years ago.
Scholars have gone on to make scientific discoveries, regulate animal safety, consult on government programs, develop their own entrepreneurial models and more.
We asked several veterinarians who participated in the Veterinary Scholars Program through the years about how it shaped their careers.
Here are the stories of several of them:
SUSAN WILLIAMS
‘No one thinks about chickens having a veterinarian’
Professor With Pathology Passion Inspires New Crop of Vets to Consider Research as Vital Professional Path
Susan Williams was a cut-up as a kid - but it wasn’t about laughs. You should be more studious when you wield a surgically sharp filet knife.
Like many 8-year-olds, she went fishing with her dad. She remembers best not the bass they stalked in San Francisco Bay, but how she would sit on the boat and cut open silver baitfish to see what was inside.
“I was always wanting to know how things work,” Williams said. “We’d be looking at all the guts, and my dad would try to help me identify the organs.”
With that, a pathology expert was born.
Williams started as a zoology major at the University of California-Davis, volunteering at the school’s raptor rescue center. She entered vet school at Tuskegee University and then accelerated her career when she accepted a spot in the Boehringer Ingelheim Veterinary Scholars Program, which introduced her to poultry research at the University of Georgia in 1992.
“I was in the pathology department, so I also got to do stuff on the necropsy floor when we weren’t having experiments,” said Williams, who helped collect turkey blood and separated out the white blood cells as part of disease study. “And then I’d work with pathology residents, participating in their slide rounds, and that kind of cemented the idea, ‘Yeah, I do want to do pathology.’ ”
Today, Williams is a professor with an emphasis on veterinary pathology. She works at the Poultry Diagnostic Research Center in the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Georgia. She provides pathology services - the examination of animal tissue to determine the cause and effects of diseases.
Her veterinary expertise is critical for the state of Georgia, which leads the US in poultry production. The market value of broiler chickens is about $4.4 billion in Georgia; eggs are valued at about $850 million.
“When most people think about veterinarians, they think about dogs and cats or they think about James Herriot and ‘All Creatures Great and Small,’” Williams said. “I had that phase. No one thinks about chickens having a veterinarian, but chickens need veterinary care to ensure healthy food comes to the table.”
Williams also serves as co-director of the University of Georgia’s Veterinary Scholars Program, encouraging vet students to try their hand at research.
The bait she dangles in front of potential scholars is about them making a big impact. The science behind animal disease supports broad economies, protects public health and deepens the human-animal bond.
“It has come back full circle trying to get students interested in research,” Williams said. “For me it’s a big bonus that I can be a role model for students.”
STEPHAN SCHAEFBAUER
‘I wanted to contribute to the greater good’
USDA veterinarian overcomes barriers, finds calling to help safeguard nation’s food supply, overall health
As long as she can remember, Stephan Schaefbauer knew she wanted to be a veterinarian – even if she didn’t know until middle school the word for someone who gives medical care to animals.
She added “veterinarian” to her vocabulary only after she happened upon it in a well-worn encyclopedia owned by her great grandmother, who raised her.
Schaefbauer grew up and went to school in Summerton, S.C., home to one of the five foundational cases that comprised the historic Brown vs. Board of Education case, the landmark 1954 US Supreme Court decision that ruled “separate but equal” schools segregated by race were unconstitutional.
She overcame a number of barriers when she accepted a summer veterinary research scholarship from Boehringer Ingelheim for her to study at the University of Georgia in 2002.
“I went to an all-black high school. I went to a historically black college,” Schaefbauer said. “And one of the barriers about coming to a traditionally white institution is that you are in an environment where you feel the effects of being a minority, which leads to culture shock.
“One of the main barriers that the scholars program broke down for me was being able to ease into the environment and get to know people and build relationships. That experience was huge. It helped to build my confidence.”
Her confidence fortified, Schaefbauer looked beyond becoming a small animal vet. She had a lifelong passion for animals – she fondly remembers her great-grandmother raising pigs, chickens and rabbits. In vet school, though, she didn’t find her calling until she met veterinarians who worked in regulatory veterinary medicine.
“That changed my trajectory,” Schaefbauer said. “I just knew I wanted to be in regulatory medicine and work with large populations, diagnosing and eradicating diseases. I wanted to contribute to the greater good.”
Today, Schaefbauer is the Area Veterinarian in Charge (AVIC) of Minnesota field operations for Veterinary Services, an agency of the US Department of Agriculture that inspects animals and plants.
She manages a team of 14 consisting of veterinarians, animal health technicians and administrative personnel. The team collaborates with the state’s animal stakeholders. The relationships are critical, because Minnesota ranks No. 4 among US states for agricultural exports, including global markets for pork, beef, dairy and poultry.
Affecting the world through veterinary medicine is Schaefbauer’s true calling – even if it took a while for her to find the words to describe it.
“All of the things that we do contribute to a healthy US population, because we’re ensuring a healthy animal population,” Schaefbauer said. “Once we do that, we can ensure our producers can export to other markets. That means we’re feeding the whole world.”
ABIGAIL SHEARIN
‘Research experience helps you in everything you do’
Research background combined with clinical knowledge drives critical thinking to achieve the best medical outcomes
Abigail Shearin grew up on a little farm in rural Maryland with horses, dogs, cats and rabbits. She became so fond of animals that she wanted to volunteer with the local animal shelter in middle school.
She was too young to do that, so the family started fostering animals at home. As a young teenager, Shearin nursed kittens, rehabbed geriatric animals and cared for canine litters.
The human-animal bond crystalized for her when she cared for a litter of pups that suffered from swimmer’s syndrome, a developmental deformity that causes a dog’s legs to splay, preventing it from standing or walking. Shearin cared for one puppy named Tighe.
“We had to do physical therapy with some for them to be able to walk,” Shearin said.
“I spent a lot of time bottle-feeding him by hand, and then, eventually, he developed progressive seizures. We had to make the decision to euthanize him. It was very hard on me.”
It was a formative experience.
“Euthanasia is a challenging choice for anyone to make, but it is frequently the most compassionate and caring thing we can do for animals in our care,” Shearin said. “In fact, in addition to my full-time job, I work part time for Lap of Love, an in-home euthanasia service. This lets me help animals and owners when they’re at their most fragile. I’m grateful to assist them.”
Early in her education, Shearin thought she might become a small animal vet. But her curiosity turned to genetics and then to endocrinology. Later, Shearin developed a taste for research after accepting a stipend from the Boehringer Ingelheim Veterinary Scholars Program for 2007-2008
“Up until that point,” Shearin said, “I had not really seen a lot of translational clinical elements to research, but doing the summer research experience after a year of veterinary school helped me to understand the value of having the clinical training.”
Today, Shearin works as a veterinary medical officer with the US Food and Drug Administration in Washington, D.C., responsible for reviewing preclinical data for animals that participate in clinical trials.
Shearin recommends veterinary students gain research experience to help enrich their understanding of both medical theory and practice.
“Research experience helps you in everything you do,” Shearin said. “That kind of very scientific, critical thinking helps you understand the demands of a research publication versus a case study report. It helps with your understanding of veterinary medicine and how we think about evidence-based medicine. Being able to really critically evaluate the evidence helps veterinarians overall.”
JESSICA BERTOUT
‘I learned how broad the opportunities are’
Early experience with comparative oncology leads to entrepreneurial thinking for biotech-minded veterinarian, dog-lover
In precision medicine, scientists identify approaches that lead to the most effective treatment by devices and drugs for a given patient. That means working through a number of iterations before zeroing-in on a promising path.
Jessica Bertout has taken a similar journey to find her specific calling within the veterinary sciences. She worked through early hypotheses about her professional path before plotting her trajectory as a bioscience entrepreneur.
“I started veterinary school interested in equine reproduction, and I ended veterinary school very focused on small animal and human oncology,” said Bertout, director of clinical research at Presage Biosciences, Inc., a biotech company in Seattle.
Presage collaborates with pharmaceutical companies to help develop new drugs and drug combinations. The company assesses novel agents in human patients, largely through a device that allows micro-dose injection of up to eight different drugs directly into tumors. Subsequent analysis of tumor responses helps drug companies determine which drugs or drug combinations appear most effective. Bertout ran the company’s feasibility study in canine patients with cancer and is now managing its clinical trials in human patients with cancer.
“During my training in the VMD-PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania, there was an interesting transition,” Bertout said. “I started off interested in reproductive biology and endocrinology and then rotated through a lab that was focused on breast cancer research, where endocrinology and cancer research converge.”
Bertout grew increasingly interested in how cancer cells work and how best to fight cancer. She credits the overlapping experiences, as well as her mentors at Yale and UPenn, in broadening her perspective and building a career in oncology.
This year, Bertout is starting her own business, CASTR Alliance, based in the Seattle area. The name contains an acronym for Companion Animal Studies for Translational Research. The business, which she co-founded with fellow veterinarian Jim Perry, will manage studies in companion animals for pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The company’s goal is to run high-quality studies and translate the findings into new drugs and devices approvals for humans and/or animals.
“There’s a void in the Northwest when it comes to veterinary studies,” Bertout said. “If I take my dog to his veterinarian and ask about clinical trials, there are very few opportunities, in part because the nearest veterinary schools are quite far away, over a 4-hour drive from Seattle.
“There are lots of dogs and cats and dedicated owners in the Puget Sound area, in and around the greater Seattle area, and there are also many progressive, state-of-the-art, specialty vet practices, but there is just no entity that can really help these practices move clinical studies forward and manage them. CASTR Alliance plans to do just that and to help fill this gap.”
Bertout said she owes many of the fundamentals of her research skillset to her summer project as a Boehringer Ingelheim Veterinary Scholars recipient in 2003. Among many other things, she said, she learned how to prepare research proposals, presentations and study reports.
“All of those things are skills that I use every day,” Bertout said. “I learned how broad the opportunities are for veterinarians interested in research.”