West Texas A&M University is now looking to expand with its new VERO (Veterinary Education, Research, and Outreach) program this spring which is in partnership with the Texas A&M college of veterinary medicine & biomedical sciences and West Texas A&M University.

“So, we started this project to try to get exposure and help students understand what wonderful opportunities not just with job employment but the citizenry in the panhandle. It’s a wonderful place to be,” clinical professor and Director of the VERO program Dr. Dee Griffin said.

This new addition on campus can bring not only knowledge to students accepted into the program, but also comes with the hope of giving back to the Texas Panhandle upon graduation into many different areas.

“The VERO program is going to be a really helpful extension to a lot of WT students. So, the way it will work, I believe is you spend two years here in the panhandle for your first two years of vet school. And then after your two years, they start transferring you out into other rural areas in Texas in order to properly learn about veterinary medicine,” junior pre-vet biology major, Mia Davis said.

This huge undertaking however did not happen overnight. Countless hours of planning and execution was put in, in order to bring this program to the great panhandle plains.

According to vetmed.tamu website, “ VERO is the culmination of an idea that began in 2009 as a response to the urgent need to expand the CVMBS and address the continual need for well-trained veterinarians skilled in the care of both large and small animals. ”

This new program is not looking at Texas A&M University as a competitor in this program but as a helping hand in offering the best experience for students, staff and faculty to offer the best learning experience.

“We thought if we could mentor students that enter WT from the Panhandle region, this area and mentor them in a pre-veterinary program such that they qualified to make application to a veterinary college I’m not going to tell you that we were looking for the best and the brightest, we were looking for the students that were academically qualified to make it and they had a genuine desire to be a veterinarian,” Dr. Griffin said

The twenty-two million-dollar, 22,000 square foot facility project is located in Canyon, Texas and is a partnership looking for a change for the future of dedicated, hardworking individuals.

“I think it’s a great idea forWT. One of the main reasons why I chose WT was because of their amazing pre-vet program and the things that they have added in. So, just to add in another way for people to get into vet school. I think it’s a great addition I love that they added that into the program”, Davis said

With the Grand Opening being scheduled for April, students can look and begin taking classes in the building come Fall 2021.