Logan • Jenna Gowans didn’t always dream of being a veterinarian, but caring for animals has almost always been in her family.
Gowans’ father and sister run a veterinary clinic in Tooele where she grew up. While attending Utah State University for her undergraduate degree, she said, “The running joke in my family was if I was going to get an animal science degree, then I might as well go to vet school.”
Gowans is now in her second year of veterinary school at Utah State, but instead of dedicating more time to her studies in Logan, she’ll soon have to move to Pullman, Washington, to finish her advanced degree.
That’s because Utah State doesn’t yet have a doctorate of veterinary medicine college — nor does any university in Utah. Instead, Utah State is a partner in a regional program that allows students to spend two years in Logan before finishing their degree at Washington State University and joining the workforce as veterinarians.
But soon, Utah State will have its own full-time veterinary school. USU and national veterinary leaders hope in the coming years, the new school will be an asset toward addressing a national — and local — shortage of animal health care providers.
Utah State’s new college
Dirk Vanderwall, the college’s interim dean and a professor, started at Utah State in 2012 when the regional program — called the Washington-Idaho-Montana-Utah Regional Program, or WIMU — began. Every year, a new cohort of 30 students, 20 Utah residents and 10 nonresidents, enter the four-year program and eventually graduate from Washington State.
In 2022, the Utah Legislature approved funding to create Utah State’s new College of Veterinary Medicine. Vanderwall, recently tapped to become the college’s first full-time dean starting July 1, said the creation of the new school is a significant achievement and the number of veterinary students will grow in the coming years.
“We will be able to increase our class size from its current 30 to 80 students in each class,” Vanderwall told The Salt Lake Tribune and Utah Public Radio. “We’re planning for 40 positions for Utah residents, 40 positions for nonresidents.”
But that increase won’t happen for a while. The college’s first four-year cohort will start in the fall of 2025 and will be limited to 40 students in its inaugural year. Vanderwall said the college will grow to 80 new students per year when its new facilities are built just south of the Logan campus.
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