Learning and teaching innovations in the veterinary undergraduate curriculum at Glasgow.

Abstract

The University of Glasgow celebrated its 550th anniversaryin 2001, two years after the Faculty of Veterinary Medicinemarked its golden jubilee as part of the university, signify-ing the incorporation of the original Glasgow VeterinarySchool within a great civic institution. These events show-cased research advances and teaching innovations to stu-dents, as well as alumni and friends from all over the world.Students undertaking the five-year degree of Bachelor ofVeterinary Medicine and Surgery at Glasgow are based atGarscube Estate, four miles north of the main universitycampus, where the majority of learning and teaching activ-ity takes place. It accommodates an average of 100 studentsin each year. Although Glasgow is regarded as the only sin-gle-site veterinary school in the UK, the students also attendanimal husbandry management classes at Cochno Farm andResearch Centre, a 340-ha business enterprise that is locatedwithin five miles. The farm is quality assured for milk, beef,and lamb production and has 90 dairy cows and 550 ewesand lambs, as well as a number of beef cattle. The farm isalso used for clinical teaching in the final (fifth) year.The faculty was approved by the American VeterinaryMedical Association (AVMA) in 1999, currently one of onlyfour schools in Europe to have achieved this status, andrecently became the only center for the Clinical ProficiencyExamination outside North America, underlining the factthat we are preparing students for international venturesand collaboration. However, we also recognize at Glasgowthat clinical proficiency is insufficient alone to prepare stu-dents for global employment and that facilitating an under-standing of other cultures, languages, and environments isessential, as Gustafsson points out.