By Sarah Carey
Continuing its rise to national prominence, the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine jumped two spots to land at No. 5 among veterinary colleges nationwide in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings.
“I am so pleased and proud of our entire college community,” said Dana Zimmel, D.V.M., dean of the college. “This new ranking is an outstanding tribute to the hard work and commitment to excellence that I see every day in our faculty, staff and students.”
Zimmel added that the college’s goal was to transform the profession of veterinary medicine through innovation — a goal that penetrates every aspect of its core missions of teaching, research, clinical service and community outreach.
“Our faculty are committed to enhancing animal, human and environmental health, and are always looking for new ways to do so,” Zimmel said. “To see their efforts recognized in this way is extremely rewarding.”
Sharing the No. 5 spot with UF are the colleges at North Carolina State University, Texas A & M University-College Station, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Pennsylvania, The full rankings can be found here.
U.S. News & World Report has traditionally ranked veterinary colleges and other graduate programs every four years. This year’s rankings came out two years after the UF veterinary college rose two spots from #9 to #7 among veterinary colleges nationwide.
Since the 2023 rankings, the college has amassed several key achievements.
- With support from the UF strategic funding initiative, a state-of-the-art, AI-enabled digital imaging platform is being developed to collect, collate, and analyze patient data. This groundbreaking veterinary learning health care system will create a path for the development of precision medicine — medical solutions customized to each patient with the aid of molecular and genomic data sets. It will also address bottlenecks in the pathway to implementing personalized cancer diagnoses and treatments, including the scarcity of veterinary pathologists and the heterogeneous nature of cancer disorders.
- In August 2023, the college launched an open heart surgery program for dogs, becoming the only program of its kind in the United States and the only one to offer the complex procedure known as mitral valve repair. To date, approximately 70 dogs have received the life-saving procedure, which has not only helped individual pets and their families but has also advanced the field of veterinary cardiology. The program now includes an open heart surgery fellowship program to train veterinarians, paving the way for similar programs at other institutions.
- The new UF Veterinary Hospital at the World Equestrian Center in Ocala, which opened in May 2022 to provide leading-edge patient care to horses and small animals located on-site as well as from the local community, continues to thrive. The 40,000-square-foot hospital is part of a strategic alliance aimed at better serving WEC visitors with animals in need of veterinary care, and animal owners from Ocala and the surrounding area. Since its opening, UF veterinary students have begun performing clinical rotations at the facility. Several research projects are also underway, involving residents and faculty from a variety of disciplines at the college.
- Canine cancer research at UF received a multimillion-dollar gift from the Dr. Larry and Ann Laiks Charitable Trust that will go directly to the college’s oncology program to support special collaborative cancer research with the UF Health Cancer Center to elevate future discoveries, precision medicine, immunotherapy and genome mapping.
- An international team of researchers led by UF evolutionary biologist Emma Schachner, Ph.D. reported for the first time that soaring birds use their lungs to enhance their flying in a way that has evolved over time. Their study was published in June 2024 in Nature.
- University of Florida researchers, in collaboration with multiple agencies, published a report of a case of a Florida bottlenose dolphin found with highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, or HPAIV, in Communications biology. The report documents the discovery, the first finding of HPAIV in a cetacean in North America.
- More than $7 million in private gifts have bolstered the college’s veterinary forensic pathology program, led by Dr. Adam Stern. The funding will enable the program to expand its reach, providing much-needed resources for animal forensics partners across the state of Florida, the nation and the world.
“We’ve worked hard, and no list of achievements can fully capture all of the great things being done here at the college,” Zimmel said. “I can’t wait to see what the future holds.”