With students and professors vying for limited space in outdated facilities and using equipment that is more than 30 years old, officials in the College of Veterinary Medicine say it’s not hard to see why it has slipped in rankings and prestige.

The question many are now asking is: “How do we get back on the top?”

The current proposal, presented to the Iowa Board of Regents at its last meeting and expected to be approved Dec. 16, is to generate more tuition revenue for the school through 12 percent in-state and 8 percent out-of-state supplemental tuition for veterinary medicine students for each of the next four years.

“We have huge gaps of what we are able to provide and the expectations of modern medicine,” said John Thomson, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine.

According to the proposal for the Board of Regents, reduction in state-mandated appropriations for the college totaled more than $1.62 million. Coupled with mid-year reductions, the college eliminated more than a dozen positions. Such reductions were also reported to have negative impacts on research programs, distance education, physiology teaching, field services and pathology services to the public.

“No student is excited to dish out this amount of money, but it comes to a point where you see your school needing it,” said Megan Peavey, Graduate and Professional Student Senate senator for the college. “It’s not the only source of money that will be used to help improve the college’s budget.”

Thomson has said revenue will also be drawn from grants, donations and income made from the teaching hospital.

But such a proposal has prompted faculty, students and staff to ask how the money will be used to enhance the college.

Don Draper, the college’s associate dean for academic and student affairs, said he has identified three key areas for which tuition revenue needs to be used: expanding student educational opportunities, enriching the quality of educational programs and expanding the college’s educational delivery system.

The accreditation report by the American Veterinary Medical Association last April pointed out serious deficiencies in the college’s facilities, most of which are currently being addressed through a three-phase renovation and expansion of the Veterinary Teaching Hospital and completion of a Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory biosecurity unit. The report states the project will do little to correct other facility needs, however.

“We are busting out the seams. We just don’t have the room for the number of clients and patients that come through,” said Peavey, junior in veterinary medicine. “We have professors that have to double-up on offices, and four or five graduate assistants to an office.”

The report states that facilities of Veterinary Clinical Sciences, Veterinary Diagnostic and Production Animal Medicine, the Veterinary Teaching Hospital and the Veterinary Disease Laboratory are inadequate to varying degrees. Specifically, the report says that the college’s equine area designated for isolation of infectious diseases is not an isolation area and that the area designated for respiratory diseases is marginal. The environmental condition of the remainder of the food animal hospital is “substandard” as well, with poor lighting and ventilation, cracked flooring that can’t be sanitized and poor equine induction/recovery stalls. As well, there are not facilities to load or unload horses being admitted or discharged from the hospital and a substandard canine rehabilitation area.

The effect for students, the report says, is an animal hospital that “is not efficient in managing teaching/service components of the curriculum.” It states that clinical practice models no longer “fit” the physical facilities.

“You talk about a crowded space, this place is crazy in the morning,” Draper said of the college’s surgery preparation and anesthesia induction room during a tour. “It’s not uncommon to have a dozen people in this space.”

The association also cited deficiencies with the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit.

“We have a very good ICU unit, but it’s very small. It’s not what a modern ICU unit should be space-wise, and they certainly could use more equipment, as well as staffing,” Draper said. “Usually, an ICU unit like this is anywhere from two to three times this big. It would be a better educational experience for students if this were enhanced.”

With all these concerns, Draper said money is and will be used for renovations that are expected to begin soon for these facilities. Dates have not been finalized, however.

Facilities aside, the report also mentioned needed improvements in the programs offered by the college. The report cites poor student performance on national examinations and the need for students to have better exposure to clinical cases. According to the report, a higher than expected percentage of veterinary medicine students do not pass the North American Veterinary Licensing Examination — a national benchmark for U.S. veterinary schools.

The national average of students who do not pass is between 6 and 7 percent; however, from 2000 to 2004, the ISU college has seen non-passage rates of 9 to 10 percent.

The accreditation report does praise the college for its strengths in the emphasis on the basic sciences, as well as its strengths in its surgery laboratory. But the report also stated that there is little provision for adding additional courses, and that infectious disease isolation facilities must be used in the professional teaching program.

Draper said the school is currently implementing an outcomes assessment intended to analyze how effective the college’s curriculum is at serving student needs.

The report indicates that the college has an insufficient number of faculty positions in clinical disciplines.

“In fact, we have a lot of faculty that are teaching classes who are not board certified. For example, we don’t teach separate surgery classes in food animal accessions, exotic animal medicine, oncology and animal behavior,” he said. “Our counterparts do offer these types of courses and do have more board certified faculty. This is one of the reasons why we’re ranked so low.”

The college is short on pathologists as well and does not have the “critical mass” to support such programs, he said.

The hope is to use revenue from the tuition proposal to either higher more faculty or through distance education by streaming lectures into classes, Draper said.

The report also states the college’s equipment does not meet its teaching needs. The dissection tables in veterinary anatomy were purchased in 1971 and the large animal surgery table in the teaching hospital is over 50 years old.

Draper said money from the tuition proposal and other funding sources will be infused into expense funds for course budgets and to purchase new equipment such as imaging and diagnostic equipment.

Despite the school’s shortcomings, Peavey said it is still a quality college with outstanding, supportive faculty.

“To the school’s credit, there are a lot of people doing top-of-the-line, big-time, state-of-the-art research with things such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s,” Peavey said. “I look at the accreditation as finally a heads-up that things need to get done — it was a push, a wake-up call.”