NC State, UNC-Pembroke Sign Veterinary Scholars Agreement

The North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) and the University of North Carolina at Pembroke’s School for Biological Sciences have reached an agreement intended to help make veterinary medicine careers more accessible to historically underrepresented groups. The signing ceremony for the institutional agreement was held Jan. 25 in the chancellor’s conference room on the NC State campus.

The two schools have established the University of North Carolina System Veterinary Education Access (UNC-SVEA) program. Its purpose is to make a pathway to a degree in veterinary medicine more accessible to both minority students and also students from a rural background. Minority students comprise 62 percent of the enrollment at UNC-Pembroke.

The program identifies undergraduate students at UNC-Pembroke who have been selected to attend the CVM once an undergraduate degree is completed, provided they met academic and extracurricular criteria specified in the agreement. Up to two students and one alternate from each entering first-year class in the UNC-Pembroke biology program can be selected for the UNC-SVEA Scholars Program. A selection committee from both schools will approve the participants and review their continued eligibility to remain in the program each semester.

This agreement is the first of its kind in the UNC system, with the goal of expanding it to include other rural UNC campuses.

CVM Director of Diversity and Multicultural Affairs Allen Cannedy welcomed the pact, calling it, “an important step toward realizing goal one in our new strategic plan: developing a culture of inclusion that values diversity.”