The Arkansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) will open Fall 2026, pending accreditation, and will give students an experience differing from the average veterinary medical school. 

Heidi Banse, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine said the college will have unique aspects based on how they have structured their curriculum, such as using a distributive model where students participate in clinicals in their final year of schooling. 

“It’s a very community centered program, which I think fits the state of Arkansas and really does position us with some educational elements that other programs may not be able to offer. All programs have their own niches and own areas that they emphasize and for us, it’s community.“ Banse said. 

Banse formerly served as associate dean for educational strategy at Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine (LSU Vet Med).

At LSU Vet Med, Banse led the implementation of a new competency based veterinary program by restructuring the educational framework to ensure students are prepared to enter practice when they graduate. 

“The thing that enticed me here at Arkansas State University was the opportunity to build a program, really starting at the ground floor,” Banse said. “Having just built a new curriculum at LSU, it seemed the next logical step in a career progression to build an entire program.”

Banse said A-State’s vet school curriculum will focus on the components of developing skills, communication, ethics, practice management and clinical reasoning in the first three years. In the final year students will go out into community practices across Arkansas and in other states to hone their skills and prepare to enter into practice.

Len Frey, senior advisor for strategic initiatives and senior associate dean of the CVM, said the distributive model of structuring veterinary medical schools is becoming more common. 

“We’re very comfortable with the distributed model because we saw it work at NYIT (New York Institute of Technology),” Frey said. “Again, it’s not the norm. It’s not the way it’s always been done. It’s more of a newer theory on how to deliver kind of practice ready doctors or practice ready veterinary medicine physicians.”

Banse said one of the primary goals of the college is to train veterinarians across the breadth of species so they are prepared to enter general practice. To accomplish this, something she wants to leave behind as much as they can is the traditional lecture format of education. 

“Our goal is to make sure that our students are engaged in learning and they have active learning experiences,” Banse said. “Our classrooms that we’re constructing in our new building are flexible use classrooms, so they can be used for lectures, but our hope is that we’re doing a lot of small group learning to support some of the clinical reasoning.” 

Banse said around 190 practices, 85 of which are in Arkansas, have signed up to be part of the clinical year teaching network. 

Since there is currently no veterinary school in Arkansas, students hoping to become veterinarians have to go to college out of state to finish their schooling in veterinary medicine.  

“We are one of the most underserved states in regards to the number of veterinarians per capita. We have 10 counties currently with no veterinarians and so that makes it harder for clients to seek out care,” Banse said. 

Amy Schmidt, director of the Northeast Arkansas Humane Society (NEAHS), said one of the reasons veterinary costs are so high right now is due to the lack of veterinarians. She said one of the problems in the community they see often is people love their animals but can’t afford to take care of them. 

“The more vets we have in the area, the more we’ll be able to service the community in a way that’s accessible,” Schmidt said. “I think there’s a great need to have a vet school in the area, and I’m super excited that we’re getting it here in Jonesboro.” 

NEAHS is one practice that will be partnering with the veterinary school for students in clinicals to give them the opportunity for hands-on experience. 

Banse said students will be able to practice doing physical exams on dogs and cats at the shelter and learn to provide veterinary care under the oversight of a practicing veterinarian. 

“They’ll get lots of experience talking to clients, working with animals in the community to make the quality of life for animals and hopefully make client experiences meaningful,” Banse said. 

Schmidt said a room in the isolation building on site at NEAHS will be remodeled specifically for students to learn isolation protocols. 

The NEAHS does a low cost clinic three days a week that offers spays and neuters as well as vaccinations. Schmidt said they have a hard time keeping up with the demand, with low cost surgeries booked out until May. 

“The vet school is going to help us with some of that volume, so they’re going to be helping with low cost surgeries. Not just helping us, but helping the community,” Schmidt said. “We also have that indoor dog kennel area, they’ve talked some about using that to teach students how to make rounds in a clinic and assess everyone, especially post op.”

Banse said the vet school will include two flexible use classrooms with tables that can be set up multiple ways to easily change the configuration of the room. 

The building will also feature an almost 3000-square-foot clinical skills lab where students will learn procedures, an anatomy lab, cooler, freezer, a place to store anatomy specimens, a clinical skills laboratory space, storage for models from suture pads to full sized horses and cows, a practice lab for students that will be set up with 24/7 key-card access, a surgical skills training suite with a pre operative area, a sterile surgical area for their spay experience, for their spay surgeries and kennels for dogs and cats in case they need to be housed overnight.

Banse said plans for continuous improvement include collecting feedback from students, instructors and course coordinators as the program is built and as students go through, and making adjustments as needed. She said they will also use the national standardized exams, the veterinary education assessment and the North American Veterinary Licensing Examination, that all veterinarians take as part of their licensure to help inform changes immediately.

 “One of the things that’s important for us too is once our students go out into the community, we then collect feedback from them one year out and five years out as well as from their employers one year out, to see how prepared they were when they entered into practice,” Banse said. 

She said it’s also going to be important for them to keep tabs on the changes and anticipated changes in the field of veterinary medicine and industry trends to make sure they’re responding to any needs within the state of Arkansas.

The college has collaborated with the College of Agriculture and will continue to do so. Banse said they will be using the Equine Center and one of the bovine barns for teaching students skills based training. 

“Hopefully that creates better facilities for animal science students too. It’s not like those are ours only, we share all of that,” Banse said. “I’m really grateful that the College of Ag has invited us in. And really feel like part of the same part of the same team training students.”

Sarah Hooper, associate dean for student programs and admissions, joined the CVM Feb. 27.  

She will oversee student programs from recruitment through graduation, refine admission processes and the recruitment of students, when that time comes. 

Hooper said she will be working a lot on creating new website content for admissions. 

“I’m just excited to be able to help start the first state vet school in Arkansas. I had the advantage of going to a state university that did have a vet school in my home state and it’s really beneficial and advantageous when students like myself have our support systems,” Hooper said. “It’s really exciting in my mind to help initiate this new school and to give the residents of Arkansas something that they’ve not been able to access before.”

The proposed class size is 120 students admitted once per year in the fall. In-state tuition will be $35,000 per year and out of state tuition will be $55,000 per year. 

The groundbreaking ceremony for the CVM will be held today at 11 a.m. and construction will begin later this month to early April. 

Banse said they will be able to start recruiting students after they receive a letter of reasonable assurance from the Council of Education that they may receive after a comprehensive visit this summer. 

“I’m most excited to have students. It’s exciting to build a program and to try to think about how we construct a student-centered curriculum, but ultimately, it doesn’t feel real until the students are on site,” Banse said. “We’re doing it for the students and it’s really fun to hear the excitement on campus from our students about the vet school and I just can’t wait for them to get here.” 

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