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Tuesday, January 19, 2016

ELEANOR GREEN, TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY VETERINARY DEAN

By Donald F. Smith, DVM, DACVS
Posted January 18, 2016

Author’s Note: This is the third of six articles honoring the centennial of Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences.

The Women who shaped the West Changed the World is the slogan of the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame where Dean Eleanor Green of Texas A&M University was inducted in 2013. She shares the honor with such notables as animal welfare advocated Temple Grandin, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former AVMA Council on Education member and rancher, JoAnne Smith.

Dr. Green’s career is one of firsts, serving as the first woman department head and chair of the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at the University of Tennessee, and the first large animal hospital director and hospital chief of staff at the University of Florida.


Dr. Eleanor Green, Dean of College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences
(Courtesy of TexasA&M University)

A DVM from Auburn University, Dr. Green was one of just three women in her 1973 class). She is a recognized leader in the equine industry, having owned and shown horses most of her life, winning circuit, state and national championships and numerous awards. She was the first woman to officiate at a National Intercollegiate Livestock Judging Competition, and has served on boards of various horse industry organizations. In 2008, she served as the 54th president of the American Association of Equine Practitioners, the first woman to be elected to that position.

Dr. Green started her veterinary career as owner-partner of a mixed animal practice in Mississippi. When Mississippi State University established its veterinary college in the mid 1970s, she became a founding faculty member and its only woman. Though she never had a goal of becoming an administrator, Dean Green always had an unrelenting passion for leadership, whether in teaching, clinical work, research or the workplace around her. She is a voracious reader of books on leadership and once participated as the only veterinarian in an intensive case-based leadership program at Harvard. 

A recognized clinical specialist, Dr. Green is Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine and also the American Board of Veterinary Practitioners.

With her appointment in 2009, she became the first female dean at the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences at Texas A&M University.  

Dr. Smith invites comments at dfs6@cornell.edu