Women in AVMA's 2014 House of Delegates, with some Government Comparisons

By Donald F. Smith, Cornell University and Julie Kumble, Women's Fund of Western Massachusetts


In April 2013, we reported on the gender makeup of the AVMA’s House of Delegates (HOD).[i]  We thought readers might be interested in seeing an update of the current composition of this important legislative body of the veterinary profession in as they meet for their semi-annual HOD meeting this week in Denver.[ii]

Graph 1 below shows that 22 (31.4%) of the 70 HOD delegates are women.[iii]  This is a higher proportion than we reported last year when women comprised 25% of the HOD delegates. The percentage of female delegates representing the 52 states (including Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia) is  26.9% and the percentage representing the allied organizations is 44.4%.

Graph 1. Percentage of women and men in current HOD (July 1, 2014) showing total percentage, and also segmented by those who represent states and those who represent affiliated organizations.
(Data from AVMA, www.avma.org, July 1, 2014)

The proportion of women in the HOD does not represent the full story with respect to voting power, however. This is because the voting power for delegates representing state associations (including Puerto Rica and the District of Columbia) is weighted proportionate to the number of AVMA members in each particular state.

For example, delegates from the ten states with the most AVMA members carry approximately half of the total votes apportioned to all states. Because eight of these ten delegates are men (including the delegates from the five largest states), the weighting of male votes is disproportionately high compared to the total number of delegates.

Though the female representation of the allied organizations is higher (44%), the impact of their aggregate voting power is not realized proportionate to their numerical presence in the HOD because these organizations carry only two votes each.  Therefore, in the aggregate, the affiliated organizations provide less than 10% of the total weighted voting power of the HOD, with the other 90% coming from delegates representing state associations.

This is not to diminish the substantial progress that has been made in women’s representation in the House during the past year. Not only has the proportion of women delegates increased substantially, as noted above, but the gender ratio of the alternate delegates for the 10 largest states is now 50%. If some of these alternate delegates become delegates in the next few years, this by itself will have a substantial impact on the weighted vote of the body.

As we did in our story in 2013, we again match our HOD gender profile with data from the US Congress. We also added governors for one additional point of comparison. (See graph 2, below.)

Graph 2. Percentage of women and men delegates in current HOD (July 1, 2014) and of three governing bodies (US Senate and House of Representatives; and State Governors).
(Data from AVMA, www.avma.org, July 1, 2014, and other sources.)

Scholars generally recommend a minimum of 30% women in leadership positions to achieve a critical mass where they effectively influence policy and decision-making.  Unlike in the US Congress and governorships, we have reached that 30% point in the HOD.  Though we have not yet reached the threshold in weighted voting power within the House, we are optimistic considering the progress over the past year and the impact that the Women's Veterinary Leadership Development Initiative also may be having to increase awareness for the importance in achieving more women in leadership positions.  This is a favorable sign in a profession that is now well over 50% women.   

The authors extend thanks to Nathan Watson '17 for his assistance in preparing this story.

Dr. Smith invites comments at dfs6@cornell.edu

[i] Smith, Donald F. and Julie Kumble. Women’s Leadership in the U.S. Congress and the AVMA’s House of Delegates: Exploring Parallels and Looking Forward. Perspectives in Veterinary Medicine, April 28, 2013.

[ii] The House of Delegates meets just prior to the AVMA Convention (July 24-25, 2014).

[iii] This includes on delegates, not alternate delegates (delegates are non voting). The proportion of women among alternates is currently 34.1%.

In the 70th Year Since its Founding, a Tuskegee Alumnus will become AVMA President

Donald F. Smith, Cornell University
July 21, 2014

Editor’s Note: Continuing my episodic series on AVMA presidents, I present a story of Dr. Ted Cohn, who will be installed as the 2014-15 AVMA president on July 29th. In response to a tribute to Tuskegee University posted last January,1 Ted told me how proud he was to have been a graduate of that college, and how especially honored he was that I had cited him as an alumnus. This led to more substantive communications with both Ted and his wife, Becky. This is the story of their Tuskegee years (1971-75).2

Donald F. Smith

Dr. Cohn was but one of several white students in the 1971 entering class at Tuskegee. Six years earlier, the School had matriculated its first white male student and the following year, the first white woman was admitted. In his book, The Legacy, Dr. Eugene Adams summarized the feelings of the era.

There was an uneventful acceptance of these students by their classmates and teachers. No special arrangements were made for these first non-black students and no media publicity was accorded their entrance or graduation.3

Ted was unaware of this demographic change because the advertising brochure that the school provided did not contain any photos of white students so he really wasn’t sure that he would not be the only white student present.

Tuskegee University DVM Class of 1975 Photo, with Dean W.C. Bowie. One of Dr. Cohn’s classmates (Dr. Michael I. Blackwell, top row) would later become dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Tennessee

(Photo provided by Dr. Ted Cohn, 2014)

Ted’s decision to attend Tuskegee was partly pragmatic, because his home state of Arkansas had just established a new regional plan to allocate two positions to the university. But his decision was also based upon his core values of social justice:

While in Jr. High, I had a read a biography of George Washington Carver―[born into slavery, he later became the first head of Tuskegee’s agricultural department]―and I was inspired by Carver’s life and accomplishments. At the time I actually told my mother, who had been active in the civil rights movement in Arkansas a decade earlier, that I wanted to go to college at Tuskegee.

Dr. Cohn found Tuskegee to be a “great place with a wonderful family atmosphere, caring faculty and administration.” The town was quiet and there was not a lot to do except to study, so that helped unite the class from almost the first day. Ted said the classmates got along well and treated each other with respect, understanding, and good humor, despite the occasional friction that is present among any group of students. Pig roasts, hosted by many classmates but especially inspired by the Caribbean students, were among the most popular extracurricular events and everyone gladly participated.

Apartment rented by Ted and Becky Cohn in Tuskegee (1971-75)

(This photo, provided by Dr. Cohn, was taken in 2014)

Though some students―both white and black―chose to live in Auburn which was 20 miles away, Ted and his wife, Becky, found an apartment in Tuskegee, close to campus. He had grown up in Little Rock, which at the time did not have a huge population (130,000), but living in this small, rural southern town provided a new environment for the Cohn’s.

The towns of Tuskegee and Tuskegee Institute were contiguous and had a population of about 12,000 people, and the students, faculty, and administration probably accounted for about half of them. There were just two grocery stores and a couple of small mom- and pop-type convenience stores. The only fast food was the “Dairy King” and perhaps the “Chicken Coop.”

Although Tuskegee was over 80% African-American when he arrived, Ted remembers there was a white mayor, and that the first black mayor since reconstruction was elected the following year. The area was part of a still thriving “southern cotton culture” in which the vast majority of the land, businesses, and ensuing wealth was white-owned. Ted also recalled a monument commemorating the civil war with a statue of a confederate soldier in the town square.

With few exceptions, the community accepted the Cohn’s. Becky found a job as a dental assistant and later a hygienist at the VA hospital, just down the street from the veterinary school. As a “long hair,” Ted drew some attention,

I did raise some eyebrows and engender some concerns with a few of the white folks, particularly at the barbershop and once at a hardware store. Subsequently, Becky learned to cut my hair, and did so for the next eight years. I found another hardware store to meet my needs.

By virtue of Dr. Cohn’s ability to secure financial aid through a work study program, he was able to have substantive exposure to the clinics during evening, weekends, and over holiday and summer breaks from the time he was a first-year student. Though he spent a great deal of time cleaning kennels and horse stalls, and exercising and restraining patients, he also had frequent exposure to faculty, staff, and upper class students throughout his educational experience.

During the summer between his third and fourth years, Cohn worked for the United States Department of Agriculture in their nearby Auburn laboratory. He made friends with several Auburn veterinary students and even attended a few of their classes. That experience opened his eyes to some of the differences between the two schools (and towns), which at that time—unlike today—had minimal collaboration.

Dr. Cohn’s summary of life as one of the early white veterinary students at Tuskegee, 40 years ago, is a warm and encouraging testament to both the university and town, and also to Becky and himself.

Overall, living and going to school in Tuskegee was a unique and educational experience from many different aspects―one that certainly has helped to shape Becky and me into the people we are today. Admittedly, while compared to some of the other veterinary colleges, Tuskegee may have had some shortcomings in their facilities, the culture of the school―the caring personal touch of the faculty―ultimately made up for any deficiencies. Amongst the many lessons Tuskegee taught me, perhaps one of the most important, is that the effort you put into your education is much more important than where you go to school. With almost 39 years of veterinary experience behind me, I believe that even more today.

Dr. Michael Blackwell, whose father was a faculty member at Tuskegee, was one of Ted’s classmates. He later became Assistant Surgeon General and was Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Tennessee (2000-2008). “You will appreciate that our time as veterinary students was during the turbulent period of civil rights reform”, he told me. “It was clear that Ted wanted to be there [at Tuskegee] and seemed very comfortable with Black people or anyone else who appeared different.”4

Dr. Douglas Aspros, AVMA president in 2012-13, who has known Dr. Cohn for years, and also served with him on the Executive Board, had this to say about his friend and colleague, “Ted’s experiences as a student at Tuskegee are the foundation of who he is as a person as well as a veterinarian. It’s clear why he’s been the most determined advocate for diversity at AVMA, and throughout the profession, that I’ve known.”5

Dr. Theodore Cohn, AVMA President (2014-15)

(Photo provided by Dr. Cohn)

Dr. Cohn will become the first Tuskegee DVM graduate to receive the AVMA’s gavel of the presidency. What a fitting tribute for this, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the veterinary school at that institution.

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1 Smith, Donald F. A Tribute to Tuskegee. Perspectives in Veterinary Medicine. Jan 17, 2014.
2 Cohn, Theodore, DVM (President-elect, AVMA). Emails to Donald F. Smith (Cornell University), Feb 23, July 11, July 13, 2014. Unless otherwise noted, all of the quotations attributed to Dr. Cohn, as well as the information about his time in Tuskegee is contained in these email communications.
3 Adams, Eugene W. The Legacy. A History of the Tuskegee University School of Veterinary Medicine. (Tuskegee: Media Center Press, 1995), 80.
4 Blackwell, Michael J., DVM, MPH (Assistant Surgeon General, USPHS (Ret.), Dean Emeritus, University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine). Email to Donald F. Smith (Cornell University), July 16, 2014.
5 Aspros, Douglas G., DVM (AVMA president, 2012-13). E-mail to Donald F. Smith (Cornell University), July 12, 2014.

Dr, Smith invites comments at dfs6@cornell.edu

Top

AVMA Presidents of the 21st Century

Donald F. Smith, Cornell University

Posted July 16, 2014

The AVMA convention is almost upon us, and with it, the selection of the president-elect who will assume the presidency for 2015-16.1 The decision will be made by the House of Delegates (HOD) immediately prior to the convention.

The typical profile of the fifteen 21st century presidents is a 60-something male small animal practice owner who graduated from veterinary college 35-40 years before their installation. Only one president was elected from a career outside of private clinical practice (Bonnie Beaver, academia), and her specialty is behavior, a subset of medicine.2 Though a few of the recent presidents have had experience in mixed animal practice, none came from a primarily or exclusively food animal or equine practice.

The breadth of educational background of our 21st century presidents has been remarkable. They are graduates of 11 different veterinary colleges. What is even more impressive is that the states in which they reside have been equally distributed from the five regions of the country, with three each from the West, Midwest, Southwest, Southeast, and Northeast.

In a previous article, I mentioned this aspect of our diversity and contrasted it to some branches of our government.3 Consider the justices on the current Supreme Court, for example, where eight of the nine are graduates of just two law schools.4 Or what about the four most recent US presidents whom are all Ivy League graduates, with two5 having obtained law degrees from the same colleges as the Supreme Court justices.

In terms of AVMA leadership experience before election to the presidency, most have arisen from the Executive Board (EB), with many serving as chair or vice chair. (Drs James Brandt and Joe Howell served as chair of the EB following their presidencies). Several presidents also served on the HOD for a number of years before ascending to the Board. In 2002, Dr. Jack Walther became the first person in many decades to be elected president-elect from the position of vice president, a position which is primarily dedicated to student interactions.6

I acknowledge the desirability to have experienced and well-prepared veterinarians in the office of the president. However, I sometimes wonder if we could find a way to elect qualified AVMA presidents with fewer than 30 years experience―the average length since 2000 is 36.8 years―since receiving their veterinary degrees. I recognize there are financial, professional development, and work-life balance issues, but perhaps we could develop creative organizational strategies that open the process to a larger pool of potential candidates.

Regardless of how we strive to optimally represent the entirety of our profession, let’s make sure we do not lose some of the desirable features of our current situation. Geographic and educational diversity are two positive components of our presidential profile. I, for one, think those are important items of note and that they could, in a quiet way, even serve as an exemplar for our judicial and executive branches of government.

Following is a list of the first 15 AVMA presidents of the 21st Century.

Name	Term	State	College	AVMA Leadership7
Theodore Cohn	2014-15	Colorado	TUSK ’75	EB(CH), HOD
Clark Fobian	2013-14	Missouri	UMO ’77	EB
Douglas Aspros	2012-13	New York	COR ’75	EB(VC), COE
Rene Carlson	2011-12	Wisconsin	MINN ’78	VP, HOD, COE
Larry Kornegay	2010-11	Texas	TAMU ’71	EB(VC)
Larry Corry	2009-10	Georgia	UGA ’66	EB(CH), HOD
James Cook	2008-09	Kentucky	AUB ’76	EB(VC), HOD
Greg Hammer	2007-08	Delaware	KSU ’73	EB(VC), HOD
Roger Mahr	2006-07	Illinois	ISU ’71	EB(CH)
Henry Childers	2005-06	Rhode Island	AUB ’54	EB
Bonnie Beaver	2004-05	Texas	MINN ’68	EB(CH)8
Jack Walther	2003-04	Nevada	UCD ’63	VP, HOD
Joe Howell	2002-03	Oklahoma	OKL ’72	EB(CH)9
James Brandt	2001-02	Florida	OKL ’64	EB(CH)10, HOD
James Nave	2000-01	Nevada	UMO ’68	EB(CH), HOD

AVMA Presidents from 2000-01 to 2014-15, including their college and year of DVM graduation. Under AVMA leadership experience, I restricted those responsibilities cited to Executive Board (EB) including Chair (CH) and Vice Chair (VC), Vice President (VP), House of Delegates (HOD), and Council on Education (COE).

(Table prepared by the author, 2014)11

Though many of our presidents-elect are selected without a challenger, we will once again this year have a contested election for the person to serve as president in 2015-16. The two candidates are Dr. Larry Dee (Florida) and Dr. Joe Kinnarney (North Carolina).12

Dr. Smith invites comments at dfs6@cornell.edu

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1 The president-elect and also the vice president will be selected by the House of Delegates immediately preceding the AVMA annual convention in Denver on July 25, 2014.
2 Dr. Henry Childers, president 2005-06, was appointed as assistant clinical professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, however his primary professional focus was clinical practice.
3 Smith, Donald F. The Changing Face of AVMA Presidents Through the Years. Perspectives in Veterinary Medicine. May 21, 2013.
4 Harvard and Yale. Justice Ginsberg is a graduate of Columbia Law School. Six of the current nine justices also have undergraduate degrees from Ivy League universities.
5 Presidents Obama and Clinton.
6 More recently (2010), Dr. Rene Carlson, who had served as vice president, was elected to president-elect.
7 EB = Executive Board; CH = Chair; VC = Vice chair; HOD = House of Delegates; COE = Council on Education.
8 During the same meeting in which Dr. Beaver was elected chair of the Executive Board in a contested race, another woman, Dr. Joan Samuels, was elected vice-chair. That race was uncontested.
9 Dr. Howell became chair of the Executive Board following his presidency.
10 Dr. Brandt also became chair of the Executive Board following his presidency.
11 The author acknowledges the assistance of several former AVMA presidents in preparation of this table.
12 Smith, Donald F. AVMA Presidential Candidates Discuss Governance, Future Scope of the Profession, and Advocacy. Perspectives in Veterinary Medicine, July 7, 2014.