Cornell's DVM Class of 2015 (150th Anniversary)

Blog by Donald F. Smith, Cornell University, 01.26.11

This a special welcome to the students who comprise the Veterinary Class of 2015 at Cornell University. You are on track to complete your DVM degree during the 150^th anniversary of the university.

Our founder, Ezra Cornell, was an entrepreneur who built a vast telegraph network for Samuel Morse. After amassing his fortune in Western Union stock, Cornell returned to his first love, farming. He acquired an expansive land tract on the top of the hill overlooking Cayuga Lake and then set to work fulfilling his dream of providing an educational institution where any person could find instruction in any study.

Cornell's New Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory Opens October 1, 2010

Why should the people of New York State invest tens of millions of dollars to build a facility at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine to diagnose and prevent animal diseases?

Let’s consider the alternatives:

·    Ten million cattle and sheep were slaughtered and their bodies burned in massive fires to eliminate foot and mouth disease in Britain a decade ago;

·    Food poisoning caused illnesses for thousands of people in the recent outbreak of Salmonella-tainted eggs;

·    Thousands of cats and dogs became sick and many died from pet food tainted with impurities from China;

·    Dogs developed a new strain of influenza that caused pneumonia and death.



$70 million Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory Opened Oct. 1 2010



These are the types of arguments that my colleagues and I made to the State of New York several years ago when I was dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine. And why we rejoiced when Governor George Pataki visited Cornell in 2006 to announce the State appropriation for a new Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory to replace our aging facility that lacked the size and sophistication to monitor and control diseases that have increased in virulence and scope.