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Sundays virtual Vet Med Open House will be like no other, according to UI Class of 2022 members JULIE KLEIN, a member of the event committee, and JI PARK, president of the UI chapter of Veterinarians as One Inclusive Community for Empowerment.

They took pen to paper to explain in this week's Town Hall.

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Why is it that we are so quick to reject new information when it challenges our long-held beliefs? This question has taken center stage in 2020, a year when new evidence of the global COVID-19 pandemic and of our countrys systemic racism confronts our beliefs about the world almost daily.

Students at the University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine think stereotypes are part of the answer to this question. Stereotypes present stubborn barriers to learning new information. Thats why this year we are devoting our annual Open House to breaking down stereotypes and busting myths about all things animal- and Vet Med-related. Old dogs can indeed learn new tricks.

As renewed protests against racial injustice swept across the country, Open House organizers decided to take action to address the lack of diversity in their chosen profession. With leadership from the UI student chapter of Veterinarians as One Inclusive Community for Empowerment, we chose the theme of Myth Busting for the annual open house, which had to be moved online to comply with pandemic guidelines.

We are out to smash the stereotype that veterinarians only look a certain way. We want to show that anyone can become a veterinarian and find a rewarding career path suited to their interests.

Although the gender balance in the U.S. veterinary profession has shifted from overwhelmingly male throughout most of the 20th century to majority female for the first time in 2009 and about 70 percent female today the profession remains 90 percent White, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data in 2019.

Deeply ingrained stereotypes can be one of the hardest barriers to break down. The lack of underrepresented minority veterinarians to serve as role models reinforces the stereotype that people of color cant become veterinarians, thus the stereotype becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Our open-house website features interviews with more than 30 veterinary professionals from a variety of backgrounds working in diverse practice areas. We want to prove that a veterinary degree is one of the most versatile degrees. You can even hear from a second-career veterinarian who started as a police officer and went on to become the director of our colleges Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

More importantly, we want to empower children and prospective students from underrepresented backgrounds by showing them role models they can relate to, including veterinarians of color and veterinarians in the LGBTQ+ community.

The theme of breaking down stereotypes extends throughout our virtual open house. We invited all 40-plus student teams that normally host a booth at the in-person open house to develop myth-busting content related to their topic. We cant wait for you to explore the thought-provoking information about wildlife, breeds, diseases, veterinary careers and much more when our website goes live Sunday. (RSVP on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/events/325561818663612/).

Busting stereotypes challenging long-held beliefs opens hearts and minds to a whole world of opportunities and experiences that were previously unexplored. Taking in new information is fundamental to growing as a person as well as growing as a society. We hope our open house will expose you to new information about animals and a profession you thought you already knew. You might even come away with a different perspective.

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Every Tuesday and some Thursdays in The News-Gazette, well turn over our Commentary page to community members and other experts with local ties. If you have interest in weighing in on a topic making news, contact Editor Jeff D'Alessio at 217-393-8249 or jdalessio@news-gazette.com.

Continued here:
Guest Commentary | 'We are out to smash the stereotype that veterinarians only look a certain way' - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette

This entry was posted on October 4, 2020 at 10:56 am and is filed under Veterinary Medicine. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |