The New SAVMA President Wanted to Be on Broadway. Instead, He’s Going to Bat for Every Vet Student in America.

Spencer Stelly has 416 days until he graduates. He knows the exact number. He also knows exactly what stands between him and that moment, the NAVLE, a mixed animal internship, and a career in emergency and critical care that he has been building toward since he was a kid watching his father run the crime laboratory in Louisiana.

He was recently inducted as President of the Student American Veterinary Medical Association at the 2026 SAVMA Symposium in Raleigh which means that in addition to everything else on his plate, he now serves as the national representative for veterinary students across the country. He is a third-year. He has Miller, a four-year-old dog who is apparently his best friend. And he still makes time to go to the theatre.

We talked to Spencer about the best advice he ever overheard in an exam room, why he thinks the VPA debate is the most important issue facing vet students today, and what veterinary medicine and Broadway musicals have in common. It is more than you might expect.

The chemistry kid from Louisiana

Spencer grew up in Alexandria, Louisiana, where his father directed the state crime laboratory. Science was never abstract for him, it was the family business. He graduated as a National Merit Scholar, took his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry summa cum laude from Louisiana Tech with minors in Biology and Spanish, and arrived at LSU’s School of Veterinary Medicine in 2023 with the kind of academic record that makes advisors smile.

If veterinary school had not worked out, forensic science was the backup. Toxicology. Crime lab work. Something that kept him close to the chemistry he loved and the father he admired.

The other backup, which is the one he mentions with more visible joy, was Broadway.

“If there was any job I could have, my dream was to be a lead actor in a Broadway musical,” he says. “I performed in musicals throughout high school, and there is nothing quite like the joy and magic of live theatre.”

He still goes to shows. He still makes time for it in the middle of vet school, which tells you something about what kind of person he is and how he manages his days.

The advice he overheard in an exam room

The best career advice Spencer ever received was not from a mentor or a professor. It came from a mother in a waiting room, talking to her wandering kid.

He was working at a small animal general practice clinic when a young boy kept running around, peeking out of the exam room door, distracted by everything happening in the lobby. His mother looked at him and said: “Don’t let what other people are doing distract you. What they are doing doesn’t matter. What matters is what you are doing.”

“While this was directed as more of a chastising demand,” Spencer says, “I thought that wisdom was a great way to pursue life and not get lost in the maze of comparison.”

In veterinary school, where comparison is everywhere and everyone seems to be measuring their progress against someone else’s, that is a harder instruction to follow than it sounds.

On the VPA and why it matters

Spencer is measured and thoughtful in most of his answers. On the mid-level veterinary practitioner debate, he is direct.

“I firmly believe that the main issue that students face now in this field is the threat of the mid-level veterinary practitioner, sometimes referred to as the VPA or veterinary professional associate,” he says. “This position undermines the roles of veterinarians, veterinary medical students, veterinary nurses, licensed or credentialed veterinary technicians, and veterinary assistants everywhere.”

His concerns are specific: the definition of the VPA role is ambiguous, creating identity confusion and regulatory uncertainty. The role would have limited autonomy while placing the supervising veterinarian’s license at risk. And the compensation-responsibility balance does not work.

“Veterinarians are trusted members of the community with the proper education and training to provide the medical care that animals deserve,” he says. “The VPA lowers this standard, risking animal, human, and community health and safety.”

SAVMA’s position aligns with the AVMA’s. Spencer will be making that case from the national student stage for the duration of his presidency.

How he ends his days

After a hard day, Spencer has a ritual. He starts the laundry, loads the dishwasher, and sweeps the house. Then he takes Miller on a long walk and he means long, while talking on the phone with friends or listening to music. Then he sits on the back patio with a drink and thinks back through the day: the highs, the lows, the small moments, the times he laughed, the times he did not.

“I try to be introspective at the end of the day to gather my thoughts and prepare myself to be even better for the following day,” he says.

His friends pull him back too — movie nights, their favorite all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant, driving around listening to music and picking up ice cream. “Community is a huge part of who I am,” he says. “I would not be the person I am now without my family’s and friends’ support.”

That instinct toward community is what makes him a credible national student leader. He is not trying to build a platform. He is trying to make sure the people around him make it through.

What he wishes someone had told him

Always do what makes you happy.

He follows it with something larger, a poem he loves by St. Mother Teresa that begins “People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.” The whole poem is an instruction to keep going in spite of everything. To be kind anyway. To succeed anyway. To create anyway. To give your best anyway.

“In the final analysis,” the poem ends, “it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

For a student who is 416 days from graduating, navigating a national presidency, and still making time for the theatre — that framing makes sense.

The part he almost didn’t include

At the end of his interview notes, Spencer added a section he labeled as optional. He called it a tangent. He wrote it late at night when he could not stop thinking about something.

It is about veterinary medicine and musical theatre.

“Veterinary medicine and musical theatre may not appear to share many traits,” he writes, “but at their core they are built from the same need: to feel and to heal.”

He draws the parallel carefully. In veterinary medicine you learn to read patients who cannot tell you where it hurts, the dog that won’t meet your eyes, the horse that shifts its weight just slightly off balance. In theatre, revelations do not happen only in lyrics and dialogue. You must become fluent in what is not said.

“Both fields place you in the middle of emotion without flinching,” he writes. “You don’t get to look away or detach completely when stepping into grief, joy, rage, love day after day. It is real every single time, real enough that it costs you something.”

Compassion fatigue in veterinary medicine builds quietly until you feel like you are carrying pieces of every animal and every owner you could not save. In theatre, the exhaustion comes from rejection, vulnerability, the constant pressure to be seen and understood. Both paths break you down and build you back up, over and over, and require you to show up anyway.

“Healing doesn’t always look clinical,” he writes. “Sometimes it looks like a perfectly timed diagnosis. Sometimes it looks like a perfectly held note. Sometimes it’s a life saved. Sometimes it’s a single violin.”

We are very glad he included it.

Spencer Stelly is a third-year DVM student at Louisiana State University School of Veterinary Medicine and the newly elected President of the Student American Veterinary Medical Association. He graduates in 2027. Miller is doing great.