Dr. Jessica McArt Is the New Dean of Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine and Her Path Here Is a Blueprint

On July 15, Dr. Jessica McArt will walk into the Austin O. Hooey Dean's office at Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine and take the helm of one of the most prestigious veterinary programs in the world. She will do it as a Cornell DVM and PhD alumna, a dairy veterinarian, an epidemiologist, a former visiting scientist in Australia, and a self-described community-minded leader who has been building toward this moment since she joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 2014.

This is how it is done.

Not overnight. Not with a shortcut. With twelve years of showing up, building expertise, taking on section leadership, crossing hemispheres to do a visiting scientist stint with a government agriculture institution, and coming back ready. The Cornell Board of Trustees approved her appointment on May 20. The State University of New York's Board of Trustees ratified it June 2. Effective July 15, Dr. McArt leads Cornell CVM.

For the veterinary community, this matters beyond the headline. Women make up the majority of veterinary school graduates in the United States. They have for years. And yet leadership positions at the top of academic veterinary medicine have not always reflected that reality. Dr. McArt's appointment is a signal that the pipeline is producing exactly what the profession needs, and that institutions are beginning to recognize it.

Her priorities as dean are worth paying attention to. Student debt is at the top of the list. She named it plainly: it is a significant concern across the country, and graduates should be able to pursue careers they are passionate about rather than choosing positions primarily to manage debt load. That is a dean speaking the language of the next generation of veterinarians, and it is the right conversation to be leading.

She also wants to break down academic silos, creating opportunities for faculty and students to collaborate across disciplines, with seed funding and informal gatherings to bridge the gaps between research groups that are often working toward adjacent goals without talking to each other. She points to Cornell's existing investments as the foundation: the Center for Veterinary Business and Entrepreneurship, Cornell Equine, the Riney Canine Health Center, the Yang Center for Wildlife Health, and the Duffield Institute for Animal Behavior. The infrastructure is there. Her job is to connect it.

On AI, she is clear-eyed. Cornell is already using it, recording appointments, generating preliminary notes, exploring radiograph interpretation tools, and also our favorite AI platform of all time, Big Red Bark Chat. She wants students to know how to use these technologies effectively while developing the clinical reasoning, judgment, and problem-solving skills that AI cannot replace. That is the right framing, and it is exactly what the profession needs to hear from academic leadership right now.

Dr. McArt replaces Dr. Lorin Warnick, who has served as dean since 2016 and will return to research and teaching. She inherits a strong foundation and arrives with a clear vision.

To every veterinary student watching this: this is what the long game looks like. Dairy vet. Epidemiologist. Assistant professor. Section chief. Visiting scientist. Department chair. Dean.

Step by step. Year by year. All the way to the top.