Dr. Christina Dougherty Is Building a Different Kind of Vet School. Here's Why It Matters

As the new Associate Dean for Clinical Programs and Outreach at UMES, she's leading the charge to bring diversity, accessibility, and community partnership to veterinary education.

Dr. Christina "Tina" Dougherty wasn't supposed to become a veterinarian. At least, not the way most people think about it.

Growing up, she was the kid who brought injured animals home. A bird that fell out of its nest. A squirrel hit by a car. She didn't have a grand master plan. She just couldn't leave them alone.

What changed that into something deliberate happened when she was 14. She got a cockatiel for her birthday. Six months later, it got sick.

"I was unable to find anybody to treat him," she said. "My older brother drove me from vet to vet to see who would help me with this bird. Finally, after three or four stops, we found a veterinarian who said he would take a look. It frustrated me to know that so few animal doctors were willing to treat this little guy that meant so much to me."

That frustration became fuel. She majored in biology. She went to the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine. She built a career treating dogs, cats, and exotic animals. And she developed a philosophy that shapes everything she does now.

"I truly believe that every animal has a personality, and therefore, they all have souls," she said. "They have their likes and dislikes. They all like being handled in certain ways. They are all individual creatures, and they all have a little touch of heaven in them."

Now, as the Associate Dean for Clinical Programs and Outreach at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore School of Veterinary Medicine, she's applying that philosophy to something bigger. She's helping launch a vet school designed from the ground up to address the real problems in the profession.

The Problem the Profession Hasn't Solved

Ask Dougherty what drove her to UMES, and she'll give you two answers. The first one is simple: the profession has a shortage problem.

Geographic shortages. Specialty shortages. Industries that need veterinarians on staff—pharmaceutical companies, nutraceutical companies, cosmetic companies, food companies, research universities. Everyone wants veterinarians. There aren't enough to go around.

The second answer is harder to talk about, but it's more important. Black veterinarians make up only 3 percent of the profession. Three percent. In a country where demographics are far more diverse than that, the math doesn't work.

"Pet owners are more inclined to seek out veterinarians of the same ethnic background for their pets' care," Dougherty said. "If we don't have enough representation of diverse populations, how are those populations of pet owners going to seek the care their pets need?"

It's not a subtle problem. It's a structural barrier to healthcare. And it's exactly the kind of problem a new school can solve by being intentional from day one.

Building a School From First Principles

Most vet schools work within existing structures. They inherit traditions, curriculum expectations, campus infrastructure, relationships with local practices that might or might not work well.

UMES SVM is different. It's being built new. Which means Dougherty's role isn't about fitting into an existing system. It's about building the system itself.

Her portfolio is clinical programs and outreach. That means she leads the Office of Clinical Programs and Outreach, which is tasked with something ambitious: developing and maintaining relationships with local practices, diagnostic laboratories, and food industries. These partners will serve as teaching sites where UMES students get hands-on experience before graduation.

This is not the traditional "students show up at the veterinary teaching hospital" model. This is distributed, community-based learning. It's a network of partners rather than a single institutional facility.

"There are a lot of quality veterinary practices and farms around the vet school, as well as up and down the Mid-Atlantic coast, and we want to forge very powerful relationships with these locations," Dougherty said. "It will be great for the communities in which our clinical partners are located to see that students from this program are quality students."

Why This Matters to the Profession

On the surface, UMES SVM is one more vet school in a landscape that already has many. But it's not really about quantity. It's about intentionality.

The school's mission is explicitly tied to diversity. Not as an afterthought. Not as a "nice to have." As a core principle. That matters because it changes who applies, who gets in, and what the profession looks like after they graduate.

It also changes how education gets delivered. A distributed clinical model with community partners means students are learning in real-world practices from day one, not waiting until their final years. It means the school is embedded in the communities it serves, not separate from them. It means partnerships aren't something you build after graduation. They start before you graduate.

For Dougherty, this is exactly the kind of approach the profession needs. She's not interested in perpetuating veterinary medicine as it has existed. She's interested in building it as it should be.

The Philosophy Behind the Work

If you listen to Dougherty talk, you'll hear something consistent. She talks about animals as individuals. She talks about representation and equity. She talks about the importance of relationships. She talks about what happens when people and animals connect.

That cockatiel at age 14 wasn't just an incident. It was a lesson. It taught her that access to veterinary care matters. That someone cares about that bird, and they needed help. And that most veterinarians she found wouldn't provide it.

Later, she discovered a passion for cats. Not because they're obviously friendly, but because she found one sweet rescue cat that needed her, and she learned what personality actually looked like when you paid attention.

"I used to hate cats, because I thought they were aloof and not always so people-friendly," she said. "But I finally ended up with one sweet cat that I rescued from my practice, and he became my surrogate dog. Since then, I have stuck with cats as my favorite domestic species."

Those aren't small observations. They're about what happens when you slow down and actually look. When you see someone or something as an individual rather than a category. That's the philosophy she's bringing to UMES SVM.

What She's Building

UMES SVM is pending accreditation from the American Veterinary Medical Association. That means it's not officially a vet school yet. But the architecture is being built. The clinical partnerships are being forged. The philosophy is being embedded.

Dougherty is at the center of that. Leading clinical programs. Building outreach. Creating a school that doesn't replicate what already exists, but addresses what's actually needed.

In five years, there will be UMES SVM graduates in practices across the Mid-Atlantic and beyond. They'll be more diverse than the profession that trained them. They'll have learned in community partnerships rather than isolated teaching hospitals. They'll have started their networks before graduation. And they'll have learned from someone who believes that every animal has personality and every person deserves access to care.

That's not just a new vet school. That's a different kind of profession.