CSU Just Rebuilt Its DVM Curriculum From the Ground Up. Here's What's Different.

VET SCHOOL & EDUCATION

New building, new class size, and a curriculum designed to make graduates day-one-ready instead of day-one-overwhelmed.

Colorado State University's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences opened its doors this fall on something bigger than a new building. Alongside the new Veterinary Hospital and Education Complex, CSU debuted Ascend, a completely reimagined D.V.M. curriculum more than a decade in the making. If you are a prospective applicant, a current student comparing programs, or just someone who wants to see where veterinary education is headed, this one is worth paying attention to.

Dean Dr. Sue VandeWoude framed the redesign as a new baseline for the profession, not just a CSU update. The curriculum draws on ideas borrowed from human medical education, current pedagogical research, and years of input from CSU faculty and students, with a heavier emphasis on clinical reasoning, hands-on training, well-being, professional identity, and leadership.

This is really changing the way we educate veterinarians, said Paul Avery, professor of clinical pathology and co-chair of the curriculum renewal committee. We think this will more successfully prepare our students for what it's going to feel like to practice veterinary medicine and to really thrive in this profession.

Body Systems Instead of Siloed Courses

One of the biggest structural changes: during the first two years, D.V.M. students will now move through a block schedule organized around specific body systems, such as cardiovascular, gastrointestinal, or respiratory, rather than the traditional subject-by-subject course structure. The goal is to shrink the gap between when a student learns something and when they actually get to apply it clinically.

Associate dean Dr. Melinda Frye put the learning science behind it simply: revisiting a topic, especially through a slightly different lens, helps cement it, and pairing that repetition with authentic clinical scenarios builds real clinical reasoning rather than rote memorization.

SWIM Weeks: Synthesis, Well-Being, Identity, Mentorship

Each semester now includes dedicated SWIM weeks, giving students time to work through complex clinical cases, engage in professional identity and well-being programming, meet with assigned coaches, and prepare for the next block. It is a structural acknowledgment that burnout and skill-building are not separate problems, and that building in recovery and reflection time is part of producing veterinarians who stay in the field long-term.

A Lot More Hands-On Time

The headline number here is significant: primary care clinical practice at the new VHEC now requires a minimum of 14 weeks, up from just four weeks under the old curriculum. Students focused on large-animal medicine get additional primary care time too, backed by a new livestock hospital that opened this summer. The explicit goal is graduating day-one-ready general practitioners, students who can walk into a clinic and handle the bulk of what a GP actually does, not just students who passed their boards.

What does a practicing D.V.M. really need to know? That was the question associate professor Sam Evans said guided the entire redesign process.

Bigger Class, Aimed at the Shortage

The new complex also let CSU grow its class size by 32 students, bringing this year's incoming D.V.M. class to 170 total. That expansion is a direct response to the veterinarian shortage playing out across the country, and CSU is pairing the larger class with more structural support rather than just adding seats and hoping retention holds. The thinking: veterinarians who are well-equipped to handle the emotional and practical stress of clinical practice are more likely to stay in the profession, which matters just as much as training more people to enter it in the first place.

Room for the Career Paths Beyond the Clinic

The committee also built in exposure to the growing number of nonclinical paths D.V.M. graduates now pursue, including advocacy, policy, conservation, welfare, and public health. It is a small but telling detail: this curriculum was not designed only for students headed straight into general practice, but for the wider range of careers a veterinary degree can actually lead to.

What Students Are Saying

First-year student Claire Cameron, who is interested in both large- and small-animal medicine, said she appreciated the deliberate attention to mental and physical well-being built into the schedule, including decompression time after exams. Alexis Rabinovitch, a first-year student interested in exotic animal medicine, said the curriculum feels like it is teaching students how to actually be a veterinarian, communication, teamwork and all, rather than just walking them through clinical steps in isolation.

Frye, who co-led the redesign, called the result one of the most progressive curricula in the country, acknowledging it was a genuinely hard thing to build but the right one. For a profession working hard to solve both a workforce shortage and a burnout crisis at the same time, a curriculum built around clinical competence and well-being in equal measure is a meaningful bet on what the next generation of vets will need to actually stay in the field.

Source: Colorado State University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences; reporting by Christopher Outcalt, photos by Kellen Bakovich.