The College of Veterinary Medicine, North Carolina State University: A Personal Perspective of Its Founding

Displaying page image 275 of 383 in total
See this page as: page images | text

Chapter viii

The Sum of Its Parts, 1989–1992

Riding the Tiger

“He who rides the tiger cannot dismount.” - Chinese Proverb
The college was now fully operational. We had reached the projected class size for veterinary students, with a full complement of veterinary students and a nearly complete complement of faculty members. The enrollment, quality, and size of the graduate program, along
with the intern and residency programs, had matured beyond what we, or anyone else, could
have expected at such an early point in our history. All of these programs had enviable reputations for quality, nationally and internationally, as evidenced by the size of our applicant pools
and the level of outside interest. The graduate and post-DVM programs attracted applications
from graduates of almost all of the veterinary schools in the United States and Canada, as
well as from Great Britain, France, Utrecht in the Netherlands, Australia, and New Zealand.
The growth of our research program had exceeded even our expectations. We had received
outside funding from several federal agencies and from private and public corporations and
foundations. The research program gave a marked boost to the teaching and service components of the program. It was a great form of winning, and it generated enthusiastic attitudes
among faculty and staff. Enthusiasm is caught, not taught, and faculty and staff carried the
joy of discovery into both the classroom and the hospital. Our success reflected several factors:
the quality of our faculty, the assets provided by the legislature, successful grant applications,
and support from the university administration. The sum of the parts was infinitely more
interesting and visible than each component by itself.

243

*

Ua145_001-curtin-cvm-history_0275