One of the largest asks pending before the Oklahoma Legislature this session proposes a new OSU College of Veterinary Medicine complex in the hopes of restoring the school’s former glory, meeting a major state workforce need and avoiding the embarrassing calamity of losing national accreditation.
“To be very blunt, OSU is not interested in running a mediocre College of Veterinary Medicine,” interim President Jim Hess told the Senate Appropriations and Budget Committee on April 2.
In October, the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine saw its accreditation downgraded to probationary status, a bleak development that combined with staff departures and an overall facility analysis to convince university leaders that a new teaching hospital and other infrastructure upgrades must occur to get the college back on track. With their $295 million request gaining traction at the State Capitol in spite of a surprising presidential resignation, university leaders received good news March 25: The American Veterinary Medical Association upgraded OSU-CVM to “accredited status for up to the remainder of this accreditation term.”
“This decision acknowledges the quality of our academic offerings while recognizing that our future success is contingent upon securing vital state funding for a new state-of-the-art veterinary teaching hospital,” Mack Burke, associate director of OSU media relations, said Monday. “The AVMA reviewers were clear that continued accreditation depends upon the success of this critical funding initiative.”
Interim dean of OSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine Jerry Ritchey made an April 11 Facebook post praising “everyone in the CVM family that worked so hard over the past year to get this gone.”
But when Hess addressed the Senate committee April 2, it appears he may not have known the probationary status had been lifted.
“Our college is currently on probation, and we have a plan to come off probation and that is probably — it’s important to know that we’ve got a little bit of a past in our accreditation [history] — because we have a plan to bring forward to you all to be able to replace this teaching hospital,” Hess told senators. “(Without a new facility), we are not going to be able to recruit the faculty that we need, which means that our practicing rural veterinarians are not going to have an entity to refer to. It means that our ability to recruit students is going to be a little more difficult because of our lack of facility to train them properly in.”
Complicating OSU’s ask during a tight budget year was President Kayse Shrum’s abrupt resignation as regents examined an apparent accounting scandal involving the OSU Innovation Foundation. OSU leaders have agreed to return millions of improperly used state funds to the OSU Medical Authority to which they were appropriated by the Legislature. As a a result, some lawmakers have questioned the rationality of granting OSU a $295 million budget request while university officials are actively working to reconcile the institution’s recent financial faux pas.
But with the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine playing such a key role in workforce development for the state’s agriculture industry, many others recognize the request as the best way to fix a big problem and avoid a further shortage of veterinarians. House Appropriations and Budget Committee Chairman Trey Caldwell (R-Lawton) said the way Hess and the Board of Regents for the Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical Colleges have handled the Innovation Foundation inquiry has helped keep this year’s OSU-CVM ask afloat.
“I think it’s something that they’re taking very seriously — looking into it, making sure the money is being spent where it’s supposed to be spent,” Caldwell told NonDoc on April 14. “But, yeah, definitely, I think that (situation) complicates it. I think the OSU vet school, getting academic probation — getting back on probation — complicates that issue.”
Caldwell referenced the other big state financial fiasco this session when describing how legislators want confidence that appropriated dollars will be handled in a way that makes an impact and avoids surprises.
“Just like with mental health, we’re trying to focus on fixing mental health, and then we have the complications that come to [involve] basic lack of governmental accounting principles,” Caldwell said. “It definitely makes the issues more complicated, because you don’t want to just throw good money at the bad. You know, a lot of these problems, more money just doesn’t fix the problem. So it’s like, how do we address the fundamental flaw?”
As session negotiations trudge along, the House budget portal shows the $295 million request in the House position. While that’s no guarantee the deal gets done, it made Hess’ April 2 presentation to the Senate budget panel carry extra weight.
“Our facility has reached its useful life,” said Hess, who previously served as the CEO of the OSU Veterinary Medicine Authority. “We need to be able to attract more referrals from our practicing rural veterinarians. That requires a large base of clinical faculty, which we’ve continued to add, but it’s about our facility as well. Our ability to recruit and our ability to get referrals are inextricably linked, because we have to have the sub-specialists and the clinical faculty, but we can’t get all the ones that we need unless we have the right facility and environment for them to work in.”
Hess said that without the $295 million in funding for a state-of-the-art complex, the future of the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine is “not a pretty picture.”
‘We let it deteriorate’
While faculty recruitment remains a priority, Hess said it’s critical that students have the “best environment” possible in order to receive the training they need to hit the ground running after graduation. Built in 1981 and named after then-U.S. Sen. David Boren, OSU’s Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital no longer makes that goal easily attainable, according to university leaders.
“I think that probably over the years, it just deteriorated from natural use and things,” Jimmy Harrel, chairman of the OSU/A&M Board of Regents, said after a March 7 meeting. “I don’t think it’s anybody’s fault. I just think it was a fact that we let it deteriorate and hadn’t taken it serious to get it back up to where it needed to be.”
Although OSU’s veterinary school used to be one of the top three programs in the country, Hess said the college will not return to its former standing without addressing the facility needs. That, however, will be an expensive endeavor.
Prior to OSU’s FY 2026 budget request of $295 million, the Legislature appropriated $20 million in FY 2025 for an animal diagnostic laboratory project. Lawmakers also appropriated $79 million in FY 2024 to OSU-CVM for the purpose of renovating the animal hospital, an amount Harrel called “just a Band-Aid” for what the college ultimately needs.
“Our facility is about 43 years old,” Hess told senators April 2. “You all appropriated some money two years ago for us to pursue renovating the current facility, but what we quickly discovered with our construction managers and architects is that we were going to spend that amount of money that was appropriated at that time, and nobody was ever going to know the difference because it was going to be for infrastructure, mechanical, plumbing, roofing, and it was not going to change one bit the inside of the building for us to be able to create a new teaching environment.”
Of the $79 million appropriated in FY 2024, Hess said about $78.2 million remains unused in the hope of combining it with the $295 million request. Those roughly $373 million in state funds would “recapitalize” the animal teaching hospital and ranch facilities. According to an OSU-CVM strategic funding needs assessment, the proposed complex would include a hospital for large animals, a clinic for small animals, a surgery center and an expanded ranch facility.
At the April 2 hearing, mention of the college’s past appropriations prompted Sen. Darcy Jech to question why the new request was not made when the Legislature first established a three-year funding plan in 2024 to expand the necessary clinical faculty for OSU-CVM. Hess said he would have loved to discuss facility upgrades, but at the time, he said he was under the impression neither legislative chamber would be interested in funding the project.
Speaking Monday, Jech said his “frustration” does not involve the size of the $295 million request in a tight budget year, but rather how the situation got so bad in the first place without adequate repairs and upgrades being made.
“It’s a little bit like the Capitol. We ignored this for a long time, just because we could,” said Jech (R-Kingfisher). “And then it turned into $270 million to redo the Capitol, whereas if we would have kept it up incrementally, it wouldn’t cost that much. That’s the same thing, in my opinion. If we would just stay on top of [the College of Veterinary Medicine], we wouldn’t be looking at a total redo like we are now. So that’s part of my frustrations. I don’t know who’s to blame for that. I don’t know if there is anybody to blame. That’s just where we find ourselves today, so that’s what we get to deal with.”
In addition to their $295 million funding request for building projects, OSU leaders are also requesting other appropriations to the OSU Veterinary Medical Authority for FY 2026:
- $2.1 million to complete the three-year funding plan to expand clinical faculty at OSU-CVM. The third year will focus on filling positions such as animal oncologists, dermatologists and radiologists;
- $5.1 million recurring annual appropriation to increase the number of in-state students enrolled in the college;
- $600,000 to retain OSU-CVM’s scholarship and loan forgiveness programs pursuant to Title 59, Section 698.33, also known as the Dr. Lee Denney Act of 2024. During the 2024-2025 academic year, the program allowed eight students to receive a $25,000 scholarship for committing to work in rural Oklahoma areas after graduation; and
- $3.4 million for a program establishing a team of eight regional food animal and large animal veterinarians equipped with mobile veterinary trucks to service the state’s rural food animal producers and breeders.
OSU leaders are asking the Legislature to appropriate the College of Veterinary Medicine project by using the state’s legacy capital financing fund, a self-financing program that leverages cash reserves to avoid paying interest rates on loans or bonds. Hess emphasized that the $295 million would be paid back to the fund over 20 years, requiring an annual debt service payment — or appropriation — of $14.75 million each year.
Harrel said he believes a new physical college offers the best path to reinstate OSU-CVM as a top program in the country.
“We had the best vet school in the nation at one time. When I was a younger man, we brought our horses and animals here that needed the top in the nation to get the proper treatment,” Harrel said March 7. “And that has dwindled down to where we’re 27th out of 33 [colleges of veterinary medicine] and on probation. And the only way I see it changing to where we need it is to have a top-notch facility and then get the top veterinarians and the top dean for that vet school. And I look forward to doing that and seeing us have that.”
Whether a portion of the project’s funding could be achieved outside of the state appropriations process remains to be seen. During his April 17 press availability, House Speaker Kyle Hilbert said he is actively having conversations with Julie Bisbee, the executive director of the Oklahoma Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust, about whether the constitutionally protected trust fund could provide funding for some one-time projects like the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine overhaul.
On March 28, TSET announced the launch of TSET Legacy Grants, “an investment of up to $150 million [in] large-scale, transformational projects that will improve rural health, health care access, prevention and data-driven solutions across the state.”
“I had a meeting with the director, and I know we’re having conversations with the board members as well about what a potential collaborative relationship would look like,” said Hilbert (R-Bristow). “They have some funds and built up interest that they’re wanting to invest around the state. I think it would totally make sense to partner with the Legislature on some of those investments and work collaboratively. Their money could go farther partnered with us, and taxpayer money we appropriate could go farther partnered with TSET. So I’m hopeful.”
Asked about the situation, Bisbee emphasized that TSET “makes grants upon application.” While the application window for the TSET Legacy Grants opened last week, it does not close until June 16 — weeks after lawmakers aim to finalize the FY 2026 budget and determine whether the OSU-CVM project gets $295 million in funding.
Complicating such a large ask is recent history. The Legislature has frequently found itself caught in a sibling rivalry of funding requests between OSU and the University of Oklahoma. If one university has momentum with a major capital ask, the other often positions itself as an equal partner worthy of similar investment.
This year, the House budget portal also notes support for a $150 million request from OU for a pediatric heart hospital, which would be funded through the University Hospitals Authority and Trust. Jech referenced that OU ask, as well as ongoing conversations about the state potentially purchasing the troubled Lawton Correctional Facility, which is owned by the GEO Group.
“That’s a whole different story,” Jech said.
Oklahoma has reached a critical need for rural large animal veterinarians
Off the top of his head, Hess said April 2 that he knows of around 85 “mature” large animal veterinarians who would “love to retire” but are unable to do since few qualified veterinarians could buy their practices and take on the patients and clients they have committed their entire careers to serving.
In order to address Oklahoma’s shortage in large animal veterinarians in rural areas and to replenish the amount of OSU-CVM graduates who commit to working in the state, Hess and others have decided the college needs to restructure its admission policies to prioritize enrolling more in-state veterinary students.
“A number of years ago, because of some budgetary shortfalls — it wasn’t anybody’s fault, it was just a shortfall in state revenue — we had a decrease in state appropriations to the College of Veterinary Medicine,” Hess said. “We admit about 106 students each year into each class. Because of that shortfall, we were forced to accept a higher number of out-of-state students. So today, of those 106 students who are admitted, 58 are in-state and 48 are out-of-state.”
Hess said OSU has a “goal” of shifting that number more heavily toward in-state students. But since in-state tuition is lower, such a change to admissions priorities does carry a slight financial impact.
“While there’s nothing wrong with having out-of-state students, they are more likely to return home and practice in their home state,” Hess said.
Caldwell said OSU-CVM’s admissions were structured that way to allow the college to replenish the loss in state funds with the additional money garnered from out-of-state students’ tuition.
“That was a huge issue, and they were doing that because they could charge those out-of-state kids so much more money,” Caldwell said. “But the problem is, it doesn’t fix our problem of having a veterinarian shortage in the state of Oklahoma. It doesn’t fix that issue, because those students stay, get their degree and then they leave.”
To address this problem, Hess has requested an annual $5.1 million appropriation to replace the money that would be lost from admitting fewer out-of-state students.
“That was one of the things that we wanted to see shift,” Caldwell said. “We need to take Oklahoma kids that qualify first because we have a veterinary shortage in Oklahoma. And especially when it comes to large animal vets in rural Oklahoma.”
‘Toxic environment’: Anonymous accounts lambast former OSU-CVM leadership
As part of Hess’ plan to reestablish the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine’s prior reputation, the need to recruit capable and highly qualified clinical faculty and support staff remains a necessity. Unfortunately for the college, on top of OSU-CVM’s low national ranking, Hess said about 13 additional colleges of veterinary medicine are expected to be accredited in coming years, which will only make it harder for OSU to hire critical faculty.
“The reason this is so important (is) there are only 33 veterinary colleges in the United States,” Hess said. “There are 13 more that are about to be accredited over the next couple years, but it’s a shallow pool for everybody to recruit from. So you have 33 schools currently all trying to hire the clinical teaching faculty for a veterinary college, all at the same time.”
Keeping quality faculty on staff can be a challenge for any university, but long-standing drama within the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine has hardly helped.
In April 2024, an anonymous group of self-proclaimed “stakeholders” had a New Jersey attorney send a damning “supplemental report” to OSU-CVM’s accrediting body. The document was highly critical of then-OSU-CVM Dean Carlos Risco, who stepped down from his administrative position in October, the same month the American Veterinary Medical Association placed OSU-CVM on probation. With Risco out and Ritchey in as interim dean, many OSU leaders hope the criticism from disgruntled “stakeholders” — whose identities they believe they know — will wane.
Nonetheless, the report (embedded below)Â alleged “material inaccuracies” in a self-study report Risco submitted to the AVMAÂ Council on Education regarding matters “integral to the accreditation process.”
Attorney Dante Parenti submitted the report on behalf of “stakeholders of the College of Veterinary Medicine at OSU” and “pursuant to the AVMA’s policy of receiving comments regarding COE site visits and evaluations of veterinary college adherence to standards of accreditation.” Like the individuals who described poor conditions within the school, the stakeholders were not named in the report.
“Unfortunately, these inaccuracies are of such a nature and magnitude that they are unlikely to be due to clerical error or innocent mistake,” Parenti wrote. “The self-study fails to substantively address the catastrophic impact of the aforementioned severe staff attrition on patient care at the teaching hospital and the quality of educational opportunities afforded (to) students.”
While also carbon copying numerous state education officials, including the offices of the Oklahoma State Regents of Higher Eduction, the OSU A&M Board of Regents and Shrum, Parenti submitted the report to the AVMA Council on Education, which acts as OSU-CVM’s accrediting body.
The report includes “notably” investigated instances of alleged falsehoods related to the attrition of clinical faculty, student caseloads, patient care standards and workplace culture reported by Risco:
- “According to published university data, the information regarding size and composition of the college’s faculty and clinical staff is falsified. Despite Dean Risco’s claim that the college added 23 net new faculty members and 40.5 FTE clinical support staff during the self-study period, evidence shows that at least 59 non-adjunct faculty and 50 clinical support staff have left the college, including at least 21 professors, 29 associate and assistant professors, seven section chiefs, four directors, seven supervisors and 33 credentialed technicians”;
- “The self-study fails to substantively address the catastrophic impact of the aforementioned severe staff attrition on patient care at the teaching hospital and the quality of educational opportunities afforded students. According to individuals with direct knowledge of these issues, it is likely that key data provided to the [Council on Education], such as caseload seen by students, is materially inaccurate”; and
- “The portrayal of the college’s workplace culture is misleadingly benign, and the description of functioning HR and DEI processes and mechanisms is grossly mischaracterized, ignoring a dangerously toxic environment that has precipitated the noted mass departure of faculty and clinical support staff. This culture, plagued by issues of hostility, discrimination, harassment and retaliation, has significantly damaged the college’s reputation, impairing recruiting and retention efforts.”
Supporting Hess’ claims that OSU-CVM needs to complete its three-year funding plan to replenish clinical faculty and support staff, the report asserts the “hemorrhage of senior faculty” and says it ultimately led to worsening recruitment and retention rates.
“In a head-turning attempt to confuse the [Council on Education], Dean Risco declares that recruiting efforts at the college are so ‘strong and promising’ that the college has added no fewer than 63.5 combined net new faculty (23) and clinical support staff (40.5 FTE) amid a notoriously tight veterinary labor market — and at such a rate of success that OSU and Dean Risco would, if true, be among the top recruiters of talent among all veterinary colleges and all deans in North America,” the report states. “Yet he simultaneously asks the [Council on Education] to accept that the college’s recruiting efforts are so significantly impaired by ‘global’ and ‘unique’ challenges that he can hardly recruit anyone to work there at all, often receiving ‘zero to few applicants’ for key positions.”
Parenti asserts the college’s decline in reputation partly contributes to its recruitment difficulties, but the report also includes comments from people in “key positions” at OSU-CVM about their workplace environment.
“Money, location, poor facilities, yes, those are all issues, but many of us would have stayed if it wasn’t such a difficult place to work,” said an anonymous former OSU-CVM employee. “Admin uses lots of excuses, but nobody asks us because we’d tell them the real answer. It’s toxic here, and the job is already hard enough. Other colleges are just run better and at some point you have to pursue happiness.”
Before resigning as dean, Risco reportedly submitted a letter to AVMA in response to the Parenti correspondence, but NonDoc was unable to obtain a copy of it prior to the publication of this article.
Burke, meanwhile, focused on the positive mission and commitments of the college.
“OSU is training the next generation of veterinarians who will protect public health and drive our state’s economic future, but Oklahoma faces a competitive crisis,” he said. “Bold investments at competing institutions in bordering states directly threaten our ability to attract top veterinary teaching talent and to keep Oklahoma students in our state. If Oklahoma is to continue leading in agriculture and food production, we must respond with our own investment in state-of-the-art veterinary teaching facilities that will create competitive advantage for years to come.”
(Correction: This article was updated at 8:57 a.m. Tuesday, April 22, to correct a typo in its headline regarding the amount of funding sought.)
Read Parenti’s report on the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine
