FORT COLLINS — Spurred by action in the Colorado Legislature, the already world-renowned school of veterinary medicine at Colorado State University is poised to expand its reach even further.
Just one day in May after Gov. Jared Polis signed House Bill 24-1231 into law to appropriate $50 million toward CSU’s new $230 million, 213,000-square-foot Veterinary Health and Education Complex, the governor attended the groundbreaking on the Fort Collins campus.
CSU hopes that the project will position it as a leader in veterinary-medicine education, research and animal care for the next several decades.
The new complex’s expanded primary-care clinic got an additional boost in late September with a $4.5 million gift from the Frank Stanton Foundation, the largest donation to the complex to date. Frank Stanton, longtime president of CBS, is best known for his role in creating the first televised presidential debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, but he also was devoted to his dogs throughout his lifetime, especially his beloved corgis. Since his death in 2006, the Stanton Foundation continues to support his legacy through giving that embraces his passions, which are reflected in emerging veterinary curricular initiatives and patient care provided at CSU’s veterinary school.
CSU retained Omaha, Nebraska-based Tetrad Real Estate as the project’s master developer. The company has been a building partner on such CSU projects as the C. Wayne McIlwraith Translational Medicine Institute and the Center for Vector-Borne Infectious Disease, and also has coordinated projects on the University of Nebraska’s flagship campus in Lincoln, as well as its medical center in Omaha.
Weather permitting on Dec. 9, the builders will hold a topping-out ceremony for the building, a long-standing construction tradition that marks the placement of the final beam, symbolizing the end of the structural phase of the project.
Slated for completion in fall 2026, the CSU project will include a teaching hospital for routine and urgent care as well as reimagined classrooms with interactive workstations and a $13 million Livestock Veterinary Hospital, adjoining the existing, 46-year-old Johnson Family Equine Hospital. The livestock hospital, planned to open early next year, will be equipped with medical, surgical and ambulatory facilities built to meet current and future demands for the care of large animals.
The existing James L. Voss Veterinary Teaching Hospital was constructed in 1978.
The new complex, approved by the land-grant university’s Board of Governors in October 2022, will nearly double the size of the teaching hospital and allow CSU to admit 30 new students to its veterinary medicine program each year, growing the first incoming class after the complex’s opening from 138 to 168 students. CSU wants to grow the full program by around 20%, from 600 to 720 students. This will also open space for more than 275 undergraduate biomedical sciences and other students on CSU’s main campus.
When the facility opens, it will allow students across all four years of the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine program to be located on the same part of campus for the first time. Currently, first- and second-year students take classes on CSU’s main campus and then transition to the veterinary facilities along West Drake Road during their third and fourth years.
“We want to continue our tradition as a cutting-edge academic veterinary medical center that pushes boundaries in education and medicine,” Dr. Sue VandeWoude, the veterinary school’s dean, said in a prepared statement. “This project gives us the opportunity to better educate and support our students and meet societal needs into the foreseeable future. We’re really going to be setting up our graduates for success — with their practices, with their well-being; it’s exciting for our campus and for our profession.”
More than half of HB 24-1231’s $247 million appropriation will help the University of Northern Colorado construct a building for a new College of Osteopathic Medicine in its Greeley campus, while the rest will go toward the CSU veterinary school and two other projects. The bipartisan bill, sponsored by Reps. Mary Young, D-Greeley, and Lindsey Daugherty, D-Arvada, and Sens. Barbara Kirkmeyer, R-Brighton, and Kyle Mullica, D-Thornton, also will fund construction of a Health Institute Tower at Metropolitan State University in Denver and renovation of the Valley Campus main building at Trinidad State College.
The new project will allow CSU’s school of veterinary medicine, already ranked second in the nation by U.S. News & World Report in 2023, to add classrooms, lecture halls and laboratories as well as the Primary Care Center.
About 70% of CSU’s DVM graduates will practice primary care., and the upgraded complex and curriculum will have them spend a total of 12 weeks on primary-care rotations. They’ll get to interview pet owners, conduct exams and develop treatment plans in partnership with faculty clinicians. Doctors will either work alongside students or observe them on monitors or through one-way glass outside clinic rooms.
“This hands-on experience is designed to give our students more confidence,” VandeWoude said. “We want to expand their portfolios — their willingness and understanding of what they can do in a primary-care setting.”
The demand for primary-care veterinarians has spiked since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, the number of U.S. households with a dog jumped from 38% to 45% between 2016 and 2020.
“The Stanton Foundation is pleased to partner with the Colorado State University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences in support of the University’s initiative to expand the ‘Spectrum of Care’ provided for dogs and their families,” a Stanton Foundation representative said in a prepared statement. “This initiative sets as its goal the provision of quality care that takes into account evidence-based medicine, client expectations and financial limitations. The Stanton Foundation, following the lead of its founder Frank Stanton, is committed to helping dog owners find sustainable solutions to the challenge of providing their dogs with quality care that is affordable.”
The foundation defines “spectrum of care” as the range of medically sound diagnostic and treatment options veterinarians can profitably recommend for their patients, whose owners come from a diverse range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Students who undergo this training will be able to provide clients with the pros and cons of alternative treatments with sensitivity toward a client’s financial abilities as well as their cultural expectations and even physical location.
Large learning spaces on the third floor will be able to accommodate up to 200 people but can transform into more intimate spaces that can serve small groups of 10, 40, or 60 students. A team-based learning classroom, located just off the first-floor atrium, can accommodate 196 students or convert to two smaller classes by using a “sky wall.”
Two 60-person simulation laboratories, an eight-table simulated treatment area and eight simulation exam rooms will be used for instruction and practice during the day and can be converted to use as quiet study spaces after hours.
“This is a really transformative implementation,” VandeWoude said. “We’re going to add capacity we haven’t had before that will truly elevate what we can do on a day-to-day basis.”
