We Champion Global Health

To help students examine the inherent complexities of improving health on a worldwide scale, we provide a formal Certificate in Global Health. The program covers the global disease burden, health determinants and disparities, and health policy and actors. It also introduces students to the methodological approaches and techniques used in global health research. We offer three dual degree programs that allow DVM students to also pursue a Master’s in Business Administration, a Master’s in Public Health with a Global Health Emphasis and a Ph.D. in Comparative Biomedical Sciences.

Offer a Working Farm

Just outside our back door, 80 picturesque acres provide a home for pigs, chickens, sheep, goats and cattle and a learning lab for veterinary students. The Teaching Animal Unit, as the working farm is known, lets students observe and work with a range of agricultural animals in a real farm setting, all within walking distance of their regular classrooms.

Expand Worldviews

Every year, internationally renowned Professor Greg Lewbart takes an eager contingent of third-year students to the Galapagos Archipelago to do hands-on research of the wildlife and ecology off the coast of Ecuador. On a recent trip, students helped perform health assessments on whales, sharks, stingrays and sea lions, with a particular emphasis on studying what might be making sea lions cough.

Lead a Marine Lab

The NC State Center for Marine Sciences and Technology on the North Carolina coast offers access to unique marine sciences courses and a broad range of research and internship projects as well as hands-on field trips.

Nurture Our Faculty

Our Academy of Educators program creates opportunities for educators in veterinary medicine to talk and collaborate, encourages more innovative teaching approaches and reinforces clinical and classroom education, including curricular and instructional design.

Invest in Diversity

Diversity, equity and inclusion are vital to the success of our college, and we invest in people, programs and resources to build a culture that values all people and their ideas and embraces the meaningful participation of everyone.

Focus on the Whole Student

Students pursue individualized training for specific career paths through our extensive elective and selective program. We help ensure long-term personal and professional success by providing support in financial literacy, career exploration and wellness resources.

Eclipse Others in Excellence

A newly Endowed Deanship, two Distinguished Chairs (including the largest in NC State history) and 10 Distinguished Professorships allow us to recruit the best educators in their fields.

We Save Endangered Species

With our own pack of red wolves on campus, the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine is at the center of a nationwide effort to repopulate the world’s most critically endangered canid species. Our students learn how to manage wild animals, participate in providing medical care for injured wolves and conduct research into genetic problems and reintroduction techniques. In 2022, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released two wolves tended at NC State into the wild.

Decrease Threats

In a major breakthrough for the swine industry, researchers on our campus have developed an algorithm and new methods to help pig farmers better predict, prepare for and contain disease outbreaks and improve animal welfare, production medicine and environmental standards. They also have developed an app that can monitor the spread of swine virus throughout the country.

Collaborate With WHO

The World Health Organization designated the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine as a collaborating center. Students, faculty and staff assist the WHO in its efforts to combat foodborne antimicrobial resistance worldwide. In addition, our global health program partners with the Institut Pasteur Dakar in Senegal to research infectious diseases in West Africa.

Cultivate Clinician Scientists

Our Comparative Biomedical Sciences Graduate Program is unique in its ability to offer extensive interdisciplinary training through highly effective liaisons with graduate faculty at other colleges of NC State University as well as with those of nearby Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Many of the program’s faculty are also members of other university-wide graduate training programs, such as biotechnology, genomics, immunology, physiology, toxicology, and zoology. This provides a large variety of course offerings that embrace a considerable range of subject areas. Our graduates have become college deans, military generals and FDA senior leaders.

We Target Cancer

At NC State, we are unmatched in our cancer research and available treatments, offering medical, radiation and surgical oncology.  Our Zoological Oncology and Therapeutics Lab focuses on cancer across zoological species, including companion animals such as rabbits, ferrets, snakes, lizards and birds as well as species that live in zoos. Our equine team is using a new approach to treat malignancies in horses called high frequency irreversible electroporation or H-FIRE, which involves placing electrodes directly into tumors then delivering electrical pulses specifically tuned to target cell and organelle membranes, killing cancer cells but sparing the tissue architecture. H-FIRE also lets us treat standing sedated rather than anesthetized horses, a huge advantage over comparable treatments.

Conquer Pain

In veterinary medicine, chronic pain is not well understood and often underdiagnosed, and the first step to a breakthrough is establishing methods to measure pain. The work of B. Duncan X. Lascelles, professor of translational pain research and Dr. J. McNeely and Lynne K. DuBose Distinguished Professorship in Musculoskeletal Health, has helped us learn how to reliably measure chronic pain in naturally occurring chronic disease in animals and subsequently test novel therapeutics for pain relief. Recent work from our Translational Research in Pain Program significantly contributed to the first FDA-approved treatment for osteoarthritis pain in cats.

Acknowledge Aging

Natasha Olby, professor of neurology and neurosurgery and Dr. Kady M. Gjessing and Rahna M. Davidson Distinguished Chair in Gerontology, leads the nation’s first veterinary gerontology program. Her research examines changes in cognition, sensory function, postural stability, mobility and frailty in elderly dogs. The team has developed novel measures of age-related changes, and its work has highlighted the similarities in the neuro-aging process between dogs and humans. Geriatric medicine is now part of our veterinary student curriculum.

Provide Comprehensive Care

Our clinic offers extracorporeal services including hemodialysis, hemoperfusion and plasmapheresis  for all diseases. We also offer state-of-the-art equine and canine sports medicine and rehabilitation, and our hospital serves as a Spinal Cord Injury center for dogs.

Support the Family

The NC State Veterinary Hospital believes in supporting the entire animal family during stressful and difficult times, and we have dedicated Family and Community Resources, including licensed clinical social workers, to assist our clients. Our veterinary social worker specializes in human-animal relationships, traumatic loss and grief counseling.

Tackle Ethical Questions

We created one of the nation’s first veterinary clinical ethics committees to help when we have difficult decisions to make. Advances in veterinary technology mean pet owners have an ever-increasing array of treatment options for their pets. However, more options can lead to complex situations and difficult questions about care goals and quality of life that must be navigated by veterinary caregivers and pet owners.