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CORVALLIS, Ore. – The College of Veterinary Medicine at Oregon State University has received full accreditation from the American Veterinary Medical Association’s Council of Education.

An accreditation team spent three days in February touring the state’s only veterinary medicine college as part of a scheduled review, examining the college’s education and research programs, clinical services, physical facilities and equipment, organizational structure and financial management.

The college passed with flying colors, says its dean, Cyril Clarke.

“It is extremely gratifying to receive full accreditation because the standards for doing so are quite high,” Clarke said. “The accreditation serves as an endorsement of our efforts to offer a full veterinary medicine education to students, and to provide the state with critical clinical services and multi-disciplinary research on significant health issues for both animals and people.”

The evaluation team gave the OSU college full accreditation for up to seven years – its highest level of accreditation. The only substantive criticism was for marginal facilities for large animal isolation, which the team noted is being addressed in a current expansion.

A $12 million expansion of the Lois Bates Acheson Veterinary Teaching Hospital – Large Animal Clinic is scheduled for completion in spring of 2008. It will boast a large animal intensive care unit and expanded isolation area, as well as a covered lameness evaluation arena, an imaging wing that includes facilities for modern computed tomography and a nuclear medicine suite, offices, and laboratory and teaching space for faculty. There will even be a treadmill for the dynamic evaluation of equine patients.

In 2005, the College of Veterinary Medicine opened a new $14 million Lois Bates Acheson Veterinary Teaching Hospital – Small Animal Clinic and associated teaching and research facilities that allowed OSU to offer a full veterinary medicine education to students for the first time. Previously, OSU veterinary medicine students had to spend more than a year at Washington State University completing the small animal portion of their education.

This past June, OSU graduated the first class of veterinary medicine students trained entirely at Oregon State.

Both the large animal and small animal teaching hospitals are named after the late Lois Bates Acheson, a former Seattle business leader, animal lover and 1937 Oregon State graduate, who left $21 million to the university to benefit the College of Veterinary Medicine.