Genesis of a program!

Alright already--enough about me! Now let's post some information on how the Germany study abroad program in veterinary medicine came to be.

Sometime in late 2001 or early 2002, the Biomedical Sciences Program here in the College of Veterinary Medicine at Texas A&M sent out an e-mail looking for professors interested in developing a study abroad curriculum for BIMS (biomedical science) majors to be held during the summer session in either Bonn or Duesseldorf, Germany. I was intrigued and e-mailed back that I had lived in Germany for a year and a half prior to joining the A&M faculty and was interested in going back as part of a study abroad program.

At about the same time, Dr. Jeffrey Musser responded to the e-mail request. Dr. Musser had extensive international research and teaching creds and was a major player in the Great Diseases course offered by his department. Even better was the fact that, as long as our course could legitimately be said to fit within the Biomedical Sciences curriculum, we could teach whatever we liked and both Jeffrey and I were interested in developing a course in the history of human and veterinary medicine.

So, we jointly developed a syllabus for a course that would examine the development of modern human and veterinary medicine in Europe from about the 1760s (the time of the founding of the first veterinary school by Bourgelat in Lyons, France) to the present time. We argued that as it was in Europe that the antecedents of modern medicine (both human and veterinary) developed, it made considerable sense to teach the course physically where these events occurred. We were to be working with the Akademie fuer Internationale Bildung, the Academy for International Education, a German institution based in Bonn. The AIB worked to bring foreign (mostly American) professors and students to Germany for study abroad experiences and provided infrastructure, support staff, and planning/logistical support. In collaboration with the AIB's Dr. Rainier Zaeck in Bonn and with their Duesseldorf based colleagues, Willum Spanninga and Caro Janda, Jeffrey and I and Dr. Elizabeth Crouch in the BIMS office put together a 6 week program comprised of lectures, guest lecturers, and field trips. I can't overemphasize the greatness of the work done by our AIB associates in the design of this program.

Now we needed some students and, as it turned out, we were not able to attract an adequate number for the couse to go for the summers of 2002 and 2003. Nevertheless, we persevered and, in the spring of 2004, we finally recruited the requisite number of students and we were go for liftoff for second summer session, 2004!