Tufts Veterinary School

Tufts Veterinary School is located in a beautiful New England setting in North Grafton, Massachusetts, west of Boston. The 585-acre campus includes the Tufts-New England Veterinary Medical Center's Hospital for Large Animals, the Foster Hospital for Small Animals, the Cornelius Thibeault Equine Outpatient Clinic, the Issam Fares Equine Sports Medicine Program, the Harrington Oncology Program, the Amelia Peabody Pavilion, the Jean Mayer Administration Building, the Franklin M. Loew Veterinary Medical Education Center, the Bernice Barbour Wildlife Medicine Building, the David Mcgrath Veterinary Teaching Laboratory, and the 250-acre working farm. The school also maintains the Ambulatory Farm Clinic in Woodstock, Connecticut and the Tufts Laboratory at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole on Cape Cod. 

Tufts is a student-centered school with an innovative flexible curriculum offering both electives and selectives in addition to a balanced core experience. We have developed five signature programs that push the traditional boundaries of veterinary medicine: International Veterinary Medicine, Wildlife Medicine, Equine Sports Medicine, Veterinary Biotechnology, and Ethics and Values in Veterinary Medicine. The School's Center for Animals and Public Policy leads the profession in the study of the role of all animals in our society. 

The recently established Center for Conservation Medicine places Tufts Veterinary School's Department of Environmental and Population Health in a national leadership role in studying the relationship between human, animal, and environmental health in ecosystems, both local and global.

Our talented and dedicated faculty and staff have established an entrepreneurial culture that values creativity and innovation on a scale exceeding other places. Our students choose Tufts precisely because our curriculum and signature programs broaden their learning experience, while defining new roles for veterinarians in society. In addition, students can enroll in various joint degree programs: BS/DVM, DVM/MA in Law and Diplomacy, DVM/MPH in Public Health, DVM/MS in either Biotechnology or Animals and Public Policy, or DVM/PhD to define further their career goals. We also have leading programs in Emergency and Critical Care Medicine, Oncology, Radiology, Surgery, Animal Behavior, and Infectious Diseases. 

Tufts and Wildlife

Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine opened the Wildlife Clinic in August of 1983 in order to extend teaching, research, and service programs to include New England's wildlife. Located adjacent to the finest clinics, laboratories, and hospital facilities that veterinary medicine can offer, the Wildlife Clinic has become not only the regional center for the treatment of diseased or injured wildlife in New England, but also the official center in the northeast for the care of endangered species.

The Wildlife Medicine Program 

By emphasizing veterinary education in wildlife and zoological medicine, Tufts curriculum offers students exposure to the entire spectrum of animals seen by veterinarians in the world…from the smallest to the largest invertebrate, fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, and mammal. 

Tufts is unique among this country's veterinary schools in offering core courses that concentrate on non-domestic animals and the environment. These courses underline Tufts' philosophical commitment to its students and the public. They will serve by helping to prepare future veterinarians for a vast range of veterinary activities. Tufts believes in the importance of all creatures, and importance of their interrelationships to the stability of our biosphere. By emphasizing the significance of comparative medicine, the school expresses its academic commitment to ecological responsibilities. 

In addition to formal coursework, students can participate in a journal club, elective courses, seminars, and student organizations dedicated to wildlife and conservation biology. Students also have numerous opportunities to become involved in environmental research that includes laboratory, field, and policy issues. 

Tufts' veterinary students spend a forth-year clinical rotation at the Wildlife Clinic, a period that, for many, provides a strong foundation for their future professional contributions. Working with native wildlife and zoological species in a hands-on manner helps the students to gain important skills in handling restraint, medicine, and surgery. Since the clinic and its patients are housed on campus in the new Bernice Barbour Wildlife Medicine Building, all students can spend time visiting, helping, and learning about wildlife. Through their practical experience at the Wildlife Clinic and their classroom education in environmental studies and comparative medicine, Tufts veterinary students achieve a substantial understanding of the complex issues affecting individual wildlife, populations, and ecological systems. 

The Department of Environmental and Population Health reinforces this spirit through its course offerings and seminar activities. Working in the environmental sciences, students are reminded of the inviolate connections among animal, natural resources, and humans. The department also provides a focus for scholarly attention to ethical issues related to wild and domestic animal in society and to the broader aspects of human-animal relationships. 

The Wildlife Clinic 

The Wildlife Clinic is a regional resource for many veterinarians, health professionals, and wildlife biologists. Skills and knowledge are exchanged through programs of mutual teaching and continuing education. The clinic houses an examination unit, a diagnostic laboratory, a mobile anesthetic machine, and several outbuildings designed as specialized recovery facilities for animals to occupy during their healing. 

The Wildlife Clinic provides rich learning opportunities for students who are concerned with wildlife preservation, habitat, and species diversity, conservation biology, ecological issues, and natural resources. At the clinic, veterinary students work with the birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles common to the Northeastern area. Students are able to play an important role in the treatment and release of the animals as they learn to apply their clinical skills to real-life situations. In addition, Tufts acts as the veterinarian-of- record for the New England Science Center, and thus students also have a unique opportunity to work with animals housed at the center which are not native to New England. The Tufts Wildlife Clinic Newsletter is now available online.