UGA vet school eyes expansion to new campus

ATHENS — After half a century in the same place, the University of Georgia's College of Veterinary Medicine could split into two locations, allowing the school's cramped teaching hospital to expand and turning part of a UGA-owned pasture into a complex of veterinary medicine teaching buildings.

After more than a decade of planning, the ball finally may be rolling now that Gov. Sonny Perdue — a 1971 graduate of the vet school — has penciled in $7.7 million in planning money for the new building complex in his proposed state capital projects budget for next year.

No definite construction date is set for the buildings, and Perdue still must get the budget approved by the state legislature. But construction money usually follows relatively soon once planning money is approved, according to UGA Campus Architect Danny Sniff.

The new complex of more than a dozen interlocked structures would be tucked behind existing UGA buildings on more than 100 acres the university owns at College Station and Barnett Shoals roads. Called the Veterinary Medical Learning Center, the buildings would include barns, classrooms, offices and a state-of-the-art teaching hospital, where veterinary students will learn how to diagnose and treat sick animals.

The goal is not just to replace the existing hospital students now train in, but to provide space so that the vet school can enroll more students and turn out more veterinarians.

"We're bursting at the seams, basically," said Dean Sheila Allen.

In the college's space on UGA's South Campus, there's just no more room to grow, Allen said.

The vet school now admits 102 new students a year, up from 86 a few years ago. Administrators would like to boost the entering classes to 150 students, but there's no room at either the teaching hospital or in vet school classrooms to do that, she said.

The existing hospital not only is too small for bigger class sizes in the future — it's really too small now, said Scott Brown, head of the college's department of small animal medicine and surgery.

The college has lost classroom space and office space over the years, as rooms were converted into treatment and diagnostic areas, Brown said.

Students and teachers now meet for daily rounds in a cafeteria, because classrooms once used for the morning sessions have been taken over for other uses. Faculty offices also have been crammed into unlikely spaces.

"I have one faculty member in a projection booth," Brown said.

And in recent years, the veterinarians have not been able to find spaces to install technology such as MRI machines, said Andrew Parks, a professor of large animal surgery and head of the department of large animal medicine.

To produce more veterinarians, the vet school not only must add more students, but treat more animals, officials say — even though the hospital already has a caseload of more 18,000 a year.

Hospitals at universities such as North Carolina State, Tennessee and Florida are three times the size of UGA's animal hospital, which was built in 1979, but none have a caseload as large as UGA's, according to veterinary college officials.

Meanwhile, the state's population has grown from about 5.4 million in 1980 to nearly 10 million now — and the number of pets and other animals has grown along with the number of people, Allen said.

When the new Veterinary Medical Learning Center opens in Southeast Clarke County, the college will be split into two parts — students will take their first two years of basic courses on campus at D.W. Brooks Drive and Carlton Street. In their second two years, students would shift their studies 2.7 miles east to the new center on College Station Road.

Some residents of nearby neighborhoods worry about the extra traffic the new center could bring to the area, but the presidents of two nearby neighborhood associations said they would welcome the teaching hospital.

"I think it will be great for the neighborhood to get a facility like that," said Keith Flaute, president of the University Heights Neighborhood Association. "It would just enhance the neighborhood."

Kent Middleton, president of the Green Acres-Crestwood Community Association and a University of Georgia journalism professor, had not seen the plans yet but is not worried about the hospital's impact on nearby residential areas.

"Generally, I think people are pleased to have the university out there as opposed to more fast-food restaurants or a big shopping center," Middleton said.

The university's proposal estimates the cost of the new center at about $110 million.

The state of Georgia would pay most of the cost, but South Carolina, which pays for part of the operating costs of the school in exchange for a fixed number of slots, also would chip in more than $20 million.

About $15 million will be privately funded, Allen said.

South Carolina residents are guaranteed 17 slots a year now; the state's educational officials want to double the number to 34 in the new facility, Allen said.

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