Two founding faculty members of the University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) – Emeritus Dean Bernard Easterday and Susan Hyland MS’73 PhD’78 – were honored with the 2017 President’s Award from the Wisconsin Veterinary Medical Association (WVMA) at the organization’s annual convention Oct. 12 in Madison.
The award is presented by the outgoing WVMA president to a person or company that has provided extraordinary service or assistance to the organization.
WVMA President Scott Spaulding DVM’91 noted the pair’s leading role in the creation of the UW SVM and their long legacy, which continues today, in advising and mentoring veterinary medical students.
“Barney and Sue have become lifelong friends and advisers to not only myself but literally hundreds of veterinary medical students at the UW,” Spaulding said in his speech introducing the award.
Easterday and Hyland were part of a founding team that between 1979 to 1983 coordinated the academic planning, recruitment of faculty and staff, and facilities construction necessary for the establishment of the School of Veterinary Medicine at UW-Madison. Easterday is the founding dean of the school, which welcomed its inaugural class in 1983. Hyland served as the SVM’s first associate dean for academic affairs.
“The passion, the vision, the tenacity of Barney and Sue, along with those other members of the founding group that I didn’t know so well, set into motion the evolution of one of the world’s leading schools of veterinary medicine,” Spaulding continued in his speech at the WVMA convention.
“The foundation laid by this founding group became a veterinary clinic, designed to handle 12,000 annual patient visits, which now handles nearly 30,000 annual patient visits,” he added. “The teaching and research demands on the school have stretched the facility’s limits and plans are in the works for a $115 million facility expansion – what a remarkable feat, what a remarkable accomplishment.”
Meghan Lepisto