November 2009-January 2010 National Discussion topic (all chapters required to reply here)
Welcome to the second national discussion board topic! Each quarter we will post a new topic here and at least one chapter officer will be required to post a meaningful response here in order to get metrics points for the quarter and remain in good standing. Remember - in order to remain in good standing, each chapter must participate in the forum discussions for 3 out of the 4 quarters. If your chapter didn't participate in the first discussion, make sure to post a response this quarter!
In the spirit of the New Year, it's all about goal-setting. Please identify a goal for your chapter, and goal for your region, and a goal for National. This will help get the ideas flowing and stimulate conversation for the VBMA National Meeting.
Feel free to comment on other chapters' posts and ask/answer questions. This is a great opportunity to share ideas and get to know students from VBMA chapters around the country!
--2010 National VBMA team
Goals for 2010
The goal for our chapter this year is to increase our membership and active member participation. Ideas to increase membership include having lunch meetings instead of evening meetings, and to offer member only events for example an etiquette dinner as incentive to join. Another chapter specific goal is to reach out to our seniors and offer them any help they need before leaving school and entering the world. At the end of February we are offering our seniors a Q and A panel about how to negotiate salary, what place of employment to choose and how to choose, and how to interview your employer, etc.
Our regional goal is to organize a VLE of our own and include the other schools in our region.
Our goal for National is to come with ideas for other schools about what worked for us this year and what we could have done better.
Auburn University
Purdue University
Hello fellow VBMA friends!
Here at Purdue, our chapter’s focus for 2010 include increasing overall student membership and continuing to partner with faculty in order to create a place in our curriculum for more business education opportunities. We have several events planned for the semester ranging from a wine-tasting event to advice on how to speak with the media and press.
Our regional goal is to support our fellow schools in North Central! We hope to keep up the communication between the new officers of 2010 that began at Nationals. To start facilitating that communication, we will be conscious of making our region aware of speakers we bring to Purdue that may be looking to talk to other veterinary schools close by.
For national goals, we aim to increase our metric points this year as well as see all of our VBMA members enrolled on the website.
We loved Nationals and are very appreciative of all the hard work put into planning the events and speakers! Looking forward to the VBMA seminar at SAVMA symposium in March!
Rayne Johnson
VBMA President 2010
Purdue University DVM 2012
Greetings from Columbia, Missouri!
Greetings all VBMA'ers!
Mizzou VBMA had a great time at the national meeting in beautiful Orlando this year! It was truly a pleasure to put faces with the names we have become familiar with throughout the year!
We have had a busy January! Our current board and president elect returned to Columbia late last night from the Missouri Veterinary Medical Association meeting held in St. Charles, Missouri. We hosted a very successful “Speed Networking” event with over 80 Mizzou students and Missouri veterinarians in attendance! Interview invitations and preceptorships galore!
Our main goal for our outgoing 2009 board is to add the additional 2010 board members to our already outstanding president-elect! We also are hosting our first annual “Spring Seminar” on Saturday, March 6, 2010. We have invited both Missouri practioners and Mizzou CVM students to join us for the day! We have three interesting presentations planned: Louise S. Dunn “Marketing for Success and Must Have Business Traits”, Dr. Ned Caldwell and Dr. Denise Roche “Fill the Bathtub with Water Before the Storm”, and Gregory Dennis, J.D. “Missouri Veterinary Employment Law”. We have been approved to offer five continuing education credits to all participating Missouri veterinarians. Our chapter is increasingly excited as the date quickly approaches!
Thank you for sharing all of your goals with our chapter! The MU VBMA wishes you great success in 2010!
Meagan Brophy
VBMA Vice President
University of Missouri
CVM Class of 2012
North Carolina State
This coming weekend the VBMA chapter here at the NCSU CVM will be hosting a mini VLE. Most of you know about the main veterinary leadership experience, that takes place out west. Last year our chapter president put a mini VLE together here at the NCSU CVM. It was quite the experience. The event had a fee for veterinarians and technicians that came from surrounding hospitals, although the CVM made it free to all students and faculty.
The same Dr. Richard DeBowes that put the VLE together for Washington State University CVM is hosting this event. He is a great speaker, very enthusiastic, as well as an equine surgeon. He does a great job at teaching team work and encouraging each individual to enhance their own leadership abilities. Dr. Richard DeBowes is also going to host a lunch meeting this friday at NCSU's CVM, where he will be encouraging all attending the lunch to come to the VLE as well as the mini VLE over the next few days. At the national VBMA meeting we discussed this mini VLE being something that the VBMA chapters in the Mid-Atlantic could share. I think this is a great idea and could take this leadership training to many students that would have never had the chance to hear about it. As veterinarians many times in life we have to be leaders. I think this is a great opportunity for many veterinarians and veterinary students to get some great training on how to be leader. Dr. Richard DeBowes really believes in the idea of servant leadership and I also truly believe that servant leadership is the best way to lead. I will leave you with a quote from 13th century ship builder:
"You can't direct the wind, but you can adjust the sails." Anonymous
University of Minnesota!
Hi from the Northern Cold!
Our goal for our chapter is to improve on the perceived value of a VMBA membership. We would like to make strides in helping fellow DVM students in making connections between their success as new graduates, their ability to overcome their debt load, their ability to find a job as a new graduate, and their current or future VMBA membership. We are looking at opportunities to make these connections through a more aggressive speaker schedule and include high quality presentations. We are also thinking about trying to add new programs like a chapter business certificate program or VMBA book club.
Additionally, our chapter would like to reevaluate our leadership structure and development. This would involve working closely with first year students in order to get them involved and motivated early in their school and membership experience.
On a regional and national level we would like to be involved in improving membership metrices by collaborating on best practices. We are also excited about the work being done on a VBMA alumni movement and would like to be a part of any planning or activities.
Mike Penkert
University of Minnesota
VBMA President 2010
Posted by:
Lisa Thompson
University of Minnesota
Marketing 2009
Ohio State's Goals
Hi!
First I'd like to thank the National Board for everything they did to make the National VBMA meeting a huge success! This was my second time going and I learned so much this year and had a great time meeting so many people from different chapters. Thank you!
Chapter Goals:
Our biggest hurtle and goal is to increase first year awareness and participation at the board level. Last quarter when we started looking for people to join, the response was sad. Since coming back from nationals, we have continued to recruit and try different ways to get people involved including making announcements to their class, sending out emails and extending open invitations to sit in on our eboard meetings. So far it was been successful and we hope to continue recruiting more dedicated individuals to help this year.
Regional Goals:
I'd like to see our region organize and share local speakers that have put on meaningful presentations to their school. We've found that it can be costly to have speakers travel long distances to come to OSU for just and hour or two.
National Goals:
I'd like to see more national awareness of VBMA and what we have to offer, especially to our sponsors. For instance, Pfizer has local representatives in Ohio that are in charge of helping clinics improve their management and business practices. Our chapter only recently became aware that this existed and when we met with the rep he discussed how shocked and excited he was to discover that the VBMA existed too. Now we are working together to pair students who are interested in owning a clinic with Veterinarians who are interested in mentoring students in business AND medicine.
Oklahoma State's Goals
For our chapter, I think our biggest goal is increasing awareness in the importance of business education and hopefully in doing that increasing our membership as well.
For the South Central Region, I would like to see better communication and joint effort among the chapters in our region. I believe with our new regional leader this will happen!
For National, I think again reaching out to all students and showing the importance of business education. Continuing to have a conference that not only is educational but a sort of leadership training too is important. The conference personally gave me the confidence to be a leader.
Melanie Novak
Oklahoma State
Vice-President - elect
Goals for this semester
Hello all from Tennessee!
Coming home from NAVC we got so many great ideas and input from everyone so we have big plans for the semester! Our first event is a lunch meeting to present the VPI contest and open it up to everyone but announce only VBMA members can participate to hopefully encourage a few more people to join. We are trying to plan a dinner meeting with AAHA to talk about interviewing skills and resume writing, thinking that spring time would encourage the class about to graduate as well as students looking for tips on how to land a great job or internship over the summer break. We are also trying to get Jim Mahan to come and talk, he has not been to our school yet but we only heard the best things about him from everyone who we talked to. Finally, we have a goal within our region to start an annual regional mini VLE that would rotate schools each year. UT and NC State in our region will both have had a small VLE at the end of this semester and we thought it would be a good way to keep the region connected. We also thought it would be a good idea to share the responsibility of hosting it between the region because it is a lot of work. Hope everyone's spring semester started off great!
Hello from UPenn! For this
Hello from UPenn!
For this year our chapter has several goals. We were inspired by many of the discussions held during the National Meeting and would like to hold several lunch and dinner talks focusing upon similar issues such as the importance of internships versus mentorship, negotiating contracts, and compliance protocols for all staff members within in a clinic.
As for regional goals, we hope to increase communications among all other schools in our region and are interested in helping to organize a regional community service project.
Finally, for national goals we hope to increase participation and utilization of the National Forum discussions to not only better our communications with other chapters but to also gain ideas for new events and lectures.
We at UPenn all had a great time at the National Meeting and can't wait to work with you all!
Chelsea McIntyre
UPenn 2013
Incoming VBMA President
New Years Planning
Hello from Oregon!
For this year we have a chapter goal of increasing our enrollment within our school. To do this we are planning an upcoming meeting to discuss the events at the NVMBA as well as the benefits of being a member of the VBMA. For the region, our chapter would really like to get to know members in other chapters around the area a little better. Currently we are trying to see if we can match up some time during spring break to meet with some of our fellow regional members in order to have some festive VBMA time together to bounce off different ideas in regards to events and networking possibilities. Nationally, our chapter is trying to increase our point totals for this year by increasing enrollment and having several events each term. While we are a small school, we have a lot of school pride and would like to bring that pride to the national level.
Thanks all!
Michelle Heade
OSU VBMA Secretary
Wisconsin
Chapter - Start membership dues of $1 for now until we better know what we can promise members with those dues.
Regional - Minnesota, we are working on having Jim Mahan swing by our campus after yours, end of February.
National - Perhaps this is a personal goal, but greater ease when navigating the website.
Mississippi State Goals
Hello from Mississippi!
Goal for chapter: After talking with other clubs in our region we would like to throw a successful Etiquette Dinner for our club as a fun way to participate in the VBMA and boost membership.
Goal for Region: The VLE is an amazing experience- from what I have heard. We would like to have a VLE in the Southern Region within the next two years to make it easier for our region to attend such a great event.
Goal for National VBMA: After getting 5th most active chapter at the National VBMA convention we would like to build off of the award and increase our chapter's events and participation to new heights.
Nicholas Naszradi
Mississippi State University
Class of 2013
VBMA Treasurer
SCAVSAB President elect
AAHA Vice President
SVECCS Class Representative
WSU Goals
Hello from Washington,
This year’s new officers are quite ambitious and have come up with a variety of new goals. For the club we would like to increase membership and retain active members. We hope to do this by providing more of a variety of lectures. We are looking at bringing in large animal private practice owners, as well as vets from the industry and corporate practices to accomplish this.
At the regional level, we would like to increase communication. By doing this we hope to make our members feel like they are part of a greater network of VBMA members.
At the national level, we hope to be able to send more officers to the national meeting next year and to increase our communication with chapters outside our region.
Hope the New Year is off to a great start for all of the VBMA Chapters!
Sincerely,
Jasmin Feist
WSU VBMA Vice President
LSU Goals
Hello from LA!
At LSU, one of our main goals is to create fundraising opportunities for the chapter. I feel like we rely too heavily on donations and sponsorships, and I would like to see the LSU VBMA become more self-sufficient. I walked away from the National Meeting with several great ideas from other chapters in our region and I hope to get some projects underway in the near future. Another goal is to increase membership and make more students aware of all the VBMA has to offer. We also hope to increase current member enthusiasm and get more people get involved.
On the regional level we would like to increase communication with other chapters in our region in order to share ideas and promote networking. I would really like to see our region hold an activity together.
On the national level I would like to see our chapter become more involved and contribute to the future of the VBMA.
Emily
LSU SVM Class of 2012
VBMA President
SCAAEP Vice-President
Goals
Virgina- Maryland's Goals
Chapter:
*Increase senior participation as many of our sponsors are most interested in reaching soon-to-be grads
*Attract a couple more first year officers so that we can help ensure the success of our chapter in the future
Region:
*Open lines of communication with other chapters in our region
*Collaborate on at least one event with an outside chapter this year
National:
*Keep current with postings so that we can communicate well with the national board and other chapters
*Keep current on postings
New Year Goals
Hello Everyone from sunny southern Califonia! I really enjoyed the National Meeting and meeting several of you. Some of the goals we have at Western are to double 2013 and 2012 membership within the next year. We were planning on surveying the two classes to determine what topics they're interested in learning about the most, but we hadn't thought about surveymonkey. Thanks for the great idea! We also want to increase VBMA awareness with the surrounding practitioners, so they understand why VBMA members are top-notch to hire. To help reach this goal, we are going to try to undertake hosting a symposium like Davis has done in the past (again thanks for the awesom idea). We also want to increase our donation for the annual Western (Regional) food drive next fall. At the regional level, we want to increase communication with our neighboring chapters. Good luck everyone with this year!
Brandi Bayliff
Western University of Health Sciences,
College of Veterinary Medicine, 2013
VBMA Chapter President 2010-2011
Tufts goals
Hey all! The Tufts chapter is feeling inspired after NAVC.
Chapter: To keep providing excellent presentations for our members and the student body. We have some cool stuff planned, including a talk on the technician's perspective (how vets can contribute to a positive working environment) and a talk by one of our very own members, an MBA with a former life as a business consultant!
Last year our chapter hosted a successful CE event, and we may start laying down plans to do another one next year.
Regional: To help come up with an idea for a regional event and to participate in it. We talked about doing some sort of drive- maybe clothes, canned food, or pet supplies.
National: I'd love to see awareness of the VBMA increase within the non-student vet community. Maybe we could get ourselves featured in one of the trade magazines?
Here's to a great year!
Liz Carbone
Proud member of Tufts/ Northeast RL
Goals
Hey y'all from sunny Georgia! It was nice seeing y'all at the national meeting. Hope you enjoyed the weather as much as I did.
This year we are quite ambitious. We want to put on a lecture series about hitting the ground running and selling yourself as an asset to a practice. We're looking at seven lectures:
We hope that it will prove to be a great series. I also want to increase the level of business and finance education that we do.
Regionally, I am looking to keep in touch with the people I met from our region and also see what we can do to be more regionally involved.
Nationally, we want to try to participate more and get more out of it. I don't have any specific goals for the national organization.
John Duncan
UGA VBMA President-Elect
Class of 2012
Goals from K-State
Hello from Kansas!
This year, our chapter will be focusing on improving communication skills. We are planning to bring in several speakers on this topic and hope to have a role-playing activity in which students will interact with "clients" and will be critiqued by an expert based on their performance.
As for our region, we discussed participating in a region-wide activity to give back to our communities. We are looking forward to discussing this further with the other South Central VBMA chapters.
A goal for National would be to establish standardized VBMA products to sell as fundraisers for the individual chapters. This will help produce a uniform, professional appearance among VBMA members as we wear/carry our gear at our schools, during externships, and at conventions.
We all had a great time at the NVBMA conference in Orlando and are looking forward to a great year!
-Jennifer Darby
2010 K-State VBMA President
Goals from Texas A&M
Howdy from Texas!
Our main chapter goal is to get people more familiar with the organization of VBMA and why it is so important. Many of our members don't realize the resources available to them through the website and the many amazing sponsors! We would like to increase website membership and transition our officers earlier to take advantage of the National VBMA meeting at the NAVC.
Our region talked about doing a region-wide community service project to benefit each of our local animal shelters. It is still a work in progress, but it should be really fun and competetive!
For our National goal, we would like to work on getting more metrics points. Within the next couple of years, we would like to be in the top 5 of all the chapters. Since we were the last US vet school to join the VBMA, we have a lot of catching up to do!
Goals Posting
Hello from Florida!
This semester a goal for our chapter is to promote professionalism. We will accomplish this through meetings that address this specific topic, fundraisers, and officer conduct. In February, we will be holding an etiquette dinner in lieu of a formal meeting, which will be an opportunity for members and officers to learn or improve their dining etiquette. We are also in the process of selling business cards and business card holders as a fundraiser. Finally, as a chapter we are going to focus more on officer conduct, particularly during meetings, such as through our attire and increased attendance at both officer and general meetings.
A goal for our region, as previously mentioned by some other chapters, is to increase the amount of interaction between the individual regions. Some of the ideas we had included interaction via e-mail, through regional Facebook pages, or possibly a get together.
Our goals for national VBMA would be to improve communications between the various VBMA chapters. We would love to see more chapters adopt having a national liaison representative, increase marketing of the VBMA Facebook page, improve the ease of use of the VBMA homepage, and to increase communication between chapters on topics such as successful fundraisers and ways to attract new members.
We are very excited for and looking forward to meeting everyone at the conference in Orlando next weekend!
Happy Holidays from Cold, Snowy Illinois!
I hope that everyone is in the midst of enjoying winter break before we kick back into high gear in January!
One of our chapter goals is to continue to build our chapter membership after already experiencing over 100% growth this past year. Along with having more members, we want to be sure that we continue to provide truly meaningful opportunities to keep the membership fully engaged. So, we are structuring some of our meetings this spring to smaller, workshop-like settings versus lecture hall presentations. We'll see how it goes.
Regionally, I really like the idea of trying to create some joint chapter activity or meeting, and want to begin to reach out to those schools in our region to see if we can pull something together. And, nationally, these forums provide an excellent tool for us to share what has worked, what hasn't worked, pose new ideas and ask for help - let's keep it going!
Best of luck to all and Happy New Year!
Nanci L.M. Richards
UIUC Vet Med - Class of 2012
VBMA President, 2010
ISCAAEP ICU/Colic Team Chair
ISCAVMA Speaker's Committee
Pfizer Student Rep
PMC Class Rep
Increase member participation
Hello from Northern California,
I hope that everyone is enjoying a well deserved break school! I can't believe that its less than one month until we all meet again at NAVC.
For the UC Davis chapter our main goal is to increase our member participation and enthusiasm. We have a sizable dues paying membership roster which we have been able to maintain for several years now, but there often seems to be little enthusiasm other than for the free food. I know that this is a problem we all face with exhausting schedules, an incredibly diverse range of club and school activities and an overall lack of time, but if anyone has a suggestion on how to get people excited we would love to hear it.
On the regional level I'd like to increase our donation level for the Regional Canned Food drive that we held out west. We need to get much more creative and put more energy into it if we are going to compete with some of the very talented chapters in our region.
On the national level I think we need to keep communicating with each other and continue our networking so that we can to strengthen and grow the organization. I believe that this quarterly forum is a great way to do that and so far seems to be much more effective than the old AIM chats.
Happy holidays and I can't wait to see all of you in Orlando!
Jason
UC Davis SVM
VBMA President
SAVMA Delegate
Our Goals
Hey Guys!
The semester is almost done! This year has flown by! I can't wait for Orlando !
This next year, I have a lot of goals set for our VBMA chapter. I would like to continue to bring in informative speakers to help educate our chapter members. I would also like to bring our membership numbers back up to where they were last year...
We have had some great meetings this semester. We ended up opening them to the entire student population. Sometimes I have a hard time having "closed" meetings when the information is so important for all students. But then I hate asking students to pay dues. Even though the dues are a small amount, it is still like pulling teeth to get students to pay them. If anyone has any suggestions about that, I would love to hear them!
As for goals for the region and national VBMA- regionally, I would love to have more events held together. We have Auburn just up the road from us, and we rarely do things together. I know it is hard with schedules and whatnot, but I would love to be able to build bridges with Auburn's VBMA. Nationally, I would love to see continued improvement on the website. This website is so informative, but I think it can continue to get better! More ideas, more networking opportunities, contact lists etc. Just a thought =)
Good luck on finals! And Happy Holidays!!!!
Ashley Craig
Tuskegee University
School of Veterinary Medicine
Class of 2012
VBMA President
AAEP Vice President
Goals
Hi everyone. National was a great meeting. I'm glad I had a chance to go and meet many of my fellow chapter board members to discuss ideas and hopes for my tenure as president.
As many of you know our chapter at Michigan State University has had decreasing membership for the last couple years and I believe this is due to two problems; poor marketing and poor relevance. Right now we are using surveymonkey to appeal to our entire student body to find out the most pressing issues by class. We are using a ranking system in about 8 categories or interests. When we get our replies we can put a number on each level of interest and sum these to find out our most pressing interest by graduation year.
We anticipate being able to offer at least 4 lectures at little or no cost so we can fill seats and show the entire student body the scope of our club. Our intent is to spread the word that VBMA offeres high value lectures that are relevant to more than just those who intend to purchase a practice. Hopefully these ideas will be a great start to fixing the two problems from above.
Our goal for this year is to double our membership by the time we turn the club over to the next year of students.
Tom Robinson
VBMA President
Michigan State University Chapter
Goals for 2010
Greetings from Iowa!!
Just a quick note - it was GREAT to meet all of you at the National Meeting - I speak for both Mckenzie and I when I saw we had an AMAZING TIME! We are looking forward to next year already!
With the new semester off to a fast start, I have three main goals for our ISU VBMA chapter: 1. increase membership in the freshman class by 20 members; 2. Participate in/organize a local charity fundraiser (yet to be determined); 3. Fill two new officer positions, Compliance Chair and Speaker Liason. I am hoping that goal #1 and #3 go hand in hand, as we're looking to increase participation from the 1st year class. To do this, our Marketing Director, Mckenzie, has worked very hard to come up with a strategy to attract not just 1st years, but the rest of the student body as well. Also, for the 1st time, the ISU VBMA is offering a one-semester membership for the low price of $10. We're hoping that students take advantage of the fact that we have 12 meetings to offer them this semester. For those who haven't yet joined VBMA, we hope they will! With the promotion ending in a week, we hope to have an even larger pool from which to select two VM1's to fill our new exec positions. We hope these positions will encourage more first years to get involved, and also show them what being on exec is really like. Hopefully they enjoy it and decide to run for higher office! Lastly, our chapter would like to organize some sort of charity fundraiser, whether it be a canned food drive, clothing drive, etc. We were thinking about doing a project called "Keep Kenya Running" that donates used tennis shoes to underprivileged Kenyans. I organized this fundraiser when I was a freshman in undergrad here at Iowa State, and it was a huge hit!
ISU VBMA's regional goal this year is to stay more connected with those in our region. I feel that ISU has been pretty isolated thus far, and could really benefit by networking more with our local chapters. Meeting Lisa was really great, and I hope to organize something soon with our fellow chapters! Maybe our whole region could get involved in "Keep Kenya Running"??? Thoughts?
By attending the national meeting, I was really inspired to expect more from ISU on the national level. Our goal next year, although high, is to be in the top 5 chapters for the end of the year point totals. Because we do have so many meetings this semester, I feel it's completely within our reach. If we reach this goal, we will have bragging rights to bring back to ISU, and hopefully that will make more students realize what a WORTHWHILE organization VBMA really is.
Well that's all for now...hope to talk to everybody soon!
Sherry Johnson
ISU VBMA President
Class of 2012
Cornell University Goals 2010
Hi from Ithaca!
We at Cornell have a chapter goal of increasing membership by demonstrating to the student body the relevance of business management in all of their lives, regardless of professional goals. We hope to bring in a variety of speakers to engage the variety of interest at Cornell. We also have a chapter goal of increasing our metrics points.
Our regional goals included greater communication with our neighboring chapters, participating in a region wide fundraiser, and hopefully planning a regional event where our chapters can get together.
We feel that the VBMA should have a national goal of achieving more recognition outside the student level. We also would appreciate an easier to navigate website and unified VBMA gear for sale to the chapters.
It was great seeing you all at the conference! Hope to see many of you again soon at the SAVMA Symposium!
Charlotte and Ilyssa
Cornell University