STARKVILLE — It’s late 1976, and Newton-native Jerry Bounds has his fingers crossed that one of the students accepted into Auburn University’s veterinary school will decline their invitation.
Bounds is one of a handful of alternates at Auburn — a school along with Louisiana State University and Tuskegee University — were the only three schools at the time that had contracts to accept students from Mississippi, which didn’t have a school of veterinary medicine at any of its four-year universities.
None of the 12 students from Mississippi would turn down the chance to attend Auburn. But, being an alternate all but assured Bounds he would be admitted the following year.
Not so bad. Just a year to wait.
But Bounds wasn’t keen on moving four hours away from home; he wanted to attend Mississippi State University, roughly an hour and a half north of his hometown of Newton.
That idle year would turn around the fortunes of Bounds and 21 others.
Just two years prior, the Mississippi Legislature directed the Board of State Institutions and Higher Learning to establish a college of veterinary medicine at MSU.
In ’76, MSU had broken ground for its vet school and was in the process of recruiting faculty and selecting students for its first class.
In ’77, Bounds received his letter of admittance.
“I was all excited about being an alternate and going to Auburn,” Bounds recalls. “But it was so much more of an honor to be a part of that first class at MSU.”
Four and a half years later, Bounds and 21 others received their doctorate degrees and became the first graduating class of the MSU College of Veterinary Medicine.
Members of the class have returned to campus this weekend for the Pegasus Gala, marking the 30th anniversary of their graduation.
Former faculty, administrators and members of the nearly 1,300 graduates from the last 30 years attended Friday’s festivities. The celebration wraps up today.
“We try to meet once every five years,” Bounds said, “but there will be classmates here this weekend that I haven’t seen since we graduated in 1981.”
In just 30 years, MSU’s vet school has gone from a hastily formed college hoping to gain accreditation to a perennial top 25 pick among the nation’s best programs.
Graduates were once unknowns; now the school boasts alumni such as NutraMax Laboratories President Todd Henderson. Graduating classes, once numbered in the low 20s are now in the upper 80s.
“The students who graduate from MSU are highly sought across the nation,” said Bounds, who practices in Newton. “You’d expect a graduate to say that, but it’s proven. I couldn’t have imagined that the school would grow into what it has today.”
‘A family reunion’
Obtaining a doctorate, particularly one in medical school, is intense. Spare time is sparse, and after spending nearly every hour of every day with 21 classmates, strangers become lifelong friends.
The “First 22” went through an intense application process, as the candidate list was trimmed from 184 to 60 before the first students were picked.
The ’81 class went through an unconventional school calendar, taking a three month break in between a pair of 21-month semesters.
Though it was the equivalent to four and a half years of school, the setup should have been enough to drive the students crazy.
But the small class grew closer through each class and lab. They pulled the typical college-like pranks, which helped get through mundane moments of classes above Herzer, the dairy manufacturing building.
“For two years, we’d look out the window and watched them make cheese,” said Crystal Springs native and U.S. Department of Agriculture Safety Inspector Tommy Smith.
The students didn’t get to use the Wise Center facilities until the last semester before graduation, as construction of the academic wing of the sprawling facility was the last complete.
It didn’t bother them, though; in a way, it was an honor. They were trailblazers for the school and for their state.
“So much was expected of you,” Bounds said, “being in a professional school but also being the first of a class. The college as a whole wanted you to be successful, then you had the vet school and their administration who were intent that you were going to be successful — whatever it took.
“It was intense,” Bounds added. “We had observations from deans and professors of other universities who would put us through checkpoints to make sure we were learning what we needed to for the school to be accredited and accepted. The one common thread we had was ‘survival.'”
The size of the ’81 class, compared to those of other schools at the time, was considered small. That benefited the students and the faculty as they were able to develop closer relationships and have more one-on-one learning.
“We all knew each other,” Smith said. “You didn’t swipe a card to tell everybody who you were. It was almost like high school, being in a small class.
“Going to college was fun but being in medical school with that group was the best time of my life. That’s why it feels like a family reunion instead of a class reunion.”
Miller made it happen
MSU formed a veterinary science department in 1890, under the leadership of Dr. Tait S. Butler.
In 1944, Dr. Duke Humphrey, then president of MSU, asked the state Legislature to form a college of veterinary medicine at MSU.
Thirty years later, MSU named its first dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. James G. Miller, who was instrumental in hiring the first faculty members and designing the Wise Center.
Miller, dean professor emeritus at MSU, also crafted an unorthodox curriculum that didn’t follow the medical discipline format. Students at MSU learned from a format that taught the normal animal, study of an animal’s basic body function, and abnormal animal, study of an animal’s body with disease, before clinics.
“It was a little controversial at the time,” Bounds said.
John C. Thompson, dean from 1999-2004, lauds Miller for being an innovative and creative thinker. Miller helped start the Tifton Diagnostic Lab in Georgia and helped pave the way for the Mississippi Poultry Research and Diagnostics Laboratory in Pearl.
“You can have a Taj Mahal, but without the people you don’t have much,” Thompson said. “It was an honor to follow in Dr. Miller’s footsteps and the structure he established here. It really helped form my administrative policies and actions.”
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