"Announcing a new equine undergraduate degree program generally acknowledged as long overdue, University of Kentucky President Lee Todd and College of Agriculture Dean Scott Smith presented plans for an Equine Education and Research campus last month at the university's Main Chance Farm north of Lexington.
"For far too long," President Todd confessed, "this university has not supported our equine industry like it should. we weren't having the right conversations with the industry (and) we weren't adding enough value to our economy and those people involved in this industry."
Todd also emphasized that there would be extensive collaboration with other colleges throughout the state, though he did not specifically mention other university equine programs by name. He also stated the new program is uniquely designed to produce graduates that could contribute immediately, designating it, "the brainchild of Kentucky's horse industry."
To meet the "niche needs" specific to Kentucky's equine industry, the new degree program will have two tracks or areas of specialty: 1) equine and farm management; and 2) equine business and organizational management. Students interested in becoming farm managers or trainers (three-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Todd Pletcher is a graduate of the University of Arizona's racetrack management and animal husbandry programs), for example, could opt for equine and farm management. Students interested in racetrack management or equine law (stallion syndication, etc.) could choose business and organizational management. Both tracks of the program will require at least three credit hours devoted to an industry internship — not necessarily local or even within the racing segment of the equine industry. The newly appointed associate director of the equine degree program is Dr. Bob Coleman, formerly the College of Agriculture's extension horse specialist and a past president of the Equine Nutrition and Physiology Society with a doctorate from the University of Alberta. The curriculum committee includes both animal scientists and people actively involved in the horse industry, and the College of Agriculture's executive-in-residence, Dan Rosenberg, also is president and CEO of Three Chimneys Farm.
Other universities have been offering equine-related degree programs for years, and UK has been offering equine-related courses for at least 50 years, though not a degree program. The University of Louisville offers an equine administration degree through its College of Business, and the University of Arizona has offered a racetrack industry degree since the 1970s that is a joint program through its colleges of Business and Agriculture. The University of Arizona also hosts an annual symposium on racing and gaming every December.
Asked if the equine initiative represented a "budding partnership" between UK and the University of Louisville, Dean Smith acknowledged vaguely that there were several joint projects that UK participates in with the U of L and other universities but avoided going into specifics about those applications to the equine program.
In conjunction with the new degree program, Todd announced plans for an "equine campus" at the Main Chance location featuring three major areas of enhancement or "clusters": 1) equine education and research; 2) equine health research; 3) animal science. The recognizably new cluster is the first one, since it will be home to UK's new equine science and management degree program as well as the continued location for research in equine nutrition and feeding management. One of three press releases issued by UK's College of Agriculture described the equine health research cluster as part of the university's Department of Veterinary Sciences, which counts the Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center among its four divisions. New plans for the health research cluster include the construction of a research facility for studying the equine mucous membrane bacterial infection known as "strangles" (Streptococcus equi) plus one and eventually two 24-stall animal containment facilities. Little — if anything — was mentioned in the press release about the animal science cluster.
Appreciation was expressed to Kentucky's state legislature for providing funding for the initiative and to the James Graham Brown Foundation and Research Challenge Trust Fund for a matched $500,000 gift to create the $1 million endowed Stanley Smith Dickson Professorship for the equine program. Dickson, who owns Glen Oak Farm in Bourbon County and had been honored for years of service with the Brown Foundation's board of directors by the $500,000 gift, is a 1953 graduate of UK's College of Agriculture.
Todd's opening apologies notwithstanding, UK has a long history of mobilizing to meet the needs of a Kentucky horse industry that until about 35 years ago was far more cliquish, cloistered, and provincial than now, having been transformed concurrently by expanding opportunities and increased gaming competition. Following UK's short-lived attempt in the 1890s to develop a veterinary medicine college (there currently are only 27 fully accredited veterinary colleges in the United States offering doctorates in veterinary medicine — none in Kentucky), UK's Department of Veterinary Science was founded in 1919 and filled crucial roles in research and diagnosis. In 1930, it discovered that an abysmally low mare fertility rate (about 50 percent) was related to breeding hygiene. In 1936, it identified the cause of undiagnosed abortions as a filterable virus. UK's Maxwell H. Gluck Equine Research Center was completed in 1986 and in 1993 was designated by the Office International des Epizooties (the animal equivalent of the World Health Organization) as a world reference center for three equine viral diseases. In 2002, it was instrumental in diagnosing the cause — fecal material from eastern tent caterpillars — of Mare Reproductive Loss Syndrome (MRLS), and in 2006 it provided laboratory support for investigating epidemics of the neurological form of herpes virus 1 infection. Other divisions in UK's Department of Veterinary Science are the Livestock Disease Diagnostic Center and the Equine Parentage Testing and Research Laboratory.
For more information about the equine initiative, contact Holly Wiemers at (859) 257-4883. Online information is available through www.ca.uky.edu/equine.
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