Annamaria Tadlock is a third year student in CVM and a past-president of the Student Ambassador club. Their purpose is to promote veterinary medicine and the college to the public, and she has led various events in the Corvallis community doing just that.
One event in particular took place last summer and Annamaria was eager to share her experience with me. The ASE (Apprenticeships in Science and Engineering) conference was focused on presenting the basic ideas of veterinary neurology to interested high school students. The program, designed by Annamaria and her colleagues, had a great balance of lecture and hands-on work. They presented information to the students first, then had a demonstration of a neuro exam done by Tabitha Wolf on her very own dog Diezel! The kids were then sent off to explore the several stations set up in the anatomy lab with videos of different animals with neurological disorders.
The goal of each activity was for the groups to decide together where the animal’s lesion was. The entire day emphasized interactivity and learning. Annamaria and her partners circulated the room answering and asking questions like, “If an animal is limping, how would you tell if it’s because their nerve is damaged or if they just broke their leg? What kind of test would you do next?” Annamaria explained, “The goal for the kids was to think like a vet and try to localize a neurological lesion to a specific part of the animal’s nervous system.”
When asked about whether or not she felt the event was successful, Annamaria conveyed her initial fear that the workshop was too advanced, but then went on to express genuine excitement at how well the conference went. “The kids were actually really quick at learning and were able to localize most of the lesions correctly!” She was impressed with the students she worked with, saying, “I think Tabitha and I were both thinking, ‘and it took us vet students how long to learn to do this?!’”
Posted by guest blogger, Josey Sechrist.
