Joel Baines, the new dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, LSUSVM, has plans to better programs at the University and put the vet school on the map.
Baines was the associate dean for research and graduate education and the James Law Professor of Virology at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. While his position at Cornell allowed him some control over research and the graduate program, Baines he said was looking for something more.
“I was also interested in impacting other things, like education, the link between the clinical expertise and basic research,” Baines said. “This allows me a little more ­— broaden the palate in the way I could affect both the profession and the school.”
Baines said LSUSVM is often underrated when compared other veterinary schools around the country.
“I think one goal of mine is to raise our rankings relative to other veterinary schools,” Baines said. “We don’t play our song very loud, or we play it loud and nobody outside Louisiana listens, I’m not sure which. It’s time to get out there and advertise what we’re doing.”
LSUSVM is ranked No. 22 out of 25 on the U.S. News and World Report list of best Veterinary Medicine graduate schools. Cornell, Baines’ former school, is ranked No. 1.
“That’s a bit of a popularity contest,” Baines said. “The reason they’re ranked No. 1, in part, is because every vet school has former Cornell alumni on their faculty. The problem with LSU is it’s a young school. So, leaders in the profession — we don’t produce as many leaders, I think, as we should.”
The U.S. News and World Report list is based peer assessment surveys sent to the faculty at schools in each discipline. Baines said since Cornell alumni are at almost every veterinary school in the country, it receives more votes.
“Our veterinary graduates have higher salaries, certainly relative to the mean, but we have some of the highest salaries
relative to cost of living of any vet school in the country,” Baines said. “Part of that is because we had some business training in our curriculum, which many other veterinary schools don’t have.”
Research is also in the forefront of Baines’ mind. Through research comes innovative ideas and ways the school can stay competitive.
Baines said he wants LSUSVM to focus more on graduate research programs.
“The other thing is, we need to start producing the next set of leaders in veterinary medicine,” Baines said. “We produce a lot of veterinarians and a lot of specialists, but we don’t produce that many veterinarians who want to do cutting edge research. I think that some of our students want to do that, but we need to offer them the opportunity so they can do what they want to do.”
Baines said research at LSUSVM is strong, and funding from the National Institutes of Health reflects this. According to the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research, LSUSVM is ranked No. 6 of 27 for NIH funding. Cornell is ranked No. 4.
“It’s really biomedical research we’re talking about, not just veterinary medicine,” Baines said. “You could argue, certainly in infectious disease, the vet school is the leader in infectious disease on the Baton Rouge campus. So if an undergraduate wants to come and explore infectious disease, they should come to us and look around and look at research opportunities.”
The vet school has a joint Doctor of Veterinary Medicine and PhD program for students to simultaneously meet requirements for both degrees. Baines said he plans to better this program to attract more students to veterinary and biomedical research.
Baines said the deans of the colleges of engineering and science and the dean of LSU Health Sciences Center in New Orleans have discussed creating combined programs and creating grants. They have started to create seed grants — grants used by researchers to gather preliminary data to allow them to apply for other grants.
“We are thinking that spring would be our first co-grant opportunity, for example, with the college of medicine,” Baines said. “And the idea will be they will get the two investigators will share a grant that is copayed by the two colleges. I think where the really exciting research is done is often at the edges of two different areas of interest.”

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Zoe Geauthreaux

Dr. Joel Baines is the new dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine.