In private meetings with alumni and staff, Dean Carlos Risco of the College of Veterinary Medicine routinely blames the State of Oklahoma and the City of Stillwater for the evident inability to recruit new talent, according to roughly three dozen alumni and Teaching Hospital staff who were interviewed for this article.
During the summer of 2022, Dean Risco held multiple meetings with various groups, some of them characterized as "emergency" meetings, according to sources, to discuss the toxic work environment that has significantly worsened in recent years.
One of those meetings was with alumni in McElroy, where a few dozen concerned alumni questioned the Dean about the College's inability to attract talent as a mass exodus of faculty and staff and the shuttering of key medical disciplines continued unabated. Addressing these alumni, Dean Risco said a few factors made recruiting difficult: All veterinary colleges and hospitals are having trouble finding talent because there is a shortage of veterinarians; and he can't find anyone who wants to work in Oklahoma or live in Stillwater.
During another meeting with hospital staff, which the staff described as 'an emergency meeting' called to explain to the Dean about the toxic work environment they were enduring, several staff members confirmed that he also reiterated that low recruiting was not his fault, but because so few people want to move to Oklahoma.
“That’s absurd,” said a veterinarian who declined Dr. Risco’s efforts to recruit her to work at CVM. “I don’t care whether I work in Louisiana, Oklahoma or Timbuktu, I just want to work at a great school. I said no because I don’t want to work for him, not because I hate Oklahoma.”
That sentiment was echoed by no fewer than a dozen others who had been contacted by College personnel about working at CVM. "I graduated there," another stated. "I grew up on a farm in Oklahoma. Why would I not want to work in Oklahoma? I would love to work there, just not while all this is going on."
"Over 50 people have quit or been fired in just the past few years," said a veterinarian who left CVM but says they were recruited to come back. "Money, location, poor facilities, yes those are all issues, but many of us would have stayed if it wasn't such a difficult place to work. College admin uses lots of excuses but nobody asks us, because we'd tell them the real answer: It's toxic here and the job is already hard enough. Other colleges are just run better and at some point, you have to pursue happiness."
Another put it this way: "Maybe it's time for someone in the job who understands the best parts of Oklahoma and Stillwater. There are thousands of vets who come from parts of America like Oklahoma. It's ridiculous to blame recruiting failures on Oklahoma."