"Fail for 6 years, get put in charge of millions of dollars and the future of a major program. Only in academia."
On September 8, 2023, Dr. Kayce Shrum, President of Oklahoma State University, told the Board of Regents that the College of Veterinary Medicine was "on a positive trajectory" and that the creation of the OSU Veterinary Medicine Authority "will accelerate their efforts." The Veterinary Medicine Authority will oversee a budget worth millions of taxpayer dollars. Dr. Shrum made no mention of significant challenges that appear to have worsened in the 6 years since the current Dean was hired and CVM was placed on probation by the AVMA.
The legislation that recently passed, aggressively backed by Dr. Shrum, is a significant and important development for the future of the College of Veterinary Medicine. But questions remain about the competence of college leaders who will be tasked with pivotal strategic decision making.
"Anyone can win the lottery, not every lottery winner is shrewd enough to run a huge organization," analogized one OSU Professor who does not work at the veterinary college. "Academia is classically backwards when it comes to management, but Dr. Shrum doesn't have that reputation. She must have some reason, whether it's good or not who knows, but some reason why she would stick with someone whose track record is not as good as we would like to see."
This Professor said he was fully aware of the challenges at CVM because he is friends outside of work with people who no longer work there. "The stories they tell me are really depressing. Everyone focuses on how bad a place it is for the people, but how about how bad it is for the animals. I would not take my animals there, no way."
In an interview earlier this year at a gathering of veterinary professionals, an individual who has worked at senior levels in both independent and corporate animal hospital systems as well as in academia stated that, "Unfortunately the leadership there is not known as being terribly collaborative or strategic. Ask anyone in this room who they'd want to lead a strategic change initiative on the scale of Oklahoma State and you already know how many would pick any of them (presently in leadership at CVM). I'm not being harsh, it's just most people at our level know what happened at OSU and we know who did it. 100% of the people in this room would be fired for that kind of a performance. But OSU is going to hand them a truckload of money."
A prominent alumnus believes that University leadership understands the risks of asking the College's current leadership to oversee tens of millions of dollars and a total strategic transformation of the College, but mistakenly has assessed that making a change now would negatively impact upcoming accreditation review and may even confuse legislators who were lobbied by the current college leadership. They also surmise that there is fear at the top levels of the University that they would struggle to attract top talent to senior CVM leadership positions.
"The devil you know is better than the devil you don't," this distinguished Alumn stated as an analogy to understand why the University is not entertaining an opportunity to bring in fresh leadership at this pivotal time for the College of Veterinary Medicine. "Which is totally unserious. There are very respected people who would jump at the opportunity to transform a program like ours, but University leaders won't even think about it because the Dean has an enemies list a mile long and it's just apparently being adopted no-questions-asked by the President and Provost and the Board of Regents. Any of us who could help or want to help are pushed out of the way.”
One person put it this way: "These people couldn't even manage our itty bitty little budget the past several years, drove the car right over the cliff. But they’re gonna be better with a huge budget? Come on.”