Our Plan
Our plan for the Linda & Dennis Clark ’68 Small Animal Teaching Hospital (SATH) is boldly driven by seven priorities aimed at continuing our tradition of educational excellence, furthering our commitment to providing exemplary patient care, and enhancing our ability to contribute to the well-being of animals and human beings alike.
Give now and join us in enhancing educational opportunities in collaborative spaces designed to bring the brightest minds across Texas A&M University together for the betterment of animal and human medicine.
Our Priorities
Provide Exemplary Primary Care Education for Professional Students
The teaching hospital is the pinnacle of veterinary student learning, and ours is the only one in the state of Texas. We do an exceptional job of teaching clinical medicine, partly because of our diverse caseload.
Provide Traditional Referral Services for Veterinarians in the Immediate Region
The Linda & Dennis Clark ’68 Small Animal Teaching Hospital (SATH) will be an essential resource within the southern United States—where treatments are available nowhere else but in College Station!
Focus on a Level of Leading-edge, Research-driven Patient Care not Available Regionally
Unique collaboration opportunities with those in disciplines that share an interest in animal and human health, will model what such a facility should be within a discovery-intensive institution like Texas A&M.
Provide Advanced Care with Compassion
We understand that pets are part of the family, and people are rightfully worried when they bring their pets to our hospital. We want to make sure that they feel welcome, that we find ways of decreasing their stress and providing reassurance while, at the same time, providing very advanced, technical patient care.
Promote Well-being for All Occupants of the Building
Our facility will promote well-being. We have seen gardens in human hospitals that can help create a sense of calm and accelerate healing and we want to see that balance in the SATH. It shouldn’t just be a high-tech facility, but a place where people can spend long hours in a welcoming and calming environment.
Focus on Clinical Trials, Biobanking, and Disease Surveillance
When we look at the new SATH as a research-intensive tertiary care center, we aspire for it to become comparable to MD Anderson. You go there to be part of a clinical trial. You go there because it is the best in the world. We want to play that role in caring for companion animals.
Focus on Telehealth and Remote Digital Monitoring
Texas is a big state, and part of our land-grant mission is to serve the citizens of Texas. How do we connect if people can’t drive from the Rio Grande Valley or the Panhandle to us? There are opportunities to grow our telehealth program to help veterinarians without access to regional referral and tertiary care.
Our Missions
Student Success
Hands-on Instruction
The quality of workspaces contributes significantly to the quality of education students receive. The new SATH will:
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- Address the increase in students necessitated by the rapid growth of the veterinary industry, leading to increased demand for practitioners and researchers.
- Train students on the latest technology and equipment, which require space to operate.
- Provide flexible spaces to facilitate students’ exposure to research and practice in established and emerging specialties.
- Learn more about our Student Success mission.
Leading-edge Patient Care
Small Animal Caseload by Species
A growing veterinary industry and our already quadrupled caseload, in comparison to cases we saw in 1981, support the need for the new SATH that will:
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- Accommodate large surgical teams, an increasing number of students, and various sophisticated and specialized surgical, therapeutic, and imaging equipment.
- Increase the number of examination and treatment spaces for services that have grown in sophistication and have required creating divided spaces for different species and specialties such as internal medicine, cardiology, neurology, oncology, ophthalmology, and dermatology.
- Provide appropriate space for services that have emerged since our current facility opened in 1981, including interventional radiology, physical therapy, rehabilitation, and dentistry.
- Learn more about our Patient Care mission.
Collaborative & Translational Trials
Clinical Trials
As research and patient-care activities have increased, the new SATH will build on the strengths of Texas A&M as a highly ranked, comprehensive, research-intensive institution. To facilitate that goal, additional space is required that can:
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- Support clinical trial coordinators, sample storage, data entry, and increased staff. This includes space for core laboratories such as our Gastrointestinal Laboratory (GI Lab), which has grown exponentially and receives samples from around the world, requiring additional staffing.
- Offer a thoughtful design that encourages collaboration, synergy, and creativity.
- Create a collaborative hub where clinical and basic scientists from across campus and beyond can come together to address pressing basic, translational, and applied problems in animal and human health.
- Learn more about our Clinical Trials mission.