Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies wins global animal welfare award!

The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies and JMICAWE are delighted to announce that we are the very first recipients of the World Veterinary Association and CEVA veterinary school of the year in the global animal welfare awards for 2020. The WVA and CEVA give annual awards for those in the veterinary profession who have gone above and beyond in animal welfare, and JMICAWE’s very own Heather Bacon and Hayley Walters have been former winners of individual awards. For the first time in 2019 WVA and CEVA also decided to give an award to the veterinary school or college that was working to promote animal welfare, and we won! 

The award is wonderful recognition of the hard work, dedication and commitment of all those in JMICAWE, the wider JMICAWE ‘family’, including our colleagues at SRUC who conduct research in animal welfare, and many, many people in the R(D)SVS who contribute to embedding animal welfare into the veterinary curriculum to give our students the best possible grounding in animal welfare science, ethics and practice. In addition, the award recognises the significant outreach work that JMICAWE and others do to reach out to other veterinary schools globally, and help to promote animal welfare education for all veterinary students.

Edinburgh has a long history of involvement in animal welfare research and teaching. The R(D)SVS was instrumental in setting up the Society for Veterinary Ethology in 1966, which has grown and expanded over the last 50+ years to become the International Society for Applied Ethology, the pre-eminent scientific society for the study of animal welfare science. Edinburgh was also home to the first MSc programme in the world to offer postgraduate education in applied animal behaviour and animal welfare in 1990. The MSc is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, and now has a network of alumni working to improve animal welfare all over the world.

With the current pandemic we were unable to collect our award in person at the 36th WVA Conference in Auckland, New Zealand in April as planned. However, a virtual awards ceremony was held last week and can be seen by following this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OhtWyYvGkw 

This also meant that we did not get the opportunity to meet and congratulate the other award winners in person but we are honoured to share the awards ceremony with Prof Paul McGreevy, Paul Oluwadare, Prof Gareth Bath, Maya Cygariska and Dr Tharanga Thoradeniya – many congratulations to you all for your work in improving the lives of animals.

Welcome to our new students coming to Edinburgh!

This week is Welcome Week for all our new students arriving at Edinburgh to begin student life, and an especially warm welcome (and welcome back) to our new and returning veterinary students. We are also delighted to be welcoming our next cohort of Masters students to the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies (R(D)SVS), whether they will be joining us at the Easter Bush campus or online to begin or continue their studies in animal behaviour and welfare.

In these uncertain times Welcome Week, and the first semester will feel a little bit different to usual for all of us, but the education teams have been working really hard to keep the campus secure and to provide a hybrid model of teaching with a blend of online and in person teaching. We are confident that our students will still have a great experience with us, and some of the new ways of teaching may even be an improvement on what we used to do in the past! For our MSc in Applied Animal Behaviour and Animal Welfare it is a particularly special year since it marks 30 years since the course began, as the oldest MSc programme in animal welfare in world. We will also be planning events to celebrate this special milestone. 

The R(D)SVS is consistently ranked as one of the best veterinary schools in the world (most recently voted top in the UK by Guardian Newspaper: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/news-events/news-and-archive/2020-news/guardian-league-table-2021), and is located in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. If you are interested in studying with us as a veterinary student then you can find out more information here: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet and see a video about student life here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNpX_DV7l4c

Or if you are interested in our postgraduate teaching in animal behaviour and welfare (or other subjects) then you can find out more here: https://www.ed.ac.uk/vet/studying/postgraduate

We hope to be welcoming you to our campus one day too!