The customary five-year dean’s review for Michael Lairmore of the School of Veterinary Medicine has been successfully completed, and Lairmore now begins his second term leading the world’s No. 1 veterinary school, the Office of the Chancellor and Provost has announced.
“Schools of veterinary medicine are complex, multifaceted centers of learning that have the daunting task of training some of the brightest minds to improve the health of myriad animal species, people and the environment,” Acting Chancellor Ralph J. Hexter said.
“Michael Lairmore has built on the school’s foundational strengths and led it to even greater international prominence” — as in claiming the top spot in the QS World University Rankings for veterinary science two years in a row.
“We look forward to what Dean Lairmore and the school will accomplish during the coming years,” Hexter said.
Lairmore’s second term as dean begins as the School of Veterinary Medicine prepares to launch a new capital campaign to raise funds for expansion and update of the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. The hospital opened in 1970 and now treats more than 51,000 animals per year.
Lairmore became dean in August 2011, having previously served as a professor and associate dean for research and graduate studies in Ohio State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. He is board certified in two veterinary specialties — anatomic pathology, and virology and immunology — and has a Ph.D. in experimental pathology from Colorado State University. He received his doctor of veterinary medicine degree from the University of Missouri at Columbia.
He is one of the few veterinarians elected as a member of the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences.