I sat across the virtual table from Dr. Michael Q. Bailey, current AVMA president, excited to hear his vision for 2026. I asked: “What should Veterinary medicine focus on for the biggest impact on the profession?”
Would he say increasing diversity? Improving communication with pet owners? Addressing burnout?
“The best chance of impact is starting in the 6th grade,” he said.
The 6th grade?
The Critical Window We’re Missing
When did you know you wanted to work in Animal Health? If you’re like most Veterinary professionals, it was young—very young.
Chris Carpenter, founder of Vet Set Go, surveyed veterinarians in 2021 and found that 65% decided before age 13 they wanted to pursue Veterinary medicine. That’s 6th or 7th grade—precisely when students begin closing doors on careers they’ve never seen modeled.
As educator Kellie Lauth stated in her 2021 TEDx talk: “Students cannot be what they cannot see.” While difficult for us to imagine, many children have never encountered a veterinarian, let alone one who looks like them. If we wait until high school or college to introduce Veterinary careers, we’ve already lost the majority of our future workforce.
But Dr. Bailey’s statement points to something more transformative than career day presentations. What if a genuine partnership between our profession and young students could benefit both sides? And what if we took it a step further?
One Educator’s Radical Experiment
Kellie Lauth’s journey began at age eight on a Colorado ranch when her father instructed her to break a wild horse. The horse repeatedly bucked her off, but her father wouldn’t let her come inside until she and the horse reached an understanding. It was her first experience with problem-based learning: learning through solving real, open-ended problems.
Years later, after entering education to address diversity gaps in engineering, Kellie questioned the age-old answer for lack of change: “This is how we’ve always done education.” She started bringing professionals from industries like NASA into high-poverty classrooms. Children stopped fighting and became actively engaged. Why? Because the problems were real, and real professionals cared about their ideas.
Kellie and colleagues studied teaching models nationwide, asking: What actually works? The answer: start young, use real-world problems, and involve real-world professionals. They opened a STEM school within the public system, and by mid-year had a waitlist of 480 families and had closed a 60% reading gap among Hispanic boys.
A kindergarten class studying “What makes a good community?” mapped their neighborhood and discovered they lived in a food desert with poor access to medical care. So the kindergarteners tackled it. They researched, developed a solution, a mobile medical unit visiting the school twice monthly, and created a marketing plan and budget.
Kellie invited three mobile medical companies to pitch for the contract. Executives arrived in suits with briefcases and were directed to sit in child-sized chairs facing a board of five-year-olds who would decide whom to hire. They asked questions like:
- “Do you speak Spanish?”
- “How would you take care of my Grandma?”
The children made the final decision.
As students progressed, complexity grew. High schoolers developed patents, including software connecting homeowners with young pet sitters. Industry professionals provided ongoing mentorship. The school registered 12-15 patents with the State of Colorado, and graduation rates climbed from 69% to over 90%.
Kellie’s work contributed to creating the first certificate in disruption, the “D-Cert,” calling for partnerships embracing innovation, inclusion, workforce development, and wellbeing. Sound familiar? These are precisely Veterinary medicine’s challenges.
What This Could Look Like for Veterinary Medicine
Imagine a 6th-grade classroom partnering with your practice or company. The challenge: “How can we help more people provide good care for their pets?”
Young minds research pet ownership barriers in their community, discovering families who can’t afford wellness care, lack transportation to clinics, face language barriers, or feel intimidated by Veterinary settings.
The students develop solutions, and they pitch their ideas to you.
Some might be impractical. Others might be simple and brilliant. All represent authentic engagement with real Veterinary challenges, and students see themselves as future professionals because you showed up, listened, and took their ideas seriously.
This approach addresses multiple challenges simultaneously:
Fresh Perspectives: Children are less encumbered by “we’ve always done it this way,” and offer a fresh, often simple solution that might yield breakthrough ideas for real challenges.
Authentic Pathways: Students working on Veterinary challenges with professionals learn the breadth of Animal Health careers beyond the veterinarian they see working on their pet or on TV.
Creating Belonging: When students see professionals who look like them and care about their communities, they see a place for themselves in the profession.
Early Skill Development: Students learn scientific thinking, empathy, business planning, and communication skills that perfectly align with Veterinary medicine.
Not Entirely Novel: Veterinary Education Is Already Moving This Direction
This concept isn’t completely novel in Veterinary medicine. Veterinary schools are actively implementing problem-based learning alongside professional identity formation. Individuals like Dr. Sheena Warman from the UK and Dr. Kristin Jankowski at the University of California are leading the way to leverage problem-based learning to teach contextualized care to Veterinary students.
And thanks to Kellie Lauth’s work in other STEM and business industries, this is a proven model to Dr. Bailey’s suggested 6th grade, creating earlier entry points and authentic partnerships that simultaneously address pipeline challenges while generating fresh solutions to profession-wide problems.
Taking the First Step
What would it be like to share your journey with 11- and 12-year-olds? To invite them behind the scenes of your work? To ask for their help in solving a real problem you and the profession face?
Can you connect with a local middle school? Reach out to science teachers or principals. Offer to bring a real challenge your practice or company faces and work with students over several weeks to explore solutions.
Can you partner with existing programs like Vet Set Go or blendVET that already bridge Veterinary medicine and young students? Support and engage with their work.
Approach novel ideas from multiple perspectives with curiosity. Even if solutions aren’t immediately implementable, considering them and providing feedback educates everyone involved.
The Call to Courage
When Dr. Bailey said the biggest impact for 2026 would be starting in 6th grade, he issued a call to courage. The courage to look beyond immediate crises to invest in long-term transformation. The courage to share not just successes, but challenges with young people. The courage to learn from students as much as we teach them.
This isn’t just about fixing the pipeline a decade from now. How can we create a new partnership model where Veterinary medicine opens its doors and its problems to the next generation, trusting that fresh eyes might reveal solutions we’ve been missing?
Students cannot be what they cannot see. But perhaps Veterinary medicine also cannot become what it needs to be without inviting new voices into the conversation, including sixth graders who might just have the courage and creativity we need.
What problem in your corner of Animal Health could you bring to a classroom? What might happen if you asked a classroom of sixth graders for help?
Here’s to the curious minds out there who care about their communities and are ready to solve real challenges together.
RESOURCES:
Podcast interview on Vet Life Reimagined with Dr. Michael Q Bailey and other experts. https://www.buzzsprout.com/1961666/episodes/18412646
Kellie Lauth. “Industry and education: A Match Made in Disruption.” TEDxCherryCreekWomen. December 2021. https://www.ted.com/talks/kellie_lauth_industry_and_education_a_match_made_in_disruption
Author first heard Kellie Lauth’s story on the An Army of Normal Folks podcast. https://www.normalfolks.us/podcast/mindspark
Chris Carpenter. “Interview with Dr. Chris Carpenter.” Published by I Love Veterinary. Updated Feb 25, 2022. Viewed on Dec 25, 2025. https://iloveVeterinary.com/blog/interview-with-dr-chris-carpenter/