Rick's Blog

#bunyipsbooksbeyond

Use the menu below to explore "All Posts," or delve into selected topics like "Children's Picture Books", and more.

By now, we’ve walked around the issue from three sides. In Part 1 , we talked about identity - how names quietly shape who we believe we are. In Part 2 , we followed the money - the real financial pressures pushing schools toward large gifts. In Part 3 , we looked at memory - who gets remembered when a single name rises above thousands of quieter contributions. All this leads to the obvious next question: If naming rights feel uneasy… If they compress collective history int

If Part 1 of this series was about identity, and Part 2 was about money,then this part is about something softer and perhaps more personal: Memory. Because naming rights are not just financial decisions. They are acts of remembering. And every act of remembering is also, inevitably, an act of forgetting. How institutions remember themselves Walk through any veterinary college and you can read its history in the walls. A hallway of class photos. A plaque honoring the first d

In Part 1 of this series, I suggested that naming rights are not really about gratitude. They’re about identity. But identity rarely changes on its own. Identity changes when money changes. If we want to understand why veterinary colleges are beginning to carry the names of individuals, we must talk about something less romantic and far more practical: Who pays the bills? The old model most of us trained in For much of the twentieth century, veterinary education in the Unite

When I look back on my latest trip to India, I realize that what stayed with me most was not any single sight. Not the traffic. Not the towers. Not the monuments. Not even the colors and sounds that travelers always talk about. What stayed with me was the sense of scale . India today feels like a country holding everything at once. It holds ancient systems and new ambitions. It holds extraordinary wealth and deep poverty. It holds biodiversity and urban expansion. It holds

For most of my career, veterinary schools had wonderfully plain names. College of Veterinary Medicine. School of Veterinary Medicine. University of X. Functional. Geographic. Almost anonymous. They sounded less like brands and more like public trusts. That wasn’t accidental. It reflected who we were. Veterinary medicine grew out of agriculture, service, and community need - not prestige, not patronage, and certainly not naming rights. Our colleges belonged to states and pro

After days of traffic, towers, water tanks, and questions about infrastructure, the shift felt almost abrupt. I stepped into a marble-floored showroom. Outside, the streets were dusty and loud. Inside, the air was cool and scented faintly with sandalwood. Rugs hung from tall walls in layers of color and pattern. Tables gleamed with polished marble inlaid with semi-precious stone. Glass cases displayed necklaces, bangles, and gemstones under soft lighting. It was beautiful. An

After several days in the cities, it was the absence that began to strike me. Not the absence of people. There were people everywhere. Not the absence of noise. India hums continuously with movement and life. It was the absence of animals. On earlier visits to India, I had always been aware of animals as part of the everyday landscape. Street dogs slept in the shade of tea stalls. Cattle wandered slowly through traffic with the calm assurance of creatures that know they belon

These are deceptively simple questions: Who is driving this new generation of veterinary professionals? Who is motivating and encouraging them? Are we missing such thought leaders altogether? My answer may surprise some. In my view, it should be : The American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC). And yet, I am far from convinced that it is. The Organization That Should Lead The AAVMC exists precisely to occupy that space. It convenes deans. It shapes academi

I was not prepared for the tone of some of the replies to my recent blog posts: Who will teach them? https://lnkd.in/guYjJctY and https://lnkd.in/dFeGdPGy Some of the replies were not merely critical. They were weary. Sharp. Disappointed. At times openly hostile toward specialists, university professors, and academic institutions. It stopped me. Because I have spent my professional life in those spaces - teaching, mentoring, examining, arguing for standards, defending schola

In India, it doesn’t take long before you start to notice the question. It begins with small things. A plastic wrapper caught in a roadside bush. A heap of refuse gathered at the corner of a lane. Someone sweeping dust and litter from a shopfront - not into a bin, but into the gutter, where it joins everything else already moving slowly downhill. At first it feels like a matter of tidiness. But over time you begin to see it differently. You realize it isn’t simply about litte

On that first drive from the airport, it was the traffic that struck me. But over the following days, something else began to catch my eye. Water. Not rivers or lakes, though those appear too, often in varying states of fullness and cleanliness, but the signs of water infrastructure everywhere once you start looking for it. On rooftops across the cities, I noticed tanks. Thousands of them. Black plastic cylinders, blue containers, squat concrete reservoirs, all perched above

After more than forty years in veterinary medicine, I have learned something simple. Buildings don’t teach. Technology doesn’t teach. Curriculum documents don’t teach. People teach. The recent discussion around veterinary school expansion has generated a remarkable range of thoughtful responses. Some focused on general practitioners. Others on specialists. Some on externships. Some on diversity. Some on AI. Some on faculty pay. Some on day-one competence. If we step back, ho

Every time a new veterinary school announces expansion, the headline sounds reassuring. More seats. More graduates. More veterinarians. Problem solved. Except it isn’t. Because the real bottleneck isn’t simply the number of students. It’s the people who teach them. And even more specifically, it’s the specialists . A recent viewpoint in Veterinary Ophthalmology makes this point clearly: The veterinary specialist faculty shortage is not all about the numbers. That phrase caus

The moment it hit me was not philosophical. It was physical. I had barely left the airport. Outside the terminal, the air felt thick with exhaust and heat. Drivers clustered behind railings holding handwritten signs. Families pressed close around luggage carts piled improbably high. A whistle blew somewhere. A porter shouted. A line of taxis inched forward, each movement measured in feet rather than meters. And then the traffic. Within minutes of leaving the airport, we merg

When professions change, the change is rarely dramatic. There is no single day when everything is different. No meeting where someone announces that the old system has ended and the new one has begun. Instead, the shift happens quietly. A practice sells. A network forms. A management agreement appears. A pricing system standardizes. A new graduate signs a contract that looks entirely ordinary. And slowly, almost imperceptibly, the center of gravity of the profession moves. Se

In Part 1 of this series on Captive Strategies in Veterinary Medicine , we looked at the structures beneath modern veterinary practice. The legal and organizational frameworks that allow corporate groups to control hospitals while often preserving the appearance of local ownership. In Part 2 , we examined the financial engine driving those structures. The logic of consolidation, valuation, and predictable revenue that has transformed veterinary medicine into an attractive i

In Part 1 of the series on Captive Strategies in Veterinary Medicine , we looked at the architecture of modern veterinary consolidation. The legal structures, ownership models, and organizational frameworks that allow corporate groups to control practices while often preserving the appearance of local identity. But structures rarely exist for their own sake. They exist because they serve a purpose. In modern veterinary medicine, that purpose is increasingly financial. To und

Walk into almost any veterinary hospital today and it looks familiar. A waiting room. A reception desk. A doctor kneeling beside a nervous dog. A technician whispering reassurance to a worried owner. What you do not see are the structures beneath it. Modern veterinary medicine is increasingly shaped by systems that sit far from the consulting room. Legal frameworks, acquisition models, and corporate architectures designed to control practices without always appearing to do so

The word Acadaemia is used intentionally, as the Commonwealth spelling seems to fit the story better. There is only one correct spelling in the dictionary: Academia . It is a neat, institutional word. Balanced. Formal. Slightly impersonal. It refers to universities as systems - budgets, rankings, promotion pathways, committees, dashboards, strategic plans. It describes the machinery of higher education rather than the spirit that once animated it. But lately I’ve found myse

Force #9: Honesty and Integrity. In this eight-part series, I have tried to name the forces that leave academic life pale and breathless: Bureaucracy, Metrics culture, Erosion of mentorship, Shrinking autonomy, and The quiet moral injury that comes when meaning is replaced by measurement. But epilogues are not meant to repeat the diagnosis. They are meant to point to something concrete. A symbol that reveals the deeper pattern. For me, one such symbol is this: A public veter