Significant Contributions
Dr. Jennifer Schleining
Stange Award for Meritorious Service in Veterinary Medicine
DVM ’01
Growing up in South Dakota, Dr. Jennifer Schleining’s perceptions of what a veterinarian did was shaped by summers spent on her aunt and uncle’s farm.
“The veterinarians I knew were practitioners who owned a clinic, served the community and treated all types of pets and livestock,” Schleining said.
After graduating from Iowa State with her DVM in 2001, Schleining initially took that path. She completed a year-long equine internship, before joining a mixed animal practice in Fort Pierre, S.D. But something wasn’t right.
“I missed the ability to work up complex cases with advanced diagnostic capabilities that I had learned during my internship year,” she said.
Thus began a new career path for Schleining that has seen her in many different roles.
“What I have experienced in my 25 years as a veterinarians is that a veterinarian is also a translational researcher solving complicated human medical conditions, a public policy expert, a missionary, a regulatory authority, a defender of public health, an educator, an administrator, an emergency responder, a national thought leader, and an expert on a broad range of issues,” she said.
In those 25 years, Schleining has made significant contributions to veterinary education and the profession, first at Iowa State’s College of Veterinary Medicine, and now as clinical professor and head of the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at Texas A&M University’s College of Veterinary & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS).
While at Iowa State, Schleining not only was a clinician, but enhanced the school’s curriculum by integrating instruction on judicious antibiotic use and practical applications of the veterinarian-client-patient relationship.
When a need was identified to augment student learning, she spearheaded the creation of Iowa State’s Clinical Skills Laboratory with colleagues Drs. Stephanie Caston and Dean Riedesel.
“We were one of the first clinical skills labs in the country at the time,” Schleining recalled. “Through developing the lab, we were fortunate to forge relationships with other educators across the country and companies that were making educational models.
“Teaching can be an expensive activity and we were looking at ways in which we could be better stewards of resources and time through exploring the use of models early in the educational process to not only improve skills, but to reduce animal resource needs until students could be proficient in a skill to maximize their learning experience with live animals later in the curriculum.”
Now at Texas A&M, Schleining oversees departmental operations, supports faculty development and cultivates strategic partnerships with industry stakeholders. She played a pivotal role in developing specialized curriculum at Texas A&M designed to prepare new graduates for effective rural practice, including implementing certificate programs in equine and food animal medicine.
While her current duties have largely taken her from the classroom and clinics, those experiences have stayed with Schleining.
“Much of what I do now is informed by my time in the classroom, clinics and research labs,” she said. “I think it helps me lead from a place of having been in the trenches. I do get to collaborate on clinical cases and while I do not have time to maintain a permanent clinical role, I do still scrub into surgeries or cover ER calls when an extra hand is needed.”
This is a long way from Schleining’s original career plans.
“I have had to redefine my career multiple times, but my purpose has always been the same, to make the lives of people and animals better.”
September 2026
