As a member of Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine faculty, Dr. Roger Hogle (DVM ’58) was well aware of the accomplishments of Dr. Frederick Douglass Patterson.
Patterson (DVM ’23) was the long-time president of Tuskegee Institute where he founded that school’s veterinary school and later the United Negro College Fund.
“Sure, I was aware of him,” Hogle recently said. “In fact I believe I was in a few meetings with Dr. Patterson when I served on an AVMA committee that was looking at minority representation in the veterinary profession.”
Those meetings were indicative of Hogle’s efforts to increase the diversity of his profession and at his university. For a number of years he served on the college’s admissions committee where diversity was a not only a college goal but a personal one as well.
“One year, Iowa State had wanted to increase the number of minority students admitted to the university to 10%,” he said. “At the time we were already near that level in the College of Veterinary Medicine.
“That was when my interest in diversity and inclusion really was piqued.”
Hogle and his wife Sharon have continued that interest to this day, even though he has been retired from the college for 30 years. Over the past few years, the couple has contributed to the college’s scholarship fund.
But not just to any scholarship but the Frederick Douglass Patterson Diversity and Inclusion Scholarship. That scholarship was created to honor the personal merits and attributes of Patterson and is awarded to current and incoming DVM students.
“I would say the veterinarian profession should be just like any other profession,” Hogle commented. “There should be veterinarians who look like their clients. If that was the case then I believe persons of color would be more inclined to take their animals to a clinic.
“I hope these type of scholarships will help overcome the lack of persons of color in our profession.”
May 2021