College of Veterinary Medicine
The College of Veterinary Medicine is one of the traditional competitive colleges in Northwest A&F University, whose history dates back to one of the Teaching and Research Section of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine in the National Northwest Junior College of Agriculture and Forestry founded in 1936. The Department of Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine established in 1958, then it was divided into the Animal Husbandry Department and the Veterinary Medicine Department in 1984. In 1998, the two departments merged into the College of Animal Science and Veterinary Medicine, which is officially renamed to be College of Animal Science and Technology in 2002. The College of Animal Science and Technology was divided into the College of Animal Science and the College of Veterinary Medicine in August 2007, since then, the College of Veterinary Medicine was officially set up.
After 70 years’ construction and development, the College of Veterinary Medicine has formed a multi-level teaching system with undergraduate education as the main body and postgraduate education as the direction. It started to enroll undergraduate since 1936 and post graduate since 1963.
At present, there are four teaching and research divisions in the College engaging in the following academic fields: Clinical Veterinary Medicine，Basic Veterinary Medicine, Preventive Veterinary Medicine and Animal Biological Technology. Veterinary Medicine is the famous brand specialties in Shaanxi Province. The college possesses a national key discipline (Clinical Veterinary Medicine), a doctoral program and a post-doctoral research station in Veterinary Science. The college is authorized to confer doctoral degree and master degree in 5 disciplines, including the level I discipline, Veterinary Medicine, and 4 level II disciplines--Basic Veterinary Medicine, Preventive Veterinary Medicine, Clinical Veterinary Medicine and Animal Biological Technology, It is also authorized to confer doctoral degree and master degree in 5 disciplines which are the level I discipline, Biology , and 4 level II disciplines—Developmental Biology，Neurobiology，Cytobiology and Physiology.
The college owns a series of research platforms such as Agriculture Ministry Key Laboratory of Reproductive Endocrine in Domestic Animals and Embryo Engineering. The National Stem Cell Engineering Center, Shaanxi (also Shaanxi Provincial Embryo and Stem Cell Research Center), the Provincial Teaching and Experimental Demonstration Center, BSL-3 laboratory and the research platform for prevention and cure of livestock and poultry epidemic diseases. The college owns 4 Teaching and Experiment Bases including Animal Hospital of Northwest A & F University, Xi’an Pet Hospital, Laboratory Animal Center and Animal Specimen Center, besides. The college also edits and publishes the academic journal “Progress in Veterinary Medicine”, and the association of Animal Toxicology is hosted in the college.
Currently, the college has 120 employees with strong teaching and research capabilities, including 25 professors and researchers, 27 associate professors and associate researchers, and 39 lecturers. The college has 13 Ph.D supervisors and 24 master student supervisors, among them, one won the national as well as provincial awards for outstanding contributions, one supported by the New century National Hundred, Thousand and Ten Thousand Talent Project , two are invited to be visiting Professor of Hou Ji Scholar, two experts are supported by New Century Talents Program sponsored by Ministry of Education, one schloar won supports from provincial “Three-Five Talent Project” and four people won “excellent Teacher” award of Northwest A & F University.
There are 1117 students in the college at present, of whom 665 are undergraduate, 341 are M.S. students and 111 are PhD Students. In the past 75 years, the college has nurturing more than 12 000 graduates for China. From them, Professor Wang Jiancheng, who is the pioneer and founder of Veterinary Obstetrics, and researcher Duan Enkui, who is the former vice-president of Southwest University and the present secretary of the Party committee of the Institute of zoology in the Chinese Academy of Science, are two of the outstanding representatives.
After long-term efforts, the college has made an outstanding progress in Animal Medicine and Animal Bio-technology, especially in Animal Embryo Engineering, Animal Cloning and Stem Cell Engineering, Biological Toxins and Toxic Disease, Domestic Animal Reproductive Endocrine, Neurobiology, Livestock Disease Prevention and Control, and some research areas have reached the international and domestic leading levels. For instance, Professor Zhang Yong first succeeded in producing the cloned goat from somatic cells and a group of cloned cows with human defense gene. Professor Dou Zhongying has made a remarkable breakthrough in stem cell research to gain the heart-beat cell cluster derived from human ES cells.
Always aiming to the frontier science and technology and sticking to meet the requirements of regional and national important strategies, the college is active in carrying basic and applied research about the practical agricultural production. In recent 3 years, the college has undertaken 85 projects funded national level (National “Project 973”, “Project 863”, the Natural Science Fund, “the Eleventh Five-Year” Plan and so on). In recent years，8 research programs have been awarded ministerial or provincial prizes, 680 papers have been published, among which 78 journals were Collected by SCI, 28 books have been published and 34 state invention patents have been granted.
In recent years, the college has promoted international academic exchanges and cooperation by dispatching young teachers and students abroad for exchange and degree study. The college has established long-term stable relationship with many universities and institutions in the United States, Britain, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Austria, making significant contributions to promote the college’s prestige worldwide.
With the subject construction as the leading role, implementing talent strategy, optimizing the disciplines structure and outstanding superiority of the subjects, the college has formed its own features of school running. In order to build the veterinary medicine into a state-level leading academic disciplines and to enhance the academic level and the influence of the college nationally and internationally, all the faculty members are working hard with great enthusiasm to embrace the brilliant future of the college!
15 July, 2010