Author Archives: Laci Taylor

Change of Summer Plans: from Field Work to Virtual Teaching

  By Laci Taylor • January 27, 2021 Uncategorized

Laci leading the Great Ape Team through their disaster preparedness scenario via Zoom

As an aspiring veterinarian interested in zoological medicine, I have tried my best to take advantage of all zoo and wildlife opportunities available to me. When I think about the kind of veterinary career I want to have, it is one where I can combine my interests in conservation, international travel and cultural immersion. For this reason, I am sure you can imagine my excitement when back in January, I was accepted to work at the Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) in Uganda for the summer of 2020. For eight weeks this summer, I would have been assisting the JGI team with disease monitoring in habituated chimpanzee populations, transmission analysis of infectious diseases between humans and chimpanzees, and community awareness. My proposed project aimed to reduce disease transmission risk for humans and wild-habituated chimpanzees in Kibale National Park to improve public health and conserve this endangered population of chimpanzees. I was particularly excited for this opportunity because it would have been my first veterinary experience that encompassed the topic of conservation with communities. Conservation with communities is an approach to conservation that includes the local people in an effort to make the conservation initiatives more sustainable. It is a concept that I am passionate about because I believe that involving the local community in conservation initiatives helps to better sustain these initiatives. 

Like many other students whose summer experiences were cancelled due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, I was devastated. Not only would I no longer get to participate in this once in a lifetime experience, but also I did not have any other summer opportunities lined up. Having traveled back home once classes went virtual, I was no longer able to work my hospital job as a student technician at the Wildlife Health Center and many local practices were not accepting new hires for safety reasons. As a result, I spent my first couple of weeks back home scrambling for summer experiences. That is, until one of my professors reached out to me about an opportunity to become a teaching assistant for his three-week virtual summer course on conservation. The course was offered through Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine for credit and geared towards high school students. This would be the first time that the course would be virtual. Something I really enjoyed throughout my undergraduate career was teaching so I happily accepted the position.In undergrad, I gained teaching experience mainly through planning and leading educational activities through the student run organizations I was a part of, but this would be different. 

As a teaching assistant I had a lot of responsibilities. I was responsible for managing and organizing the course website, securing guest lecturers, managing discussion boards, creating and grading quizzes, developing course feedback surveys and providing feedback on and grading final projects among many other responsibilities. I was even responsible for creating and leading my own lectures and labs. Some of the topics I gave lectures on were the role of veterinarians in zoos, zoonotic diseases of companion animals, disease transmission at the wildlife-livestock interface and illegal wildlife trade. I was even able to integrate the concept of conservation with communities into some of my lectures! 

Laci presenting her lecture on African Penguin Conservation via Panopto

One of the activities I enjoyed leading the most was on disaster preparedness in a zoo setting. I worked closely with Dr. Abou-Madi to put this activity together which tasked students with acting as a cohesive team to build the different parts of a disaster prevention plan. Following a presentation on disaster preparedness and prevention, students were divided into teams each with a different animal grouping and their job was to look at all the different aspects that are necessary to best prepare and act quickly in the midst of a tropical storm to protect the animals in their grouping. The teams were also tasked with addressing the basic medical needs of the animals they were assigned to as part of their plan. For example, one student group had Komodo dragons as their animal grouping and some of the Komodo dragons had spinal lesions caused by salmonella while others were intermittent shedders of salmonella. In order to come up with an effective disaster prevention plan, students were encouraged to consider how they would secure and care for the animals during and after the storm hits, decide where to best locate the animals, and how to distribute the animals in the selected shelter among many other considerations. 

I did not quite know what I signed up for when I agreed to be a teaching assistant for the course, but I am so glad I did! Throughout my time as a teaching assistant, I gained organizational skills such as carrying out administrative tasks, and strategic planning and decision making. I also further developed my communication skills through teaching, interacting with students and through collaborating with the rest of the core course planning team. I was also able to develop critical thinking skills through coming up with creative ways to make virtual lectures and labs interactive and troubleshooting technical difficulties. Becoming a teaching assistant was a really great way to develop my soft skills and is an experience I highly recommend to other veterinary students. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laci Taylor, class of 2022, is a DVM student at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. She is interested in wildlife and aquatic medicine and hopes to make a global impact as a wildlife veterinarian. Laci hopes to promote biodiversity through rehabilitation and conservation – fields that serve as pathways for understanding many pertinent issues today from the transmission of zoonotic diseases which affect public health, to restoring endangered species.

An UnBELIZEable Experience

  By Laci Taylor • July 31, 2019 ,

Laci examines an anesthetized jaguar prior to a procedure

This summer I had the opportunity to participate in a one-week experience at the Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Center through a course at Cornell called International Experience in Wildlife Health and Conservation. The course is a partnership between Cornell and the Belize Zoo in Central America. As an aspiring wildlife veterinarian, I found the course to be highly rewarding as it was unlike any other offered in the core veterinary curriculum. 

Laci feeds a tapir at the Belize Zoo

The Belize Zoo was started in 1983 by Sharon Matola to educate the people of Belize and tourists alike. One of the most interesting aspects of the Belize Zoo is that the entirety of its animals arrive as orphans or rescues and all of its animals are native species, many of which are at risk for extinction. Through educational programming, the zoo aims to dispel some of the negative stereotypes and myths engrained in Belizean culture that cause the public to intentionally harm or kill animals. One such myth is that the sighting of certain species of owls means that death is coming for someone close. The educational component of the zoo ultimately contributes to the preservation of many local endangered species populations.

While at the zoo, I worked with a wide variety of species ranging from spider monkeys to jaguars. Alongside some of Cornell’s veterinary faculty and the Belizean zookeepers, I was able to attend lectures, practice physical exam and clinical skills, take and analyze lab samples, as well as observe and assist in anesthesia and dentistry procedures. In just one week, I learned to insert my first catheter, participated in a dental extraction, gave preventative vaccines to a jaguar, ran diagnostic testing and bloodwork on a howler monkey, and performed an ultrasound on a puma amongst many other wonderful clinical experiences! One of my most memorable experiences was assisting in the dental procedure on one of the zoo’s jaguars. Before I wanted to be a veterinarian, I wanted to be a dentist, so this was an especially impactful opportunity. As a rising second year, I hadn’t yet learned about dentistry in the curriculum so assisting was a great hands-on introduction. During the procedure I learned about simple versus surgical extraction. The extraction on the jaguar was a surgical extraction which meant that the removal of the tooth required creation and elevation of a flap, and removal of bone. I watched the dentistry resident use many different dental surgery tools to remove the periodontal ligament from the tooth and I was able to loosen the last bit of periodontal ligament, ultimately “delivering”, or removing, the tooth! 

Xunantunich, a cultural site in Belize

When we weren’t working in the Belize Zoo Veterinary Clinic, the team immersed itself in the history, culture and traditions of Belize. One such experience was a trip to Xunantunich, an ancient Maya archaeological site in Western Belize consisting of four major architectural groups. Additionally, we traveled to San Ignacio, Belize to a marketplace where farmers, traders and vendors from all walks of Belizean life gather. 

My desire to make a global impact as a wildlife veterinarian drew me to this opportunity and participating only reaffirmed this desire. The course at the Belize Zoo allowed both students and faculty to broaden their veterinary experiences by providing veterinary care to zoo animals all  while learning about Belize’s conservation efforts. It is a course I highly recommend!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Laci Taylor, class of 2022, is a DVM student at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. She is interested in wildlife and aquatic medicine and hopes to make a global impact as a wildlife veterinarian. Laci hopes to promote biodiversity through rehabilitation and conservation – fields that serve as pathways for understanding many pertinent issues today from the transmission of zoonotic diseases which affect public health, to restoring endangered species.