This message will appear in the Illinois State Veterinary Medical Association Epitome.
I love watching buildings go up. I happen to be fascinated by cranes. (Not the bird kind, the construction kind.)
Much more exciting to me, however, is watching how our college programs grow and benefit animals and humans around the world. The impact of our faculty, students, and alumni is truly global.
So you can be sure that I take incredible pride in watching our world-class clinical and research oncology program expand in the form of a brand-new hospital wing.
You can watch along with me, wherever you may be, because we have a construction cam recording every step. Visit this webpage when workers are present and see for yourself: go.vetmed.illinois.edu/OncoExpansion. (You can even zoom in on the parts you want to see up close.)
Seeds of Investment
Our oncology program began in 1994, when Dr Barbara Kitchell arrived as an Illinois faculty member fresh from earning a PhD in cancer biology at UC-Davis. Now, 30 years later, the program has grown into an incredible powerhouse of clinical cancer care, residency training, and basic and applied research.
Drs. Laura Garrett and Tim Fan have fostered this growth over the past 20+ years, with Dr. Kim Selting joining the team in 2017 to add radiation oncology to the program. With Drs. Joanna Schmit and Matt Berry, the service today has five faculty members and nine house officers and cares for over 2,000 patients each year.
Boost from a Grateful Client
For many years, Dr. Garrett oversaw the care of Louie and Shanelle, beloved pets in the family of business leader Shahid Khan. Through Dr. Garrett, the family learned that the hospital’s oncology service could help a great many more pets with cancer if they had additional resources.
In 2022, the Khan family gave $15 million to create three faculty chair positions and provide additional programmatic support. Their gift was contingent on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s matching gift of $15 million toward a new facility for the program.
“We want to do all we can to ensure that the remarkable service and care we enjoyed at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital is accessible to everyone and their pets,” Shahid Khan said at that time.
“As important, whether it’s to teach or study veterinary medicine, we want to attract the best and brightest to the University of Illinois. The opportunity to support the mission of the oncology program at our vet med school is a privilege for our entire family, Louie and Shanelle included.”
Gift Comes to Fruition
Last summer we broke ground for construction of the new hospital wing for cancer care and discovery. Also last summer, two of the newly created chairs were bestowed when Dr. Garrett became the inaugural Khan Family Chair in Veterinary Clinical Oncology and Dr. Fan became the inaugural Khan Family Chair in Veterinary Oncology Research. And in October, Dr. Kim Selting was invested as the inaugural Dr. John A. Coyne Professor in Small Animal Clinical Practice.
We are grateful for the investments donors have made, enabling the growth of our oncology service team and its new facility, a dedicated oncology wing. While it’s easy to see growth in the team and the building, the impact of this growth will be exponentially larger, if harder to quantify.
There’s no way to put a webcam up that will track the endless gratitude of families enjoying extra time with beloved pets that benefited from cancer treatment at our hospital. Or the relief of referring veterinarians who entrust their patients to our specialists or who are able to deliver effective cancer therapies locally with consultations from us. Or the extended lives of pets and people around the world who benefit from powerful cancer therapies launched through our comparative oncology research program.
I want to thank all our referrers and alumni who support that college and its hospital, whether through referrals or outright donations. You play a major role in growing our programs and impact.
The feature image shows Khan family members Shahid, Ann, and Shanna posed beside Drs. Laura Garrett and Tim Fan (wearing medallions) at the August 13, 2024, investiture ceremony. below them are a screen capture from the construction site of the new oncology wing, along with an architect’s rendering of the completed wing.
