In the midst of the challenges posed by the pandemic of 2020, the Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine found a silver lining with the success of its first virtual Purdue Veterinary Conference, held September 22-25.\u00a0 Utilizing an app called \u201cWhova,\u201d along with special events conducted via the Zoom platform, the conference attracted more than 560 registered attendees, including veterinarians, veterinary nurses, and Purdue Veterinary Medicine faculty, staff, and students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The general education sessions were conducted in a live, synchronous format. Attendees were able to view the sessions, interact with speakers, visit exhibitor booths virtually, and network with other conference participants while utilizing the Whova app, which also was available as a desktop version that could be used to view sessions from a laptop or desktop PC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even in the virtual format, the conference offered a full range of top quality continuing education, including 94 sessions given by 49 speakers.\u00a0 The virtual Exhibit Hall featured two dozen exhibitors who provided videos, chat opportunities and prizes for attendees who could peruse the exhibits with a simple click or two. \u00a0The Exhibit Passport Contest gave points to attendees who visited booths and engaged with the vendors\u2019 digital content.\u00a0 Congratulations to contest winners Angel Pritt, RVT, of Care-Pets Animal Hospital in Sellersburg, Ind., and Amy Butcher, RVT, ICU\/ECC technician in the Purdue University Veterinary Hospital!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conference participants also found ample opportunities to network through the Whova app.\u00a0 Attendees utilized the app to share more than 2,350 messages either privately or via community message boards.\u00a0 There were 37 community board topics, including \u201cWhat\u2019s your favorite part of veterinary medicine?\u201d, \u201cWhere\u2019s your favorite place you\u2019ve traveled?\u201d, and \u201cWhat do you enjoy doing in your spare time?\u201d\u00a0 Participants also used the app to share 164 photos.\u00a0 Congratulations to Dawn Haas, DVM, of VCA West 86th<\/sup> Street Animal Hospital in Indianapolis, and Lara Luke, RVT, dermatology technician in the Purdue University Veterinary Hospital, who had the most likes to win the photo contest.\u00a0 Additionally, Jim Roberts, DVM, of Allison Lane Animal Hospital in Jeffersonville, Ind., won the Community Engagement Challenge with 131,400 points that were earned by engaging with other attendees, attending sessions, providing session feedback, and visiting exhibit booths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The continuing education sessions were organized in a variety of tracks, including Equine, Exotics, One Health and Emergency Preparedness, Practice Management, Ruminant, Small Animal, Swine, and Veterinary Nursing.\u00a0 The registrants were able to earn up to 24 hours of continuing education by virtually attending the presentations.\u00a0 The outstanding line-up of industry experts and hot topics included keynote lectures on wellness and diversity and inclusion, presented by Dr. Mia Cary and Dr. Kemba Marshall, respectively.\u00a0 In addition, Dr. Andy Roark served as the lecturer for the practice management track and gave the Dr. Jack and Naomi Stockton \/ Class of 1971 Keynote Lecture, while Dr. Zenithson Ng kicked-off the conference with the Elanco Human-Animal Bond Lecture Tuesday evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to the continuing education offerings, the conference included virtual special events. The Awards Celebration Wednesday evening, September 23, honored recipients of the college\u2019s Distinguished Alumni Awards and awards for outstanding faculty during a presentation conducted via Zoom. Congratulations to the following award recipients:<\/p>\n\n\n\n In lieu of the customary annual conference reception, the virtual trivia night “Pursuit!” held on Thursday, September 24, pitted teams of alumni, faculty and staff against each other in a contest of who had the best command of facts and figures involving themes and subject matter ranging from Purdue history to movies and TV shows.\u00a0 Congratulations to the winning team, called the \u201cGas Passers,\u201d led by team captain Elisa Hostetler, RVT, anesthesiology technologist in the college’s veterinary hospital.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Special thanks to this year\u2019s conference sponsors: IDEXX, Banfield Pet Hospital, the Indiana Board of Animal Health\/Indiana State Department of Health, Nutrena, Purina, Zoetis, Elanco, Hill\u2019s Pet Nutrition, and Coyne Veterinary Service. And a big thank you to everyone who participated!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the midst of the challenges posed by the pandemic of 2020, the Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine found a silver lining with the success of its first virtual Purdue Veterinary Conference, held September 22-25. Utilizing an app called \u201cWhova,\u201d along with special events conducted via the Zoom platform, the conference attracted more than 560 registered attendees, including veterinarians, veterinary nurses, and Purdue Veterinary Medicine faculty, staff, and students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":8570,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[676,105,225,26,56,422,1776,1636,1784],"class_list":["post-9964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-continuing-education","tag-awards-celebration","tag-ce","tag-continuing-education","tag-featured-story","tag-homepage","tag-purdue-veterinary-conference","tag-pursuit-trivia","tag-virtual","tag-whova"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9964"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9971,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9964\/revisions\/9971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vet.purdue.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}