Dodam Chosen to Lead
Veterinary Medicine and Surgery Department

Dr. John Dodam doesn’t have the exact route plotted yet, but he’s sure about his intended destination.

“I want this department to be known nationwide for our research, teaching and clinical service,” he said. “I want the Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery to be attractive to faculty, house officers, and graduate students because of our productivity and our team approach. If we can accomplish that, I’ll consider our department to be successful.”

Dodam, who has been a member of the MU College of Veterinary Medicine faculty since 1995 and has served as the associate dean of academic affairs since August 2005, recently accepted the position as chairman of the CVM’s Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery. He will officially take over his new position beginning Sept. 1.

He said elevating the CVM to the level of national prominence he envisions will not be without challenges – challenges that necessitate fundamental changes in the way the department operates.

“Support for both the university and college are insufficient to allow us to continue as we currently operate,” he said. “It’s imperative that we figure out a way to move forward and enhance education, quality of service, and discovery of new knowledge as resources become even more limited than in the past,” he said.

He added that he will look to the faculty and students for solutions to maintaining and elevating the department’s level of excellence in the face of a funding shortage.

Dodam will take over the chairmanship of the college’s largest department under a new organizational structure that will see him working closely with recently appointed hospital director Dr. Dave Wilson. While Wilson will be tasked with the clinical management of the department, Dodam sees faculty enhancement and hiring as his priorities.

“It’s a diverse department,” Dodam said, “and we must use the professional diversity to optimize synergism between our faculty.”

Dodam grew up in Maple Heights, Ohio. He earned his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in 1985 from Ohio State University. After two years of private mixed-animal practice, he matriculated to North Carolina State University. There, he completed a residency program in anesthesia and earned a Master of Science in pharmacology and PhD in physiology. At NCSU, Dodam was named a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow, and also served as a clinical instructor.

He joined the MU Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital in 1995, teaching classes during all four years of the curriculum and graduate level courses, including physiology, pharmacology, anatomy, anesthesiology, emergency and critical care medicine, and clinical anesthesia. After being named associate dean, he continued duties as a member of the anesthesiology, emergency and critical care and graduate faculty in the Departments of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery, and Veterinary Biomedical Sciences. He has also served as the college’s Mule Club advisor.

He and his wife, Ginny, reside in Columbia. They have two daughters, Casey, a sophomore at Truman State University, and Page, a junior at Rock Bridge High School.

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