On a hot spring day in Albuquerque in 2004, Megin Nichols, ’08 MPH, was shearing sheep. It was an experience she didn’t expect to change the trajectory of her career. 

Nichols was in her final year of earning a bachelor’s degree in animal science at New Mexico State University when shearing gave way to a discussion about the orf virus, which causes blisters to form around sheeps’ mouths. In people, who can contract the virus from animals, orf looks very similar to smallpox or Mpox. 

Nichols knew she wanted to become a veterinarian, but she also wanted to expand her work beyond individual animals and their owners. 

“These diseases that spread between animals and humans can impact the security of our food supply and even cause reemergences of previously eradicated viruses. I thought maybe this is how I expand my career,” she says.

Making it happen

Nichols was starting a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) program at Colorado State University the following school year and discovered the University of Minnesota’s (UMN) dual degree program that allows students to earn both DVM and Master’s of Public Health (MPH) degrees at the same time. 

Although she was already locked into her DVM program at Colorado State, Nichols decided to call Kate Hansen, who was the coordinator of the UMN dual DVM/MPH program. She answered, and then connected her with Will Hueston and Jeff Bender, as well as a few other professors in the program. 

“This really felt like a big deal to a student who was uncertain how to get into this career path, to have the key administrators and coordinator of the program calling me to speak with me,” she says. “That was a big thing then, and it continues to be huge today––the people at the program are so generous with their time and with students.”

As a team, faculty at the UMN MPH program told Nichols they would help her find a way to do a DVM/MPH program at CSU in conjunction with UMN. By fall, the novel collaboration was a go. 

Honing real-world skills 

Every student in the dual DVM/MPH program spends at least three weeks taking a series of classes through the Public Health Institute (PHI). It was at the Institute’s summer program that Nichols found a unique mentor in the late Larissa Minicucci, who was an associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM). Minicucci also played a foundational role in developing the relationship between CSU and UMN that allowed Nichols to pursue the unique path to dual degrees.

“You don’t necessarily believe you can do it unless you see someone who is representative of you in a higher position,” Nichols says. “I am a Hispanic woman, I am the first person in my family to get a four-year college degree. I saw a woman who had the same grit. That really helped fortify my path.”

Out of graduate school, Nichols landed a two-year fellowship at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Epidemiology Surveillance Service. From there, she worked for the New Mexico Department of Health for five years before returning to the CDC to investigate zoonotic diseases. Today, Nichols is the director of the Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases at the federal agency. 

“Entering the job market, I had built both the medical understanding from veterinary medicine, but I also had the skills to investigate an outbreak, and the people skills to manage teams,” Nichols says. 

Today, she combines those skills to track foodborne, water, fungal and parasitic diseases at the federal level.

“These affect humans, animals and the environment. It’s kind of my dream job,” she says.

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