Bethany O’Bryan knew from an early age she wanted to be a veterinarian. The Rochester, Minnesota, native remembers attending a Mayo Clinic event for kids about medicine as a kindergartener.

“I always joke that I decided to be a veterinarian the day I realized I couldn’t grow up and be a dog,” says O’Bryan, who also has a master's degree in public health. “The next best decision was to help them instead. That’s where I found out there was a doctor for animals. That was it for me.”

While children often dream big, O’Bryan’s career choice stayed steady. It was solidified when she attended the University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine’s (CVM) VetCamp the summer before her sophomore year in high school, after learning about the opportunity from her family’s veterinarian.

The camp is an interactive program for middle and high school students that offers hands-on learning activities for those curious about veterinary medicine. It’s led by CVM students with sponsorship from the Minnesota Veterinary Medical Foundation.

As a camp participant, she enjoyed the educational games, including one about which foods are toxic to dogs, and then the “big case” of the day, in which participants worked on a mock case involving how to help a stuffed animal that had been hit by a car. She found the whole experience engaging.  

“It's obviously a very simplified version of how we work through a case,” O’Bryan says. “But the fun of having these problems and having to problem-solve and prioritize left me knowing this is what I wanted to do.”

Years later, when she was a CVM student, O’Bryan jumped at the chance to help lead the VetCamp, becoming camp coordinator.  

“It felt like such a full-circle moment for me,” she says. “I was one of the students sitting there, and now I'm on the backside teaching, being able to give this experience to kids who were in the same boat I was once in. It was a fun and rewarding experience.”

In addition to VetCamp, O’Bryan cites two other major highlights from her time at CVM that continued her efforts to represent veterinary medicine to a broader audience. She was instrumental in starting One Health Club as a way for students to learn about and get involved in various One Health fields. The other was her interprofessional internship with the Center for Interprofessional Health and the Office of Academic Clinical Affairs.

“I was there to represent veterinarians as we talked about this roundtable of healthcare and how every profession has their role,” she says. “I was there to show veterinary medicine is a crucial part of that discussion.”

These days, O’Bryan is a small-animal general practitioner at Willow Pet Hospital in Rochester.

 “A lot of people helped me get to where I am today, and I feel a deep responsibility to do the same,” she says. “VetCamp was one of my ways of being able to give that back.”

Learn more about VetCamp