Michelle Schultze followed her curiosity, and it took her further than she ever planned.

After earning her DVM at Iowa State University, she spent a couple of years in small-animal practice. But a public health course during her time in Iowa had her thinking about epidemiology, eventually leading her to pursue a master’s degree at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, where she worked on a project on chronic wasting disease.

But she didn’t stop there.

Schultze is currently finishing the University of Minnesota’s Veterinary Public Health and Preventive Medicine Residency (VPHPM), a two-year program housed in the Center for Animal Health and Food Safety. Her work for the residency has taken her from the parks of Hennepin County to Washington, D.C., where she helped present research to a deputy administrator at USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.  

“I just want to learn everything,” she says.

Established in 2002, the VPHPM was the first U.S. residency recognized by the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine (ACVPM) and one of only five today. Each year, it takes two or three early-to-mid-career veterinarians and draws applicants from around the world. What sets it apart, Schultze says, is range. Residents move across many projects at once, spanning multiple species, leading some and joining others for a stretch of data analysis. The program also prepares residents to sit for their ACVPM boards, and many earn diplomate status within two years before moving into government, industry or academia.

Take Schultze’s varied experience: she helped assess the risk of African swine fever entering the United States from the Caribbean alongside collaborators at Ross University and UC Davis, work that culminated in Washington, D.C.

“My confidence from when I started to now has grown tremendously,” she says. “Two years ago, if you were to ask me to present at a conference, I would be extremely hesitant... now I’m still nervous, but I’m like, yeah, I can do it.”

Early on, she set a goal of writing her own grant, and her mentors spent a year guiding her toward funding for a project that sent her into Hennepin County parks to collect ticks, ship them to a lab for testing and map where tick-borne diseases were showing up.

“It was amazing to get to take the lead and initiative on a project that I was personally interested in,” she says.

As she wraps up her time in the residency, Schultze says she is confident she could step into nearly any epidemiologist role. In the future, she hopes to work with a department of health through an applied epidemiology fellowship. Her goal is to work on zoonotic and vector-borne diseases, where animal, human and environmental health meet.

“People just don’t realize how many paths you can take with a veterinary degree,” she says.

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