Encouraging Culturally Relevant and Engaged Teaching Approaches in a Summer Camp for Students of Color Interested in Veterinary Medicine

In scientific fields such as veterinary medicine (VetMed), instruction is often content-focused and lecture-based, leaving insufficient room for students to make meaningful connections to the curricula or see themselves in related careers. Inclusive pedagogies such as engaged teaching and culturally relevant pedagogy help students to make connections between their lived experiences and academic content, and are associated with deepening students' motivation and interests. During the summer of 2024, Education and VetMed faculty from a large, research-intensive university collaborated to create a culturally relevant, engaged curriculum for a veterinary summer engagement program. This program was geared toward middle and high school students from racial-ethnic groups historically underrepresented in veterinary medicine. In this teaching tip, we highlight the ways VetMed faculty adapted their activities after collaborating with the Education faculty. Overall, the VetMed faculty focused on revising their activities around three core principles: connection, interaction, and relevance. The findings of this article showcase the ways in which these principles were enacted within the activities of the summer program, and the reactions the students had from participating in these activities. This pilot program exemplifies curricular ideas that veterinary medicine faculty can implement to create meaningful learning experiences in both K-12 pipeline programs and in higher education settings. Through supporting interdisciplinary collaborations, particularly between VetMed and Education faculty, we can foster learning environments that increase access and engagement to VetMed for youth from historically underrepresented groups.