Dr. Steve Marks is building a vet school from scratch, and he’s not afraid to do things differently. In this episode, Dr. Marks, founding dean of Clemson University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, joins Dr. Andy Roark to talk about what it’s really like to start a vet school in 2025. From juggling seven buildings under construction to planning clinical clerkships and raising funds for student housing, this conversation covers it all. Dr. Marks shares his vision for producing day-one ready veterinarians, explains why Clemson chose a semi-distributed model for clinical education, and unpacks the challenges of placing students in real-world practices. They also dive into corporate partnerships, vet student recruitment, and what future vet students should know before applying. Whether you’re curious about vet school trends, love a good underdog story, or want to know what veterinary education might look like in 10 years, this episode is for you.
You can also listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts!
LINKS
Harvey S. Peeler Jr. College of Veterinary Medicine at Clemson University
Dr. Andy Roark Charming the Angry Client Team Training Course
Dr. Andy Roark Swag: drandyroark.com/shop
All Links: linktr.ee/DrAndyRoark
ABOUT OUR GUEST
Dr. Steven Marks is the founding dean of Harvey S. Peeler Jr. College of Veterinary Medicine at Clemson University, set to welcome its first class in 2026. With curriculum development, faculty hiring, and facilities planning well underway, Dr. Marks is leading efforts to address a critical need for veterinarians in South Carolina and beyond. Passionate about the human-animal bond and veterinary education, he is committed to building a values-driven program that prepares day-one ready clinicians and scientists. As a proud Clemson parent and longtime advocate for veterinary medicine, he’s excited to shape a college that aligns with the University’s mission and serves both people and animals.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Andy Roark: Welcome everybody to the Cone of Shame Veterinary podcast. I am your host, Dr. Andy Roark and I am here with Dr. Steve Marks. He is the founding Dean at Clemson University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. I ask him a little bit about how’s it been going, and it’s always fascinating to hear when people are doing incredible things like starting vet schools.
They have seven buildings under construction at the same time right now. It’s a big project, but that’s not really what I’m digging for today. I’m really interested in how vet students get trained and what the experience of the vet students is. And I keep coming back and thinking about this distributed model of veterinary education where instead of having a teaching school, we are sending vet students out into practices to get their education.
Now Clemson is interesting. I really wanna talk to Dr. Marks because Clemson has chosen to do a semi distributed model, meaning they have facilities, they are gonna have rotations, they’ve got a community clinic, things like that. They’re doing some large animal work and things at Clemson University.
And they’re also sending students out to do some of their education distributed in a distributed way. It’s not the type that, that I did where I had, two or three, two week externships. It’s definitely much more robust than that as terms of sending students out to get their education, but it’s not the full on, we don’t have a medical hospital approach that, some other schools are using.
And so I wanna talk to him about the distributed model because here’s a guy who’s picked the middle path. And so I’m like, talk to me about this. How is this gonna work? Do you have these concerns? I asked him vet students being overly wooed and recruited when they’re trying to get their education.
I asked him about corporate practices coming in putting together significant programs to try to absorb some of these students and how do we feel about that? And it’s just a, it’s a really interesting conversation about what does education and development and creation of doctors look five or ten years from now and I got good answers. I really appreciate Steve. I think he was honest. I think he was really candid. He’s a very likable guy. I am, I’m really optimistic about what Clemson’s doing ’cause they’re right down the road from my house and so I’m really rooting for him. I, feel like they’re in good hands.
Guys, let’s check it out. Get into this episode. Here we go.
Kelsey Beth Carpenter: This is your show. We’re glad you’re here. We want to help you in your veterinary career. Welcome to the Cone of Shame with Dr. Andy Roark.
Dr. Andy Roark: Oh, welcome to the podcast, Dr. Steve Marks. Thank you for being here, my friend. I appreciate it.
Steve Marks: It is my pleasure to be here. Thank you for the invitation.
Dr. Andy Roark: You and I met before you are, for those who don’t know you, you are the founding dean at Clemson University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. And you and I met in, that capacity. You are still in the middle of getting the university or the college up and going. Go ahead and tell me real quick, sir, where are you in this, process of making Clemson’s College Event Medicine happen?
Steve Marks: There’s a lot of moving parts right now. So we are we are walking through the accreditation process. So our accreditation body is the American Veterinary Medical Association Council in Education, and that’s really the bar you have to clear. But even prior to that, we’ve had to go through some, some, I would say some steps at Clemson University and the state of South Carolina.
We’re an approved college. We had to get our curriculum approved. There’s lots of steps to starting a college and most universities haven’t started a new college for quite a number of years, so you have to reinvent the wheel little bit.
Dr. Andy Roark: You’re building, you have construction going on right now for facilities, correct? What’s that like?
Steve Marks: Yeah. We have seven buildings currently under construction simultaneously. So we do, I would say we started out going out to the site I would say every couple of weeks. And now we’re going out, I, on average once a week and now you can actually tell, like now if you go out there, you can see there’s buildings coming outta the ground.
Initially they were just moving. It looked like they were just pushing a lot of dirt around. But you don’t realize how much work goes into the prep before a building starts coming out. So there, there’s lots happening.
Dr. Andy Roark: So you had been the dean of vet schools before and… no?
Steve Marks: No, my top rank, I guess was an Associate Dean at NC State. Being a dean and especially being a founding dean are very different.
Dr. Andy Roark: Okay. Alright. So yeah, I, so the associate Dean was what I was thinking. So is this what you thought it was going to be when you came, when you took this job? Did you have in, did, was your inkling of what you were getting into correct at all?
Steve Marks: I would say, that’s an interesting question. I’m not sure any job I’ve had. I knew everything about the job before I took it. There are some things that you find out on the job. at my core, I’m a veterinary clinician, like I know. I know medicine, and that’s what I’ve studied my entire career. And I, I know a little bit about veterinary education that I’ve accumulated through my career, you’ve heard of the Peter Principle?
Dr. Andy Roark: Yes.
Steve Marks: So I might I, may fall under that category a little bit. You get
Dr. Andy Roark: You might have been promoted up as high as you can. As high as you can be, huh?
Steve Marks: Yeah. I think we all, of us a little bit have the imposter syndrome. You wake up one day, say, how did I get here?
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah.
Steve Marks: So we all deal with that a little bit.
Dr. Andy Roark: I still find myself thinking, who’s in charge here? And then my team will look at me and I’m like, oh, it’s me. I am.
Steve Marks: I agree with that. It’s, but I think it’s a good question to ask yourself how you got there? Remind, like I remind myself all the time of the people that enabled me to be successful, mentors, former students, interns, residents. Right now the, Clemson administration all those people played a role in who I’ve been allowed to become.
Dr. Andy Roark: I think that sort of exercise and gratitude is probably really healthy and really helpful.
Steve Marks: What keeps you humble?
Dr. Andy Roark: it’s like I, found as soon as I’m not humble the universe makes that happen for me.
Steve Marks: Yeah, so you and I already discussed that we both have daughters, we both have wives, and I think if you’re not humble, there’s usually a couple of people will point that out to you.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yes. Oh, yeah. I’m right there with you. Let me the reason I wanna talk to you a bit today is, I have this sort of ongoing interest in education in general and ve veterinary education specifically. And so I am, I’m looking at, Clemson’s coming up right down the road and you guys are building seven buildings and is, it’s this big undertaking and then I’m looking and reading and I’m seeing, there’s probably about 10 ish college of veterinary medicines that are coming online either now or in the next couple of years and things like that.
And so I’m looking at, and I’m trying to think. What is this education going to look like? Because a lot of these schools are set up very differently than veterinary schools that, we looked at 20 20, 25 years ago.
Steve Marks: Sure.
Dr. Andy Roark: And so let me open this up by, by going back to sort of something that you’ve said a couple of different places I’ve seen in the press.
And so when, you’re asked what your objectives are for Clemson’s College of Veterinary Medicine, one of the things that you, the phrase that I’ve seen you use more than once is you’ll say that, we want to produce day one prepared veterinarians. Can you talk a little bit about what does that mean to you when you say it?
Steve Marks: Yeah. It’s not my, it’s not my term. I think excuse me. Veterinary education has really moved into the realm of competency-based veterinary education. So we want our students to be prepared for whatever area of veterinary medicine that they choose to practice in. For us it means we’re gonna primarily shoot for producing veterinarians that are ready to practice in the private sector and general practice. So I am sure that we will have some students that are interested in specializing and postgraduate education. So some may want to do a PhD in internship or residency.
So we will give them the foundation to have those tools to progress in their career. But we won’t say that general practice is a second choice. We will say that if you choose to go to be a general practitioner in veterinarian medicine, that you should own that decision and you should be prepared day one to be out there and participate and contribute to our profession.
Dr. Andy Roark: I it’s a big thing for me as a general practicing doctor, like I wanna see people successful on the first day, and I am, I’m very much a get things done kind of guy. I am very pragmatic, in my, nature. And so it speaks to me to be able to produce veterinarians that are going to be competent and they’re going to be effective as quickly as possible. And as I look at this and I think about how we educate doctors, the distributed model of veterinary medicine has definitely gained popularity and as I look at a lot of the newer schools that are coming online, it seems to be a go-to educational approach for a lot of these schools.
And distributed model being the one where veterinary students are going to, instead of having a designated teaching hospital, they will go out and they will spend time at, at general practice hospitals
Steve Marks: Yes.
Dr. Andy Roark: and do externships or rotations there to acquire that knowledge in a way. I really like this because I think showing people what general practice really is in a general practice pace, I think that’s valuable for development. I wonder also about it because, I’ve had externs students that I’ve worked with in the past. And I’m always amazed by how much work it is to actually to train somebody and to really mentor them and educate. And so it’s not a passive thing of you’re just doing your job and they’re looking over your shoulder and staying outta the way.
It’s a bit of a lift. And so let me start by asking you about this and say, we talked about the construction at Clemson a little bit. To what degree is Clemson planning to rely on a distributed model of education?
Steve Marks: We will be described as a semi distributed model. That’s the current term. So we will do a significant amount of training on our own campus. So we will have a large animal ambulatory service. We’re now planning on having a very small community practice. That community practice will. Most likely be for it’ll be a, lower income practice.
So we’ll serve some families in the area that maybe don’t have the financial resources. And that’ll also allow us to partner with a lot of the community veterinarians throughout South Carolina. And they, probably the biggest advantage of the distributed model is that it’s a throwback to an apprenticeship.
So the students will have an idea of who they will be. ’cause it, statistically the majority of our students will be general practitioners and they’ll most likely stay in South Carolina. So working with a practitioner like you for, for better, for worse, they’re gonna see every day of what you do.
And that’s not just about learning how to be a good doctor. That’s how it’s learning about being a good communicator. Being a good business person being financially resilient. In a teaching hospital there’s huge advantages, but there’s also some, probably some disadvantages. And that would go the same thing that applies to the distributive model as well. But I think I did a partially distributed model when I trained it for veterinary school. ’cause I trained in, Britain. And I learned a lot of very valuable skills from people that were living that life every day. And so I think that’s the value of the distributed model.
Dr. Andy Roark: So how do you go about selecting hospitals, Steve, to, help participate in this? So again let’s say that, so I’m, I work at a wonderful animal hospital in Travelers West, South Carolina, and I, really love it. It’s, just such a good organization. I don’t think they’ve ever trained a vet student before.
What does, how, what does that look like as far as the recruiting process what kind of quality control is there for the experience the students are getting?
Steve Marks: So this will be a true partnership. So we’ll, we will have faculty in, that’ll be deployed to these practices. So we’ll work hand in hand with those practices. And we’ve been very fortunate at Clemson. This is a combination of the loyalty to Clemson and the loyalty to South Carolina. So a lot of veterinarians have reached out to us to volunteer to be partners with us. And then of course we meet with them. We wanna make sure that the staff and the doctors really want students. And like you said, it’s a pretty heavy lift, so we wanna make sure that they know there’s, a lot of assessment, there’s a lot of questions they have to answer.
And then right now, when the accreditation body comes, they will visit some of those practices. And when they visit those practices, we will not be present. So they will quiz those practices, both doctors and staff to make sure they’re ready and prepared. And then this is not show and tell. Students have to be actively engaged in case management. So like you say, there’s a pretty heavy responsibility on the veterinarians that partner with us.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. So when you’re putting together these, do you call ’em externships? Do you call ’em rotations? What do you call these?
Steve Marks: Yeah, so varied terms right now. Mostly they’re called clinical clerkships.
Dr. Andy Roark: How long are those, when the students go out, like how long do they expect to stay
Steve Marks: Yeah, to, yeah, it’s a great question. So usually there’ll be between two and four weeks. There may be some core rotations, some elective rotations but again, the students are gonna spend a significant amount of time. Away from Clemson and with these practitioners?
Dr. Andy Roark: How did Clemson just come down on the idea of being a semi distributed school and then how did you decide what you would house and what you wouldn’t house?
Steve Marks: That’s a, actually a very good question and, a challenging one. So the decision about this distributed model was actually made before they hired me.
Dr. Andy Roark: Okay.
Steve Marks: So that, that was made, I think mostly because they thought it was a practical choice and that there had been some other universities that are using that model quite successfully.
And running a teaching hospital is, not the easiest task in the world. So again, there’s pros and cons to both systems, but as you noted, most of the newer veterinary schools right now are using either a distributed or semi distributed model.
Dr. Andy Roark: Is there a looming capacity problem with a distributed model? So the way it was presented to me not long ago was a doctor that I respect, and it’s a pretty sharp guy, said, look, we’ve got five vet schools basically that have been using a distributed model for some time, and let’s say that, it’s gone fairly well from what I can tell all of, assessments have been good the doctors I have met coming outta those schools have been very competent, very capable doctors. The concern he had was that, so we’ve had five schools and they’ve done it, and let’s say they put out a hundred students per class. And so that’s 5,000 students. We’ve got 10 more schools that are opening up, and if each one of them has a hundred students per class and they’re gonna use a distributed model, then we go from 5,000 students to 15,000 students. And I’ve seen counts of vet schools in America and say there’s 30, 32, 30 5,000 sorry, vet clinics in America and go, I got 30,000 vet clinics and 15,000 students, and they’re gonna, they’re gonna cycle through and things. Is there any concern for, just not having enough hospitals to support a model like this? For all of the schools that are coming in,
Steve Marks: I think there may be some concern. I, so the hope is that we’re producing more veterinarians, so eventually there’ll be more veterinary hospitals. But I will tell you that, so Clemson is, a little bit different in the fact that we’re a land grant institution. We’re not gonna send our students all over the country.
We’re really focusing on South Carolina. We may, we may cross a little bit into Georgia, a little bit into North Carolina, but really we would like our students to stay in South Carolina for these clerkships because eventually we want these students to stay in South Carolina when they enter the profession.
So some of the other universities that if they’re a private university and they don’t have state residents versus out-of-state residents, they are more likely to have clinical partners nationwide. They’re more likely than we will be.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, no, that, that, does make sense. I appreciate that. I, yeah, I appreciate the answer. Is there any sort of support that goes along with the students when they go and do clerkships? Let’s say that I have a little, I have a little vet practice, in South Carolina and I love to have a student, but I really don’t have a place for them to stay or things like that.
Or I’m thinking, is there, how do you feed ’em? Where do you keep ’em? Is, there support for that or is it, are they camping?
Steve Marks: These are all the questions that will keep a, dean awake at night. I will tell you, because we, so if you are, if you trained at a traditional veterinary school like you did, right? You all four years, you lived in Gainesville, right? You didn’t, you may have gone to a couple externships and been away from home for a couple weeks.
So we’re asking students in the senior year. To go to some other areas of the state. So right now we are in the process of raising funds for scholarships and travel stipends that will help. A lot of veterinarians are actually aware of this situation, so they may have an apartment over the practice or over their garage.
We plan on reaching out to Clemson alumni, who, as are very loyal. To see if there’s housing available in whatever region we’re, we’re deploying these students to I don’t think we’re gonna just send them out and say, go find a place to stay. There, there will be support. We’re certainly not gonna have them camping in the woods while they’re on clerkships.
At least you can remind me of this in a couple of years.
Dr. Andy Roark: Exactly. When there’s a bunch of tents outside, there’s a new tent city around the vet hospital and they’re all the students that, that, that are staying
Steve Marks: That that would not be our plan.
Dr. Andy Roark: Do you have any ideas about the interface for this distributed model and some of the larger corporate groups? And the reason I ask this is, I look at this and I look at this model and I say, we’ve got these students and they’re going to be consistently looking for learning opportunities.
And then you’ve got things like housing that are, Potential, logistical things we have to juggle. And again, I’m definitely not of the camp of, I’m an independent practice person and I’m terrified of the corporate groups. I don’t believe in that. And that’s, just, that’s not concerns that I have.
However, it’s not lost on me that if you happen to own a suite of veterinary hospitals, so you might have a large need for doctors. Do you think that you’re going to start to see some programs that are set up specifically around a distributed model? Just trying to think of what that would look like, if you’ve got 300 veterinary hospitals, do you launch a sort of training program or something like that? And so has that sort of been considered, what would be your thoughts in that regard?
Steve Marks: Yeah, so obviously in South Carolina we’re dealing with multiple corporate owned practices and the, and, not just the. The large ones that you’re familiar with, there’s some smaller ones that you don’t really know they’re corporate owned until you walk in the door and talk to ’em may, they may just have a cluster of four or five hospitals, not 300.
There may be a possibility that some corporations will align, with specific schools. I don’t think Clemson will be one of those. We are aligned with South Carolina. That this is, although this is the Clemson College of Medicine this is the College of Entering Medicine for the state of South Carolina.
One advantage that I don’t think people have necessarily thought about with corporate owned practices is if those corporate owned practices are aligned in how they practice medicine and the standard of care, then they may actually have a built in curriculum for when our students arrive. So that may actually be an advantage rather than a disadvantage.
But right now we are, we’re partnering with all comers, anybody that wants to work with Clemson, that provides a good educational opportunity for our students and for the most part are in South Carolina. That those are, that’s who we’re gonna work with.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah, I had the idea that when you think about the desire to be able to hire veterinarians today, and then you have veterinary students that go in and visit the practices, it reminds me of like when the college football national recruits go and visit the campuses of just people going in there as a student and just, and getting the red carpet rolled out, hey this would be a great place to be. Are there any rules around like gifts or stipends or accommodations? Yeah. Is there anything, like that as far as hey don’t treat the vet students too nicely? Anything.
Steve Marks: No, we, our primary goal, and really this is not just the College of Veterinary Medicine. This is Clemson’s strategic plan, Clemson Elevate, the number one pillar on that is to provide the number one student experience. And so the veterinary medi, or the veterinary medical profession is always been student centric and we are gonna focus on that.
So if, that practice provides a good educational experience. and as in, in your daily life, there’s some great days and there’s some not so great days, and they need to experience both.
Dr. Andy Roark: I think that’s, I think that’s hugely valuable. I think one of the challenges for a lot of veterinarians is that they imagine what the lifestyle of a veterinarian will be, and they decide they want that lifestyle, like the adoration, they like working with the pets.
They like those sorts of things, and. that lifestyle, you have to actually, I think, really love to actually do the work as well as the lifestyle. And so I, think I don’t know, I was just thinking about that recently of I think a lot of people pick a lifestyle and say, that’s the lifestyle I want to have.
And I, I think that’s probably a mistake if you don’t factor in what kind of actual work is going to be done here, because that’s what’s really going to make this happen.
Steve Marks: It is. No, I agree. It’s a I think being a veterinarian is incredibly rewarding. I would not change, I don’t think I’d change anything about my career. But my generation of veterinarians the majority of them went into veterinary medicine ’cause they read the James Harriet stories and they, if you and I still, those stories are still in print and they’re still on television.
And if you watch them and you read those books, there’s almost always happy endings. There’s not too many sad endings, and I think they need to see. A little bit of a reality check that some people will have bad days in bettering medicine. It’s tough and you have to make tough decisions.
Dr. Andy Roark: It’s unfortunately a big part of this job is choosing between a couple of not perfect options.
Steve Marks: I’m sure you see this when you, meet students, we still have a group of students that tell us they wanted to be a physician, but they hate people, so they’re gonna be a veterinarian. And we know that we spend a great deal of our time with people, and that veterinary medicine is really about people. It’s not just about animals.
Dr. Andy Roark: So, I’ll leave this. I know there’ll be some people who will listen. There’s always anyone, anytime I talk to, to vet student deans or to veterinary school deans. There’s always people who always wanna say, did you ask him for advice on how to get in? A year before you opened, do you have advice for people who are interested in going to vet school? What is your cocktail party piece of advice when someone says to you, my kid’s interested in vet school.
Steve Marks: So I tell ’em what I’m telling you, really, that emotionally, it’s an incredible career, but it is a, profession of passion. So we more than any other profession that I’ve been exposed to, people come up and tell you, I always wanted to be a veterinarian. And, if they really want to drill down and they say, what can my, what can my son, what can my daughter, what can my grandchild do? I really tell them about the people aspect and to do some things that are outside the box.
Every student that applies to veterinary school loves animals. they’ve taken care of animals, they’ve grown up with animals. We like to see some other things like, some leadership opportunities.
Have they volunteered in the community? Have they done a little bit more than just interacted with animals? Like you volunteer for Habitat for Humanity? Do some charity work. Help people in need. And really understand that you’re gonna be working more with people in veterinarian medicine than just animals.
And I, will say we, the profession has done a really good job in that we are approachable. Like people feel like they can just walk up to you. I don’t think somebody walks up to a dentist on the street and opens their mouth and says, have a look. But people come up to you and ask you about their animals all the time.
And I think that’s one of the best things about veterinary medicine. we are compassionate, we’re empathetic, and most of all we’re approachable.
Dr. Andy Roark: Yeah. Dr. Steve Marks, thanks so much for being here today. where can people find you online? Where can they follow what’s going on with Clemson?
Steve Marks: Yeah, we love that. You’ll follow us the Clemson Veterinary School has a has a website. We’re on Twitter. We’re on Instagram. I have a LinkedIn. And you’ll, find us you may need to look for. we are now a named college, which we’re very proud of, and that we are the, Harvey s Peeler Junior College of Energy Medicine. We’re named after Senator Peeler. So you can either, you can actually search for the Harvey s Peeler Junior College of Energy Medicine, or the Clemson College of Energy Medicine.
Dr. Andy Roark: Outstanding. we’ll put some links in the show notes for people to find. Thank you for being here guys. Thanks for tuning in. Everybody. Take care of yourselves, gang. I’ll talk to you later.
Steve Marks: Thanks so much. We always end every, talk. Go Tigers.
Dr. Andy Roark: Go Tigers.
And that’s what I got. Gang, thanks for being here. Thanks to Dr. Marks for being here. Go Tigers as he says. I hope you guys found this interesting. As always, if you like the episodes, if you get something out of them, I’d love for you to write me an honest review wherever you get your podcast.
It always means a lot to me and it helps people find the show. So anyway, that’s what I got today, gang. Be well, everybody. Take care of yourselves. I’ll talk to you later on. Bye.
