Here in New Jersey, we have an unprecedented shortage of veterinary professionals right now.

It's very difficult, especially for folks with large animals that aren't horses, so goats and sheep and alpaca, to even find care for those animals.

New Jersey has no School of Veterinary Medicine, so every student that applies has to apply out of state.

You know, a student goes to Kansas and stays in Kansas.

So here, if we can keep these students in state, we can keep them here as veterinarians later, the expenses of this program are pretty high anywhere we do our best to keep those costs low, but certainly not an inexpensive thing to become a veterinarian, and that really dictates what these students can do after they graduate.

Some folks might want to be a horse vet or a Cal Vet, but if that pays half of what it pays to be a small animal veterinarian, they might change their career plans.

So if we can decrease their costs, we really change what they do when they come out of school, I'm honored to give the gifts because animals are my passion.

So I couldn't think of a better way to give something back to my passion.

And thus, the scholarship was my answer.

My mission in fundraising is always look for opportunities to help the students.

And I'm so delighted that, through the generosity of Jerry, the entirety of this gift would be assigned to give to students so that the education would be much more affordable.

Jerry Schreiber is a lifelong animal advocate.

He's done a lot of great work for a lot of different animal related efforts over the years.

This really is a capstone donation.

I mean the amount of effect that this is going to have on our students for so many years to come, I'm not sure I can even fully explain how absolutely important this is to us and how honored we are to have him give us this gift.

The reason I became involved with Rowan is because I believe in what they're doing and how it fits into my commitment to education.

I believe New Jersey needs better veterinary care, and if I can do my small part to help that, I will be happy to do so. One of the things that we're doing different is starting a clinical teaching hospital.

Most of the new programs don't have their on site hospital.

We thought it was important to make sure that most of the clinical rotations, at least the core rotations, are in house for us.

As far as research, we're really lucky at Rowan to have a lot of different departments that want to collaborate with us.

We worked on some projects with biomedical engineering already.

We have some projects ongoing with college of education.

We're considering getting them involved in our outreach programs.

We have an Early Admit program with the College of Science and Math.

We've made friends with a lot of folks around the whole tri state area at this point.

So we have a partnership with cedar run wildlife refuge for wildlife experiences Marine Mammal Stranding center in Brigantine, for folks that are interested in seals and dolphins, the zoo at Six Flags, the Wild Safari Park, a local dairy farm, horse farm.

So any experience a student wants to have, we can really cover that through these partnerships.

Given the opportunity to do this, to give access to something that didn't exist for me, I was really excited to take part in this project.

I am very hopeful and sure that there are teenagers in New Jersey that will have a chance to pursue their goals of veterinary school because of the gift.