OVC Professor Shane Bateman Recognized With U of G Teaching Award

In photo: Dr. Shane Bateman, Ontario Veterinary College, with student veterinarians.

Dr. Shane Bateman’s passion for teaching and learning is being recognized with the University of Guelph’s John Bell Award.  

Bateman, a professor in the Department of Clinical Studies at the Ontario Veterinary College (OVC), will receive the award during U of G’s summer convocation in June.  

The award recognizes Bateman’s outstanding contributions to education at OVC through curriculum development and assessment, pedagogical innovation, and scholarship of teaching and learning.  

It also recognizes his passion and commitment to extending learning and teaching beyond OVC to serve people and companion animals in underserved communities.  

Dedicated to social accountability and community outreach, Bateman’s work as faculty advisor for the student-run Community Outreach Club at OVC, focused on community-engaged service learning for student veterinarians. The group partnered with First Nations communities for nearly a decade to provide animal wellness clinics at Kettle and Stony Point First Nation in southwestern Ontario and nearby Walpole Island First Nation. In his role as regional veterinary director for Community Veterinary Outreach (CVO), he organized and facilitated veterinary outreach clinics in the Guelph, Kitchener-Waterloo and Hamilton regions for several years. 

“When few others were speaking about social justice issues in veterinary medicine, Shane envisioned a program that would recognize the universality of the human-animal bond and prepare our veterinary graduates to provide care for those most at risk and underserved,” says OVC Dean Jeff Wichtel. 

Bateman guided the initial development of the Kim and Stu Lang Community Healthcare Partnership Program (CHPP) as interim veterinary director. The program brings OVC faculty, veterinarians and clinical staff, students and partners together to expand animal healthcare for disadvantaged populations and, ultimately, help shape a more equitable future for veterinary education and care.  

Bateman led several successful clinics in underserved communities with the CHPP, providing telemedicine and in-person veterinary clinical care to patients during the COVID pandemic.  

The program partnerships provide care to animals in First Nations and other traditionally underserved communities and also ensures OVC students have the specific knowledge and skills to extend animal health care to these communities, says Bateman. 

He has also collaborated with a team of curricular experts and OVC faculty to create an innovative curriculum proposal designed to transform the experiences of student veterinarians and engage future professionals and partners in the core aims of the program: to identify, understand and remove the barriers that prevent equitable access to veterinary care. Curricular changes span all four years of the DVM program and introduce 48 new phase-level learning outcomes in intercultural competency, spectrum of care planning, animal welfare, and veterinary well-being and mental health. 

Bateman teaches in OVC’s Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) and graduate programs and is a clinician in the Emergency and Critical Care (ECC) Service in OVC’s Health Sciences Centre.  

In addition to his work with CVO, he has served as a member of the Board of the Guelph Humane Society. 

Established in 1988 in honour of Professor John M. Bell, a distinguished and innovative teacher of classics with a passion for improving student learning and the development of educational goals, the John Bell Award recognizes faculty members who have demonstrated outstanding educational leadership at the U of G.