Penn Vet names 2026 SAVMA Student Teaching Award honorees

Penn Vet recognized a broad slate of student-selected teaching and clinical mentors at its 2026 SAVMA Student Teaching Awards, held April 10 and announced April 14. Susan Bender received the Zoetis Distinguished Veterinary Teacher Award, while Jessie Cathcart was honored with the William B. Boucher Award for Outstanding Teaching at New Bolton Center. The student body also recognized faculty, residents, interns, nurses, and classmates across Ryan Hospital and New Bolton Center, with awards spanning lecture teaching, laboratory instruction, clinical instruction, patient care, wellness programming, and community engagement. (vet.upenn.edu)

Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, these awards are a useful signal of where students see teaching excellence in real time, especially in clinical settings where mentorship, communication, and case-based instruction shape readiness for practice. Penn Vet’s 2026 list also highlights how teaching is distributed across the academic enterprise, not just among classroom faculty, but among hospital staff, house officers, and ambulatory and specialty clinicians at both companion-animal and large-animal campuses. That breadth matters in a profession still focused on training, retention, and student support. Penn Vet’s follow-on teaching honors for Kimberly Agnello and Elizabeth Woodward suggest these student-selected awards can align with broader institutional recognition of educational impact. (vet.upenn.edu)

What to watch: Watch whether Penn Vet’s 2026 student-selected honorees, especially those in early-curriculum and clinical teaching roles, continue to surface in schoolwide or national veterinary education awards over the next year. (vet.upenn.edu)