Through WIMU veterinary program, Montana State student follows lifelong dream

BOZEMAN - Townsend, Montana, is roughly 60 miles northwest of the Montana State University campus in Bozeman. For Lainee Colombik, that proximity to her hometown fulfilled her top priority when pursuing education in veterinary medicine.

Now in her fourth year of veterinary school through the WIMU Regional Program in Veterinary Medicine, Colombik lives further afield in Pullman, Washington, but once her studies culminate in May, she will return to Montana and launch a professional life she's been working toward for more than a decade.

Growing up in Townsend, Colombik was involved in 4H and FFA, but she wanted her college studies to blend her love of agriculture with her enduring interest in medicine. Colombik and her husband, Caden, who is from Miles City, both completed undergraduate degrees in animal science from the College of Agriculture's Department of Animal and Range Sciences in 2021 and progressed to veterinary school.

They are two members of the WIMU program's class of 2025, and both felt the pull to remain in Montana for as long as possible. Up to 16 students are admitted annually at the MSU campus for the WIMU program, making for a close-knit group that Colombik said has contributed greatly to their success and persistence.

"I felt like it was important for us to be in that small class size because it gave us one-on-one experience with all of our professors," Colombik said. "The amount of care that our professors had that first year and their desire to get to know us had such an impact on how seriously we took the program and how invested we were in our studies, because we knew other people were invested in us."

WIMU gets its acronym from the four states it serves: Washington, Idaho, Montana and Utah. Students complete their first year of veterinary coursework in their home states before coalescing into a larger cohort at Washington State University for their final three years.

"The WIMU Regional Program in Veterinary Medicine at Montana State University offers an exceptional veterinary education with a small class size, dedicated learning facilities and clinical training with an emphasis on community engagement," said Garrett Ryerson, one of the program's instructors at MSU. "As our program enters its 11th year, we are focused on continuing to prepare veterinary students to meet the changing needs of Montanans. We are pleased to report that most of our students choose to return to their home state after graduation, serving in a variety of capacities in communities large and small."

Colombik described the first year of studies as "learning what is normal," studying basic body systems, anatomy and physiology. Once students arrived in Pullman, they progressed to learning "what is abnormal," diagnosing diseases and disorders. In their third and fourth years, students move into clinical rotations and apply their knowledge in practices, learning different aspects of veterinary medicine in two-week phases.

It was that diversity of exposure that Colombik said will help her reach her goal of returning to Montana to start her career.

"When you come back to more rural areas, you have to go into mixed animal practice," she said. "We both grew up in rural communities and want to continue to be in rural communities, and so we have focused really hard during school to develop the skill set to be good mixed-animal practitioners, and that takes a lot of intentionality."

In addition to clinical and classroom training, the WIMU program includes a required preceptorship, in which students shadow staff in an operational clinic, rather than at the referral hospital on the WSU campus. It's there that Colombik said the non-medical skills are built: interacting with both animals and their humans, learning the business of running an independent veterinary clinic and getting a taste for what the day-to-day work is like after graduation. It also offered opportunities for mentorship and support from faculty and professional veterinarians in real-life situations.

Montana is one of many states with a documented shortage of veterinarians, particularly in rural and agricultural communities. Lainee and Caden Colombik hope to be two of the many MSU WIMU graduates who have returned to practice in Montana. It takes a special kind of person, Colombik said. The small class of students who began at MSU in their first year remain close, and she called that community a great benefit over the ensuing years.

"A lot of the advice I give kids who are thinking about applying to vet school is that you need to find a group of people that understand what you're going through, because vet school is really hard and not a lot of people outside of that community understand," she said. "If you have a really close-knit group, you can struggle together and study together and enjoy vet school together. It was really nice to come to Pullman and already have made those friends."