Veterinary college 2023 'Tracks' calendars ready for delivery, available for a donation

A different kind of “Tracks” will be showing up in veterinary college supporters’ mailboxes this holiday season.

Instead of offering a winter edition of its biannual “Tracks” magazine, the Office of Advancement at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine has developed a 2023 calendar containing photographs and short vignettes illustrating college programs, animal care, and donor support.

“It’s not meant to replace ‘Tracks,’” said Sandy Torget, assistant dean of advancement at the veterinary college. “It’s meant to offer another way to show supporters of the college how we do what we do through the support of donors. … It’s a fun way to see what’s happening across the college in a one-year time period.”

The ‘Tracks’ calendars are being mailed to those who have donated to the veterinary college over the last three years and others interested in supporting the college. They are also being distributed among faculty, staff, and students at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital in Blacksburg, the Animal Cancer Care and Research Center in Roanoke, and the Marion duPont Scott Equine Medical Center in Leesburg.

Calendars are also available for a suggested donation via a link on the veterinary college website.

“We are so glad to focus on thanking all our supporters, from alumni to clients to friends, with our first ‘Tracks’ calendar,” said Maggie Meikle, associate director for development with the Office of Advancement in the veterinary college. “All the success and growth of the college is only possible because of the members of our community donating their time, talents, and treasure. Our goal with this calendar was to highlight all different levels and types of philanthropic support, because all gifts truly make a difference.”

The calendars were designed by Australia-based Content Box, with guidance throughout the process from the veterinary college’s Advancement and Communications team, and printed by Bison Printing of Bedford, Virginia.

“With the ‘Tracks’ calendar, we hope that it helps keep our regular ‘Tracks’ magazine readers connected with the college year-round,” said Andrew Mann, director of communications and marketing for the veterinary college and the photographer of most images in the calendar. “We’ve strived to make it useful with space to write notes and added key events at the college throughout the year such as Open House and Commencement.”

“It features great photographs of all the wonderful things that are happening here at the college so that they have it open for a month, and really come to appreciate the diverse care that is being offered to animals of all types here, and the really cutting-edge treatments that are available because we have support from friends and animal lovers,” Torget said.

Torget said the veterinary college’s Advancement team would follow up on delivery of the calendars with a survey to determine if the college’s supporters would like to see more calendars in the future or if they would prefer a return to having summer and winter magazine editions, or, possibly, having both magazine editions and a calendar.

Written by Kevin Myatt, writer/editor with the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine