Will County center expands veterinary program for high school students

Romeoville — Will County teens interested in entering the veterinary medicine field will have an expanded opportunity to get hands-on experience while still in high school thanks to a new expansion at the Wilco Area Career Center in Romeoville.

The Wilco center is an educational facility that provides technical and career-oriented training classes for students in their junior and senior years.

The cooperative is shared by Lockport, Lemont, Bolingbrook, Reed-Custer, Romeoville and Wilmington high schools as well as the four Plainfield District 202 high schools.

One of the programs offered at Wilco is the two-year veterinary assistant course, which helps students learn the basics of veterinary care while earning dual credit at Joliet Junior College.

This program recently was expanded as part of a $1 million renovation at the Wilco Center, which created new lab space and kennels for students in the second year of the program to utilize in their studies.

“We expanded our facility, which almost doubled our capacity to 100 students,” said Margaret Janke, a certified veterinary technician who teaches the Wilco program.

The 1,300-square foot space includes a full radiology lab, new microscopes, a high-end pet scale, treatment tables, a grooming station, two cat kennels, two dog kennels, and a dog yard, which will all be used for day boarding.

While the old facility included some lab space and a kennel that houses a collection of 13 rescued small mammals, birds, and reptiles for the students to work with, Janke said the new space will allow for students to get more hands-on experience with more common house pets.

“Our old program has a very robust area to interact with animals and is unique in how many animals it has on site,” Janke said. “We teach them basic handling techniques and how to administer medicine, and it’s great for them to get exotic and small animal experience, but this will help them get practice with unfamiliar dogs and cats.”

The facility is equipped to handle light day boarding for dogs and cats, which the program will soon be making available to school faculty and students, before opening up appointments for members of the larger public.

The pets will help teach students about proper animal handling and restraining so they can become Fear Free Certified.

“Fear Free is a training program for animal handling, which reduces stress and keeps everyone safer,” Janke said. “Being certified will open up a lot of new opportunities for students.”

Boarded animals also will be able to receive basic grooming services like baths, nail trims and ear cleanings courtesy of the students.

Wilco also is working on setting up clinic days with the veterinarians at the Joliet SNIP Society to provide pets with vaccines and basic diagnostic tests on-site.

“We’re hoping to set up our first date in October and then have them once per month,” Janke said. “It’s a great way to provide free services to the community at no cost while letting our students interact with the animals and clients.”

Janke noted that after the SNIP Society visited the program last May, several students volunteered with the group over the summer, which is a big part of the program. Students are encouraged to volunteer with local shelters or veterinary offices, and in their fourth semester of the program they are matched with internships at local practices.

“We’re really looking to develop more sites for them to build their skills,” Janke said. “The lab is great, but there is no substitute for real life work experience.”

Janke noted that the expansion of the program comes at a good time, as the veterinary industry is short-staffed.

“There are quite a lot of vacancies in the field right now, even locally,” she said. “It’s hard to get competent, well-trained assistants. The Department of Labor estimates there will be a 20-percent growth in veterinary assistant and lab animal caretaker openings by 2032, and now these kids will be able to graduate high school with pertinent, high-quality skills to provide services for the pets in our homes that we all love.”

If students plan to become certified veterinary technicians or veterinarians, they also have a head start going into college. The course at Wilco earns students dual credit at Joliet Junior College. Completion of year one earns students an Agriculture elective credit, while year two earns them credit for the school’s Veterinary Medical Terminology class.

The new facility was officially opened with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house with officials from Romeoville and Joliet Junior College on Sept. 21, which Wilco’s Director Dr. Elizabeth Kaufman said was “very well attended.”

“I’ve been waiting for the better part of two years for this, and it’s finally come to fruition,” Janke said. “I’m very excited about it, and so are the kids.”