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You might say Kaylie Rowe’s spark for animal care ignited when the town’s “crazy cat lady” walked into her mother’s workplace when Rowe was a child. “I have kittens that need homes!” she declared.

One of those kittens, a black domestic shorthair named Panther Lynn, spent much of the next 15 years curled up with Rowe at home in Florida. Though her pet still resides in the United States with her family, Rowe is temporarily living on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, continuing her dream to tend to other pets for a career.

Enrolled in the doctorate program for Veterinary Medicine at the Royal Veterinary College in London, one of the top-ranked veterinary schools in the world, Rowe is slated to obtain her doctorate degree in 2027.

While an undergraduate student majoring in biology, Rowe took advantage of Alvernia’s Pre-Veterinary program, one of six pre-professional programs offered by the university. Advisors provide oversight and guidance for students interested in continuing their education in such fields as law, optometry and healthcare.

“My academic advisor, Jamie Becker, was a great help to me,” Rowe said. “He was always there to talk and was always ready to listen. I was able to gain invaluable academic and professional advice and was even able to receive strong letters of recommendation for my graduate school applications. I felt great support from the entire STEAM (College of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) department, and I attribute a lot of my success to Dr. Becker’s help.”

When Rowe decided to enroll at Alvernia to pursue a veterinary career, it was the university’s small class size and easy-to-navigate campus that drew her in, but it was the connections she made, and the experiences afforded to her, that she grew to value most.

Much of Rowe’s service came in working with Reading’s Humane PA, helping at vaccine clinics for low-income individuals.

“Being a part of those clinics gave me invaluable experience about raw exposure to direct interaction with the local community,” she said.

She completed her prerequisites at Alvernia and put in more than 500 hours of community service, earning her Holleran Center Engagement and Sister Alodia awards.

A strong believer that animals unify people, Rowe says what she valued most was how the outreach service brought the community together.

“Veterinary medicine is about more than the animals,” she said. “It’s about the people, too, and how (the animals) make us feel.”