Veterinary Work-Study Program Inspires High Schoolers to Pursue Veterinary Careers

Every Monday morning on school weeks, high school junior Brenda arrives at Mission Animal Hospital for a day of work and learning. She is one of four Cristo Rey students placed at Mission for the 2025–26 academic year. It’s the school’s first work-study opportunity in the veterinary field and one that is highly coveted by students.

Since 2022, MVMA has supported this unique partnership that introduces high school students to the veterinary profession in profound and life-changing ways. Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Minneapolis offers career-focused, college-preparatory education for students from families with limited economic resources, most of whom are racial minorities. The curriculum is academically rigorous and uses a work-study educational model. 

With financial support from MVMA, Mission Animal Hospital in Eden Prairie said yes to being a work-study site for Cristo Rey’s program nearly four years ago, and has been hosting four students each year since. It’s been such a positive experience for Mission that in the fall of 2026 they will be going into their fifth academic year!

MVMA is now eager to support an additional Twin Cities area veterinary practice in hosting one or more Cristo Rey students for an academic year, which could begin as soon as fall 2026. We’ll be offering an online information session on Tuesday, June 2 at noon. We encourage you to register, even if you’re just curious to learn more! 

Junior Brenda Is Thriving

The work-study program is structured so that each student spends one day a week at their work study site. Each class year is assigned a different weekday, and Mission has chosen to host one student from each grade: junior Brenda works Mondays, senior Ximena is in on Tuesdays, freshman Miguel on Wednesdays, and sophomore Mia on Thursdays. Other arrangements are possible though, including hosting just one student, or hosting two students in the same class year, for example.

Brenda arrives at school Monday mornings as usual, but instead of going to class, she boards a school shuttle that brings her to Mission Animal Hospital. When she arrives, she checks the schedule to see where she’ll be working, changes into scrubs, and joins the team member she’s been assigned to that day. HR Director Kellie Lager, who oversees the program, pairs the students with different veterinary assistants each day/week so they can all share in the experience of teaching and mentoring the students. 

The appointments side at Mission includes wellness checks, grooming, vaccines, and minor illnesses, etc. Brenda works alongside the assistant she’s assigned to, observing and learning as they take patient histories, and stepping in to restrain patients as appropriate or perform veterinary assistant tasks. Sometimes she also helps translate during conversations with Spanish-speaking clients. As a bilingual English/Spanish speaker, she’s learning veterinary terminology in English and figuring it out in Spanish as she goes. If Brenda goes into the veterinary field as she currently hopes to do, having bilingual vocabulary specific to the profession will be an enormous asset to her and future employers.

Working on the urgent care side is a bit less hands-on for students, as more experience is often needed to restrain patients safely, but she gets to do things like help set up supplies for surgery, which she finds interesting. Brenda and her fellow students also help out with tasks like laundry, cleaning, flushing syringes, and other easy and practical but necessary things, especially on days when the urgent care rush ends early.

When asked what she enjoys most, Brenda talked excitedly about working on her patient restraint skills, which is something she’s been allowed to learn and practice now that she is in her second year of work-study with Mission. It’s clear that she enjoys it not because it is a skill she’s fully mastered, but because it’s a skill that she is continuously working on and improving. 

She likes expanding her learning and getting to do more now that she’s in her second year (she started at Mission as a sophomore). The first year was a lot of learning and getting used to the environment, she said. “This year, I feel like I’m definitely more hands-on and I can do more than last year.” She says the internship has also helped her learn general professional skills. 

How has her experience at Mission shaped her thinking about future plans? Brenda said: “I really like our career program because I like getting experience in the real world, with real world jobs. I think working here really helps open up my horizons and think about what I want to do. I definitely want to pursue something in the animal field. And working here has really influenced that.” 

Staff Perspectives

Kellie Lager is the Human Resources Director for Mission Animal Hospital and handles the logistics of the work-study program, including scheduling students, mentoring them and guiding their training plan, and communicating with Cristo Rey. She says that Cristo Rey is a really great partner and very organized. The school handles anything insurance related, and rather than having students on payroll, work-study sites pay a flat fee that helps cover school tuition. This is where MVMA financial support comes in—as an initiative of our DEI Action Team, MVMA has allocated funds to share the cost of hosting Cristo Rey students with veterinary work-study sites. 

Now that the program is well established at Mission, and once the students have gotten situated in the fall, Kellie dedicates just a couple hours each week to the students. Mission has an in-house veterinary assistant training program led by the Veterinary Assistants’ Manager that they model the students’ training on. It’s a little different because the students are only in once a week, and there are some things Mission has decided they don’t want students to do, but it’s been relatively easy to adapt. Kellie said that overall the students have been a great supplement to staffing, especially when there are staffing shortages. 

On what it’s like to have the Cristo Rey students in the clinic, Kass Otteson said: “I love having them here. It’s a lot of fun to be able to give these guys an introduction to vet med as a possible career path.” She really enjoys answering their questions and sharing what she knows. Of course, the idea of having high school students in the clinic took staff a bit of time to get used to, but now it’s part of Mission’s culture in a very positive way. 

When we asked what they’d tell someone who was a little hesitant about having high school students working in their clinic, Kass said: “Treat them like you would a regular new employee. Keep in mind that there are some things they can’t do age-wise, but they are mature enough to be treated like employees. They are high school students, but they’re not kids.”

Last spring, Diego—the student who began his sophomore year with Mission in 2022 and continued as a junior and senior—graduated high school and was then hired on at Mission as a veterinary assistant, where he worked shifts over the summer. Diego is now finishing up his freshman year of college at the University of Minnesota and is planning to pursue veterinary school after completion of his undergrad. 

Whether the Cristo Rey students who work at Mission ultimately choose to go into the veterinary profession or not, the program has a profound impact on all who take part and is raising awareness of and interest in the veterinary profession, particularly in populations currently underrepresented in vet med. 

Is your practice interested in contributing to this effort? Please join us for an online info session on Tuesday, June 2 at 12 p.m. to learn more. Register here.

About Mission Animal Hospital 

Keeping pets and their people together is at the heart of everything Mission Animal Hospital does. As a nonprofit veterinary hospital, Mission provides high-quality care to families regardless of financial circumstances. They utilize a tiered pricing model providing financially fragile families with subsidized care, while an on-site social worker provides essential support to help clients navigate the emotional and financial complexities of pet ownership.This sustainable structure is made possible by generosity of individual donors. 

From its Eden Prairie location, Mission runs a bustling Urgent Care to meet a critical need for families across the state. In addition to urgent medical needs, the hospital provides scheduled wellness appointments and a full range of surgical services, including high-quality high-volume spay/neuter for local rescues and advanced procedures with a board-certified veterinary surgeon. 

MVMA is grateful to Mission Animal Hospital for their four-year partnership and for making a positive impact on the veterinary profession in Minnesota!