"Thai Homecoming"

Allison Lamb: We spent twenty five days in Thailand, we started out in Bangkok and then we met everybody for the program at the veterinary hospital at the Chang Mai university. Dr. Inpanbutr who is one of our anatomy professors that we have first year, she’s native Thailand, the area around Chang Mai and she set up this program for us to be able to go and see how the hospitals are run over there, the elephant hospitals, and also to see a little bit about the Chang Mai university and the vet students. So we had some classes that we attended at the veterinary hospital to learn about elephant nutrition and behavior, and then the last part of the trip we spent actually going out to the different elephant camps. The two that we visited actually had hospitals attached to them, where we got to observe the elephants being treated for the their medical conditions as well. In the southern part of Thailand there are still land mines, and we did observe two elephants that were learning to use prosthetic legs that had stepped on land mines. We did do temperature and pulse, just went over the elephant completely, to look at general health and body condition. We took them back out to the woods at night with their Mahoot which is their handler and observed where they slept for the night, and then in the morning we woke up bright and early to go out and fetch them from the woods. One day I got to help with a treatment to a leg, the elephant had a lot of swelling to one of her back legs and they make a mixture up of a native plant into a tea, like a solution, and kind of poultice the leg, and kind of give a massage to the leg with a towel.

Nongnuch Inpanbutr: I think it would be good for our students to see where I came from, so I took them to my mom’s house and she cooked them the Northern Thai dinner. One of the students is Thai, but he was born here. So he went out and picked flowers and they made a garland of flowers and presented that to my mom as a gesture of respect.

AL: Being able to go into someone’s house and observe their culture, and have them speak to you in the language, just you know their community gives us a perspective of how people live in Thailand. You can walk up and have food on just about every block of the street. We ate a lot of pad thai that was made right in front of us on the streets, and there’s always evening markets and just a lot of hustle and bustle.

NI: Diversity is something that our university celebrates, and takes seriously, and also something that I treasure and share with my students. So I think for students to come to a place like this, the opportunity for them to go abroad to learn different cultures, to meet people from a different culture and ethnicity is very rich, it enriched their life here.

AL: It’s great that Dr. Inpanbutr is part of the veterinary school because we were able to go on this trip and were given the opportunity to go and be able to observe how other veterinary schools teach their students. And also is it was just nice to be able to go and experience the culture as well.

As a faculty member in Ohio State's College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Nong Inpanbutr teaches anatomy and studies the role of vitamin D in cancer.

Inpanbutr also is a tireless advocate for expanding students' cultural horizons. The professor, a 2006 winner of the University Distinguished Diversity Enhancement Award, serves as adviser to the university's Thai Student Association and the Diversity in Veterinary Medicine group. She helps the Foreign Language Center conduct Thai proficiency tests.

And for the past several summers, Inpanbutr has taken veterinary students to Thailand to study elephant health and behavior. Inpanbutr, who earned her veterinary degree from Chularlongkorn University in Bangkok, worked with a friend who is now the veterinary dean at Chiang Mai University to develop the study abroad program for Ohio State veterinary students. (U.S. News and World Report ranks Ohio State as one of the top five places to study veterinary medicine.)

"Diversity is something that our university celebrates, and takes seriously, and also something that I treasure and share with my students," she says. "For students to come to a place like this, to go abroad to learn different cultures, to meet people from a different culture and ethnicity is very rich."

A highlight of the trip: a family dinner made by Inpanbutr's mom, who still lives in the village where the professor grew up.

"We went to my hometown and I shared my history with them," Inpanbutr says. "They were treated with my mom's special cooking: an authentic northern Thai dinner."

“Diversity is something that our university celebrates and takes seriously. ”
—Nong Inpanbutr, Ohio State professor of veterinary medicine

Students observed Maesa Elephant Camp, where visitors come to see domesticated elephants play soccer and make music and art. They also spent time working with local veterinarians--and experience that taught students about how veterinary care in Thailand differs from the U.S.

"They're very much into some homeopathic and holistic medicine there," says student Allison Lamb, who helped treat one injured elephant with massage and a tea made of native plants.

Students also were surprised to see severely injured and ill animals being treated instead of being euthanized.

It was hard for Lamb and her fellow students to see animals in pain, she says. But she thinks the experience will serve her--and her future patients--well.

"I think I have a better understanding now," she says. If a patient didn't want to euthanize a sick animal, "I could empathize more with them."

"You have to keep animals alive because of the Buddhist beliefs," Inpanbutr says, adding that the elephant, the national animal of Thailand, is especially valued. "You have to keep a sick elephant alive. It's very costly for medication and students found that very surprising, how the religion and the culture effect the practice of veterinary medicine."