Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 5/20/16

USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) today issued a notice providing instructions to agency personnel for administering a scholarship program seeking to recruit veterinarians amid an ongoing shortage of them at the federal level.

The Adel A. Malak Scholarship specifically seeks to recruit students enrolled in veterinary medicine to “critical” Public Health Veterinarian positions in FSIS’s Office of Field Operations, the agency said.

The scholarship program is structured as a 2-year pilot with the first group of scholars to be selected this summer. FSIS will reevaluate the pilot program in 2018.

FSIS has named this scholarship after Dr. Malak to honor his service in FSIS. Malak started his professional career with FSIS in 1985 as an in-plant PHV in Phoenix and moved up the ranks into managment positions. The agency said Malak was instrumental in recruiting and mentoring many students from the University of Fresno and the California Polytechnic State University.

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