Major Amie Pflaum, a Tillman Scholar and full-time student in the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine, has led a path of service as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army’s Aviation Branch and currently the North Carolina Army National Guard. She has always had a love for animals and an interest in science and medicine, and those interests culminated in a career change during her service in the United States Army.
Pflaum grew up with horses, dogs and cats, but her focus had been on becoming a human orthopedic surgeon. She had positive mentorship throughout high school from an Army surgeon in reserves who actually performed some surgeries on her, according to Pflaum.
Pflaum went to school thinking she was going to be a doctor in the military, but she was so impressed by the ROTC program at Wake Forest that she wanted to immediately go into active duty instead of waiting four more years.
“So at that point, I switched my major from biology to political science,” Pflaum said. “Even though I’m interested in medicine and science, I’ve always been really fascinated with the world and how complicated it is. I really have a major in political science, a minor in history and a minor in international relations but I had an international politics flavor to my major.”
As a student at Wake Forest, Pflaum studied abroad in Vienna, Austria for a semester and also spent two weeks in Ben Tre, Vietnam for a volunteer service project building a “jungle school.”
“That was one of the most amazing, life-changing experiences of my life,” Pflaum said. “That was the first time I’ve been to a developing nation before and realized here you have an amazing group of people that don’t have a lot, but they were the happiest people I had ever seen. It changed my whole perspective on life and family and materialistic things that for us seem so important but to them, they didn’t have it and they were very content, very happy, awesome amazing people — wonderful experience.”
Pflaum then had thoughts about what she wanted to do in the military and knew she was invested in serving and contributing as much as she could. At that point in time, women could not do what they can today in the military according to Pflaum.
“Arguably one of the most frontline exposed jobs I could have had were I could’ve been a military police officer or I could’ve flown, so I opted to fly,” Pflaum said. “I went and said I want to be an aviator, I did that, but I always knew that at some point I was going to transition to go back to school, but the shift between human medicine and veterinary medicine happened when I was in the military.”
Pflaum was stationed in Honduras for a year in a deployment that supported humanitarian efforts. She helped deliver the medical assets, veterinary assets and engineering assets used to support and stabilize the region. The team had partnerships with nongovernmental organizations and other local state agencies to help their mission.
“We would enter a community and we’d stay for a week, plus or minus, and then sometimes we returned to that same community months, weeks later,” Pflaum said. “To see the positive changes and what that work can do and how it improves communities for the better was really powerful, and that’s when I said ‘hey, this is my next step.’”
The shift between human medicine and veterinary medicine took a while, and there were a couple of different experiences that made Pflaum realize that it’s not just taking care of dogs, cats and horses and that veterinary medicine can make great contributions on a collective level.
“They could improve the well-being of an entire community through a lot of public health service projects, and if you can create a healthy food source, then you can feed the future,” Pflaum said. “It’s really important to me and so much of the developing world — they’re in need and to be able to help on that level, that’s something that I was really struck by. I felt like I reached a point in my aviation career that I did my bucket list, I had done everything that I wanted to do, I was so blessed and fortunate, and I said ‘you know, I’m at this perfect point, it’s time to make the transition.’”
Pflaum made a strategy to transition from active duty to the North Carolina Army National Guard and line up the prerequisites needed for joining a vet school. According to Pflaum, she knew she wanted to come here and made the move from her station in Wisconsin to attend NC State’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).
Pflaum planned a transition from active duty to the National Guard so she could return to school full-time in order to become a veterinarian. According to Pflaum, she was a student in CALS for two years.
“I loved it,” Pflaum said. “It was such an awesome experience. I’m very, very fortunate that I attended Wake Forest. It was the school I needed to go to when I was 18 to 22 years old — small school, nurturing environment, my professors knew my name but they didn’t have the same resources that this school has. I’ve had classes where we go out and castrate pigs and learn how to drive tractor trailers. We’re taking care of horses and sheep, and I got to work at NC State’s small ruminant education unit as a student volunteer — such incredible opportunities.”
Once the prerequisites were completed, Pflaum applied to NC State’s vet school in September 2015 and matriculated into NC State’s vet school program in August 2016.
Military-affiliated students can face unique challenges when returning to school, in addition to the challenges of returning to civilian life, and support from members of the community and from the university can help. This is the first semester that there is a dedicated meeting area for veterans.
“I am very excited that this is the first semester that veterans now have a space on campus,” Pflaum said. “It has been a long fight and I am thankful for those that have put blood, sweat and tears into making that possible. I think that the veteran community on campus needs that, and we’re a very distinct group of people, and that transition from the military to academia is hard. It is a challenge and I know when I first came here off of active duty, I struggled. It was so hard. I think transitioning from military life to civilian life is one thing, but to transition from military life to being a student is hard and I’m fortunate that I went to college before, but imagine if you hadn’t.”
The Student Veterans Association (SVA) at NC State aims to help support the student veteran community and provides resources and group activities.
“I wouldn’t have been able to be so resilient and keep chugging if it wasn’t for the Student Veterans Association and the connections I made there,” Pflaum said. “My very best friends at this school are veterans and it’s great to have an organization with people that have had the same life experiences. I’m thankful for the group, I’m thankful for the support and I’m thankful that the university is now providing a space where we can go and we can hang out and continue to bond and provide that peer support, peer counsel and deal with the issues that we have. Not me, but many of us have families to support, homes and mortgages and issues that we need to deal with.”
The Pat Tillman Foundation (PTF) also supports military veterans and their spouses on a national level with academic scholarships, and Tillman Scholars like Pflaum are chosen according to academic and leadership potential and a commitment to creating positive change through work in medicine, law, business, education and the arts. The foundation was created after the death of former NFL player Pat Tillman who joined the military in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
“Like many of the Tillman Scholars, Amie volunteered to serve in the military after the events of Sept. 11,” said Elizabeth O’Herrin, the PTF programs director and 2010 Tillman Scholar. “Her experience providing humanitarian assistance and medical care in Central America and the Caribbean as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot inspired the unique career path of becoming a public health veterinarian. Her clearly articulated goal of addressing human and animal health and well-being through her doctor of veterinary medicine degree as well as her passion, humility and dedication to her community helped her application stand out among thousands of applicants.”
The ways in which PTF supports its scholars includes covering various university expenses and providing enriching experiences and connections.
“As part of the Tillman Scholars Program, scholarship recipients benefit from a network of service oriented, like-minded Tillman Scholars who have the shared experience of military service and are all keenly focused on the future and impacting their local communities for the better,” O’Herrin said. “The PTF strives to provide high quality professional and networking opportunities to both current and alumni Scholars which include participation in a regional and national network of Tillman Scholars, access to conferences, workshops and panel discussions, attendance at film and documentary screenings, media interviews related to subject matter expertise, and assistance editing and placing opinion pieces.”
In addition to the services the PTF provides, Scholars are encouraged to collaborate on service initiatives and, since 2011, have contributed more than 50,000 hours of community service while enrolled in their degree programs, according to O’Herrin.
“Not only have they given me the ability to go to school and not worry about it financially, the community of Scholars — I mean talk about the most incredible, awe-inspiring people you have ever met in your entire life,” Pflaum said.
PTF has a leadership summit in Chicago where Scholars meet and mingle with each other. The Scholars come from a wide range of professions but are all tied by a commitment to serving their communities and country on a global scale, and at the summit they can work together to think about how to tackle big problems, according to Pflaum.
All of these experiences and paths of service have led Pflaum here, and after school she hopes to re-enter the military in active duty in the U.S. Army Veterinary Corps.
“I’m so moved by what they do,” Pflaum said. “Also I’m very appreciative of the opportunities that NC State has afforded me, because I definitely think the experiences I had here in my informal post-baccalaureate program definitely best prepared me for school because I got to experience so many incredible hands-on things that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do elsewhere.”
A version of this article originally appeared in print on October, 3, 2016, on pages 9 and 10 with the headline: Veteran turns to veterinary medicine
