March 7, 2025
Veterinary student receives Schoneweis Scholarship and poster award at swine medicine meeting
Annika Senn, a first-year student in the College of Veterinary Medicine from Newton, was awarded the David A. Schoneweis Scholarship during the American Association of Swine Veterinarians, or AASV, Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California. She is the first first-year veterinary student to have ever been selected for this scholarship.
The children of the late David Schoneweis established this scholarship in his memory to benefit swine-interested students from Kansas State University and Oklahoma State University. The $1,000 scholarship is awarded to a student or students from K-State or OSU who participate in the student oral or poster presentations during the AASV annual meeting, based upon a selection rubric prepared with the oversight and approval of the Schoneweis family.
Senn presented her research, “Effect of antibiotic and stimbiotic interventions in the periparturient period on sow mortality,” during the AASV Student Poster Session. She was one of 26 students who presented a poster.
"This past summer, I participated in the Swine Veterinary Internship Program organized by Iowa State University," Senn said. "Through this program with Zoetis and Seaboard Foods, I completed a research project on sow mortality. After completing veterinary school and my Master of Public Health degree, I plan to either go into a mixed-animal clinic or into food animal medicine."
Senn was also among nine students selected for a $200 award in the AASV's Veterinary Student Poster Competition. United Animal Health sponsored the competition, offering awards totaling $4,000. Additionally, a grant from the Zoetis Foundation supports $500 awards for each student selected to participate in the poster session. Joel Spencer, United Animal Health, announced the following awards during the AASV Luncheon on March 3.
Schoneweis was born in Clay Center and earned his Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from Kansas State University in 1956. He served two years in the Army Veterinary Corps before teaching clinical sciences at Oklahoma State University for six years. After two years in private practice in Lawrence, he joined the K-State College of Veterinary Medicine faculty in 1966, where he also received his master’s degree in surgery and medicine in 1971 and taught food-animal medicine for 30 years.
Schoneweis was a charter member of the American Association of Swine Practitioners, or AASP, and served on the association’s board of directors in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1997, he received the AASP Meritorious Service Award for his lifetime of support for the association and in recognition of his work with students as a professor of food-animal medicine at K-State and OSU.