LSU Vet Med hosts “ribbon-cutting” for the Stephenson Pet Clinic

And since this is a veterinary school, our “ribbon-cutting” is being conducted by a canine companion.

On Monday, May 9, at 4 p.m. the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine will host a “ribbon-cutting” ceremony for the new Stephenson Pet Clinic located adjacent to the LSU Vet Med building on Skip Bertman Drive in Baton Rouge. This 40,000-square-foot facility is the new home of our companion animal wellness efforts and many of our clinical services, including community practice (primary care), dermatology, integrative medicine, and ophthalmology. The actual “ribbon-cutting” will be done by Mac, a Belgian Malinois owned by Jeannie Hansbrough, an LSU Vet Med veterinary technician on our surgery service.

Oliver Garden, BVetMed, PhD, DACVIM DECVIM-CA, LSU Vet Med dean, will welcome special guests, including Governor John Bel Edwards, LSU President William Tate, PhD, and Emmet Stephenson. Dr. Garden will also recognize those donors whose generosity made this new building possible. 

Emmet and Toni Stephenson, for whom the new building is named, have been generous supporters of LSU for many years. In 2007, they pledged $25 million to LSU. That pledge created the Stephenson Disaster Management Institute at the E.J. Ourso College of Business, as well as aiding the college’s Department of Entrepreneurship and Information Systems and providing support for LSU Vet Med. This new building will be transformational for our LSU Vet Med programs.

This facility is being constructed thanks to a combination of state funds and $4 million in private funds from more than 300 individual donors, with the primary donors being Emmet and Toni Stephenson. Construction on the current Veterinary Medicine Building was completed in 1978. LSU Vet Med has greatly increased the number of people, labs, and services since then, and this new clinic allows us to grow and improve services to our patients.

“The generosity of Emmet and Toni Stephenson, and all the other donors who made this dream possible, will be memorialized in the rich legacy this wonderful facility will leave for generations to come," said Dean Garden. "The School of Veterinary Medicine is on a firm trajectory of growth in its missions of teaching, healing, discovering, and protecting – nobly serving Louisiana, the nation, and indeed the world. It is the honor of a lifetime to be at the helm of this outstanding veterinary school at this exciting time in our history.”

Emmet Stephenson is senior partner of Stephenson Ventures, a private equity firm. Stephenson graduated magna cum laude from LSU with a bachelor of science degree from the College of Business in 1967 and was ranked first in his graduating class. In his senior year, he served as student president of the LSU College of Business Administration. He also graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School and received the Ralph Thomas Sayles Fellowship in Investments. At LSU, he was inducted into the LSU Alumni Association Hall of Distinction in 2006; was inducted into the LSU Kappa Sigma Hall of Distinction in 2005; was a speaker in the Flores MBA Distinguished Speaker Series in 1999; and was inducted into the Ourso College of Business Hall of Distinction in 1998. Stephenson previously served as president of the Harvard Business School Alumni Association. He received the Albert Einstein Technology Medal in 1999.

Toni Stephenson, who passed away in 2020, was the founder and president of General Communications, Inc. She was publisher of Law Enforcement Product News and Public Safety Product News and was a founder and director of Charter Bank and Trust. She earned a bachelor of science degree from LSU in 1967, where she served on the Student Council, and completed the Harvard Business School Owner/President Management Program in 1990. She served as president of the Children’s Hospital Association of Volunteers, a director of the Children’s Hospital, a director of Anchor Center for Blind Children and a director of St. Joseph’s Hospital.

About LSU Vet Med: Bettering lives through education, public service, and discovery

The LSU School of Veterinary Medicine is one of only 33 veterinary schools in the U.S. and the only one in Louisiana. LSU Vet Med is dedicated to improving and protecting the lives of animals and people through superior education, transformational research, and compassionate care. We teach. We heal. We discover. We protect.