Amid a shortage of veterinarians across the country, Rowan's Shreiber School gives aspiring animal doctors a chance to stay in the Garden State.

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Aparna Zama, undergraduate program director at Rutgers University's Department of Animal Sciences, has been a pre-vet advisor for eight years. During that time, she has sent a lot of students aspiring to be veterinarians out of New Jersey.

"You multiply 25 through the years ... that's how many students we've been sending out," she said.

According to Rutgers, students from New Jersey have gone on to Cornell, The Ohio State University and the University of Pennsylvania, among others, to pursue a veterinary science degree.

With the opening of the Shreiber School for Veterinary Medicine at Rowan University this year, Zama said that trend is going to change.

"This is a very exciting development for our students, the parents and in general for the profession in New Jersey," she said. "We have been waiting for this for a long time."

Though classes for the incoming Class of 2029 began in September, Rowan and New Jersey officials formally celebrated Friday the completion of New Jersey's first veterinarian school with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a tour of the new facility that took 18 months to build.

Edward D. Wengryn, New Jersey's secretary of agriculture, said the opening of the school goes beyond retaining students in the state. It opens up a host of other opportunities.

"Not just practices like on the corner vet services, but the technicians, the research side of this to make those innovations in animal healthcare that we're looking for," he said.

Dr. Jennifer Quammen, president-elect of the American Veterinary Medical Association, said rural areas, like much of South Jersey, are hurting more amid a nationwide shortage of veterinarians.

"Whether that is large animal, meaning like cattle, horses; that is an area we need," she said. "But even rural medicine for small animals ... we need that as well."

Aspiring veterinarians from New Jersey would leave the state, sometimes taking a gap year to establish residency where their school is located so they can save money on tuition.

"Quite a few were having to take all kinds of routes to pay in-state tuition in the state that they were going to be going to vet school," Zama said.

Wengryn said that while they have great relationships with schools in neighboring states, they learned that the students "don't really come home to the Garden State."

"When you get there, you get settled, you start developing your practice there, you stay there," he said.

With Rowan's veterinary school established, the hope is that students who want to be veterinarians will stay in the state and reverse the drain of talent.

"This is the opportunity to have students that were born and raised in New Jersey, work in New Jersey, experience the opportunities that are here to develop their practices here," Wyngryn said.