In Memoriam—Dr. Edward A. Rhode
25 July 1926 – 10 November 2025
Dean emeritus and founding faculty member Professor Edward (Ed) A. Rhode, who served four decades on the school’s faculty, passed on Monday, November 10, 2025.
Dean Mark Stetter, reflecting on Rhode’s impact, described him as ‘a dedicated leader who helped shape the school into the world-class institution it is today. His commitment to advancing veterinary education and research, particularly with cardiology, large animal medicine, and disease management, left a lasting mark on our community and the profession.’
Growing up on a dairy farm in Mohawk Valley, NY, Rhode attended Union College for a year as a chemistry major, transferred to Cornell University after one year as a pre-vet student, and was admitted to the veterinary school in 1944, graduating at age 20, in 1947. With a strong interest in large animal practice, he worked for a year in northern Vermont before appointment as a large animal clinical instructor for three years at the Kansas State College veterinary school (now Kansas State University). Dr. JD (Don) Wheat, also a Cornell graduate who had been at Kansas State, encouraged Rhode to come to the new veterinary school at UC Davis in 1951.
Appointed as an Assistant Professor and Assistant Veterinarian in the Experiment Station in June 1951, Rhode started his academic career as a large animal ambulatory clinician in the Department of Medicine, Surgery, and Clinics, teaching clinical medicine to the inaugural DVM class who were starting their senior clinical year. A year later, he joined Wheat as one of two large animal in-house clinicians, both providing medical and surgical care for horses and livestock. As Wheat focused on developing surgical skills, Rhode developed a stronger interest in medicine and therapeutics, which were his primary teaching responsibilities.
With substantial responsibility for instruction in the foundations of clinical medicine, Rhode early recognized, and championed, the importance of teaching comparative medicine and especially the relationships between clinical signs and manifestations of disease, emphasizing pathophysiology rather than the traditional approach of only teaching individual diseases by species. Particularly adept at physical examination, auscultation, and percussion, in 1957 he began making electronic recordings to enhance learning, developing a library of normal and abnormal heart and lung sounds.
An early adopter of using television in instruction, Rhode served for many years on the campus committee guiding teaching applications of television. In 1960, he served on the American Association of Veterinary Clinicians (AAVC) committee on exchange of visual aids for teaching. While dean, he supported, within the school’s Office of Instruction, creation of the Computer Assisted Learning Facility, forerunner of the school’s IT unit, to develop multimedia aids and support computer aided instruction in the DVM curriculum.
Rhode also taught diseases of the cardiovascular system to 3rd year students and the diagnostic use of electrocardiography, catheterization, and angiography. Afternoons and Saturday mornings were spent in clinics instructing 4th year students in the practice of large animal medicine. Graduates of those early decades have fond memories of Rhode, with one arm hooked through a tie ring on the barn wall, engaging in case discussions with students. Nicknamed the ‘Rotor Ring’, a bronzed tie ring from the Haring Barn is displayed in the California Animal and Food Safety Laboratory System (CAHFS) Thurman building.
Additionally, Rhode supervised the clinic pharmacy and developed a medical records system for the large animal clinic. From 1964, he also had a courtesy appointment as Professor of Physiology in the Department of Animal Physiology, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences teaching a graduate course in comparative physiology of respiration and circulation. In 1972, Rhode developed a 4th year elective course in advanced cardiology embracing an early model of team teaching with Drs. Stephen Ettinger and Peter Suter.
A Charter Diplomate of the newly formed American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (1973) and the new specialty of Cardiology (1974), Rhode developed an early interest in cardiology providing anesthesia support and clinical care for horses and livestock species used in studies of comparative cardiac dynamics at UCD, during the 1957-59 summers, conducted by Dr. Joseph Holt (Professor of Heart Research, University of Louisville Medical School). Study leave in 1959 with Holt cemented Rhode’s research focus in comparative cardiac physiology leading to reports of cardiac pressure-volume relationships and cardiac output (initially using concentrated saline solution as an indicator) across many species, contributing to early reports of scaling of cardiac function. Subsequent study leaves at Howard University with Dr. E W Hawthorne, and again with Holt resulted in further advances in understanding cardiac dynamics in particular left ventricular function. Concurrent studies of vascular architecture across species of greatly differing size informed the influence of these relationships on hemodynamic phenomena common in mammals.
While maintaining an active clinical practice and assuming increasing administrative responsibility, Rhode continued these comparative studies, including in zoo animals and during diving in harbor seals. One of the earliest veterinarians to be funded by NIH, he later worked with faculty imaging colleague Dr. Bill Hornof using nuclear scintigraphy to assess left ventricular function in horses.
By 1966, Rhode’s research laboratory expanded to become a cardiopulmonary laboratory providing diagnostic testing (catheterization for congenital heart disease, electrocardiograms, phonocardiograms, angiography) for clinical patients and the eventual development of a specialty section in veterinary cardiology encompassing small and large animal patients. While serving as Associate Dean for Instruction, Rhode fostered the evolution of specialty clinical disciplines in the teaching hospital, with 10 including Cardiology initially being established; Rhode was the inaugural Chief of the Cardiology service (1974-76).
In the mid 1960’s, the school engaged in substantial strategic planning and administrative restructuring under Dean Bill Pritchard’s leadership. Rhode serving as Head, Division of Medicine within the Department of Medicine, Surgery, and Clinics was appointed as Chair of the new Department of Clinical Sciences in 1968 and for 1968-69 as Acting Director of the newly established Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. Co-chairing, with Dr. Ernie Biberstein, a study group on veterinary and professional education, Rhode was intimately involved in recommending changing from a departmentally-based to a centrally-managed DVM curriculum and led efforts resulting in a DVM curriculum with a core/elective track program that recognized the need for focused clinical training in the 4th year to prepare graduates for areas of practice emphasis designed to meet the expectations of California’s animal owners. This departure from traditional veterinary curricular structure has continued to define the UC Davis veterinary curriculum and has evolved through successive curricular reviews, producing DVM graduates with outstanding entry level clinical competence. Because of his demonstrated educational leadership, Rhode was appointed as Associate Dean for Instruction in 1971, overseeing curricular implementation and shaping veterinary education in North America until appointment as dean in 1982.
Throughout his career, Rhode had a pivotal role in facilities development for the school beginning with planning in 1962 for a Health Sciences district incorporating a planned School of Medicine to be co-located with veterinary medicine on the western edge of campus. Although this endeavor was not fully realized as envisaged, Rhode chaired the planning committee for the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital completed in 1970, the first standalone academic veterinary teaching hospital in North America.
Through his administrative roles he guided the planning of Veterinary Medicine 2 (VM2) and was chair of the San Joaquin Valley Veterinary Medical Facility Work group leading to the establishment of the Veterinary Medicine Teaching and Research Center (VMTRC) in Tulare. After retirement he was recalled to guide the school’s facilities master planning that ultimately resulted in Veterinary Medicine 3A and the Valley/MPT teaching facilities.
During his tenure as the school’s 5th dean, significant developments that underpin the school’s excellence today were achieved. Included among these were largely discontinuing the clinical internship program and expanding residency training programs; transforming the school’s fledgling development program, with recruitment in 1986 of Kelly Nimtz as the first Development Officer; increased philanthropic and parimutuel wagering funding for the Equine Research Laboratory (now the Center for Equine Health); establishing the Companion Animal Laboratory (now the Center for Companion Animal Health) and its Companion Animal Memorial Fund; re-establishing an Office of Public Programs to support continuing education, alumni and public relations, and liaison with organized veterinary medicine; and establishing a standing faculty Research Committee.
Planned consolidation of the state and county veterinary diagnostic laboratories begun under Dean Pritchard were eventually realized during Rhode’s tenure with a formal contract with the California Department of Food and Agriculture and establishment of the California Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (now CAHFS) under the directorship of Dr. Alex Ardans. Another major academic planning effort resulted in outreach programs to increase the diversity of DVM classes and the faculty, and implementation of further DVM curricular changes in 1990, lengthening the clinical training year and offering more flexibility in clinical rotation selection to meet individual student career directions. At the request of the California Horse Racing Board, master planning began for the school to assume responsibility for equine drug testing in California culminating in the Equine Analytical Chemistry Laboratory (now the Maddy Laboratory) under the auspices of CAHFS, and recruitment of an Equine Medical Director to serve as a liaison between the CHRB, the racing industry and the university.
Rhode served on numerous campus, system-wide, and national committees during his career and maintained strong relationships with the American Veterinary Medical Association, including 1991-97 service (Chair, 1996-97) on the Council on Education, and with the California Veterinary Medical Association, serving on its Board of Governors. Notable were long term service on the campus committee facilitating incorporation of television and multimedia aids into instruction; the planning and steering committees establishing a program in biomedical engineering; the UC wide Health Sciences Committee and committee planning expansion of veterinary medical education in California, and as a member of the National Advisory Council on Health Professions Education for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
He was a member of the governing and executive boards of the California Biomedical Research Foundation at a time of activism against the use of animals in biomedical research. In response to this activity, he served on the systemwide Animal Alternatives Task Force and the Liaison Committee for Alternatives to the Use of Animals in teaching and research. Rhode was successful in securing funding for establishment of the UC Center for Animal Alternatives within the school, a systemwide resource for the responsible use of animals and animal alternatives in biomedical research and teaching, led by Dr. Lynette Hart.
Rhode was a member and chair of the Commission on Veterinary Medicine of the National Association of State Universities & Land Grant Colleges (now the Association of Public and Land Grant Universities [APLU]) and on the long-range planning Committee of the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges, its Executive Committee, and serving as President (1988-89).
Of quiet demeanor, Rhode was an early adopter of changes in clinical practice and veterinary medical education, a deep thinker and strategist, who remained a stalwart champion of the school, consummately interested in its progress. Dean Emeritus Fred Murphy who succeeded Rhode as dean noted – ‘I inherited an office where everything was running quietly and smoothly as if it could go on forever. Ed chaired the committee to see about new facilities -- could anyone imagine the outcome...’ Perhaps some of Ed’s personal characteristics were poignantly captured by the late Dean Pritchard who wrote when Rhode was Associate Dean - ‘Rhode doesn’t say a great deal, but when he does you better listen because it will be very important. …. he has labored long and effectively to make this school one of the finest in the world.’
To learn more about Rhode’s life, please read his obituary published in the Davis Enterprise on November 21, 2025.