Bryan Slinker retired in 2020 as Professor and Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Washington State University (WSU). He received his DVM and PhD degrees from WSU in 1980 and 1982 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Cardiovascular Research Institute of the University of California, San Francisco from 1982 – 1986. He then was Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of Vermont College of Medicine from 1986 – 1992 before returning to WSU in 1992 as an Associate Professor. He chaired the Department of Veterinary and Comparative Anatomy, Pharmacology, and Physiology (VCAPP; now Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience) from 1998 – 2008. He then served as Dean from 2008 – 2019, when he was tapped as Interim Provost until he retired.
He taught biomedical statistics, bioethics, and responsible conduct of research to graduate students; and ethics, professionalism, developmental anatomy, heart and circulatory physiology, and cardiovascular, blood, respiratory and renal pharmacology to veterinary students. His research focused on heart and cardiac muscle function and adaptation. He also co-authored a statistics text, Primer of Applied Regression and Analysis of Variance (now in 3rd ed.). He is a Fellow of the Cardiovascular Section of the American Physiological Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Among his initiatives as dean were developing collaborations with the Seattle Humane Society in Bellevue and the Idaho Humane Society in Boise to support WSU veterinary student education. Since 2014 he has served as a site visitor for the AVMA’s Council on Education, which oversees veterinary school accreditation. He was a Director of the Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle from 2009 – 2021, serving on the Animal Care the Education and Conservation, and the Governance Committees, as well as on the Seattle ad hoc taskforce that made recommendations for the elephant program at the zoo. He is currently also a Director of the Washington State Animal Health Foundation.
