Tracy Hanner, D.V.M
“Animal sciences is a field with very low unemployment, and there are an extraordinary number of opportunities within the field,” Hanner said in 2019, upon returning to the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences to lead the Department of Animal Sciences as interim chair. “It’s not a very diverse profession, though. My passion is in getting diverse students into veterinary medicine.”
In honor of his years as a leader in the profession, the North Carolina Association of Minority Veterinarians, of which he is a founding member, in 2018 established a scholarship and placed it at the NC State University College of Veterinary Medicine. Hanner was the first Black graduate of the veterinary college, one of 40 members of the class of 1986.
A goal was set to endow the scholarship this year at $50,000. NC State’s veterinary college announced this summer that it would match up to $25,000 in public contributions, estimating that it might take donors a month to hit that goal. Instead, it took a week.
The Tracy Hanner Endowed Scholarship supports underrepresented doctor of veterinary medicine students in the NC State College of Veterinary Medicine, with preference given to students from underserved communities. NC State gave the scholarship for the first time this fall.
“I am honored to have a scholarship in my name,” Hanner said. “It’s something that will last way past my life on earth and is sorely needed to help offset the cost of veterinary college tuition and subsistence.”
“Dr. Tracy Hanner is a legend at our college,” Allen Cannedy, director of diversity and multicultural affairs at the college, told NC State’s College Veterinary News this summer. “He served for years on our DVM admissions committee and is responsible for helping hundreds of students from all backgrounds gain access into veterinary colleges everywhere. This scholarship will help sustain his legacy as one of our most influential alumni to support diversity and inclusion at our college of veterinary medicine.”
Growing up in Bear Creek, N.C. as the son of a tenant farmer, Hanner fed 38,000 chickens every day, taking their feed around in a wheelbarrow. He became interested in veterinary medicine after watching the vet that came to their farm to work with the animals.
“I would watch the vet work, and I was curious,” he says.
Hanner earned a biology degree from N.C. Central University in 1974 and went to work for the National Institutes for Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, N.C. as a research and animal technician. He came to N.C. A&T as a student in the early 1980s, taking classes to bolster his application to the newly established vet school at N.C. State.
In 1982, as a student, Hanner toured Webb Hall as it was being built and met Alfreda Webb, a professor and coordinator of the university’s new Laboratory Animal Science program. One of the first African American women to graduate from a school of veterinary medicine in the United States, the Tuskegee Institute (now University) School of Veterinary Medicine, Webb took an interest in Hanner’s career, recruiting him after graduation to be a part of the growing Animal Sciences program.
“She had followed me throughout vet school, and I didn’t know it,” Hanner says. “I didn’t know how important she was when we met, but she became a great mentor.”
Hanner would later return to N.C. State to serve on the College of Veterinary Medicine admissions committee, a post he held for 15 years.
During his tenure at A&T, Hanner was named both advisor and teacher of the year, served as chairman of the institutional animal care and use committee, was elected to Gamma Sigma Delta Honor Society of Agriculture and the N.C. A&T chapter of the Golden Key International Honor Society. He has also been an advisor to the Animal Science and Pre-Veterinary Medicine Club and the Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences. In 2005, he was named National Role Model of the Year by Minority Access Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to assisting higher education, corporations and the government in increasing diversity. In 2009, he received the Iverson Bell Award for Veterinary Medicine from the American Veterinary Medical Association.
“It was through Dr. Webb that I saw my calling in life flash before my eyes, both as a vet and as an advocate for other minority veterinary students,” Hanner said. “We are here to help others.”
Andrea Gentry-Apple, DVM, an assistant professor in the CAES’s animal sciences program, said that although the number of Black vets is increasing, in 2017, just 2.1 percent of vets nationwide are Black, even though Black people represent 12 percent of the work force.
A&T is working to bridge that gap. According to Apple, A&T may currently send the largest number of minority students to vet school of any HBCU, a direct result of the hard work put in by herself, Hanner and others to make sure students get exposure and opportunities to help them get ahead in the profession.
“Professional exposure is key for minority students to see veterinary medicine as a career option,” she said. “Dr. Hanner helped me, and I help others in turn, to see themselves in this career.”
This scholarship will show minority students that they are valued and supported in the profession, said Quincy Hawley, president of the NCAMV and a 2013 veterinary college graduate, in an interview with NC State’s Veterinary College News digital newsletter. Hanner was the first Black veterinarian that Hawley had ever met when he entered the animal sciences program at A&T in 2005.
“It was very empowering to see a veterinarian who looked like me,” said Hawley. “More important than his appearance was – and still is – his leadership as an instructor and mentor. He leads by example. He’s not just sitting back and talking about change. Rather, he has taken massive action to create change. The NCAMV is honored to create a scholarship in his name.”
