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Faculty honored at Celebrating Distinction ceremony

Dean Jim Lloyd with Dr. Sarah Boston, one of 27 newly endowed professors honored during the UF Health Science Center’s fifth annual Celebrating Distinction ceremony.

Two University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine faculty members were honored during the UF Health Science Center’s annual “Celebrating Distinction” ceremony, held Oct. 26 on campus.

The event affords an opportunity to acknowledge faculty members who recently have been named to an endowed professorship or chair.

“Appointment to a professorship or chair is one of the highest honors a college can bestow on a faculty  member and is reserved for scholars of national and international acclaim,” states a description of the event listed in the ceremony program.

Honored from the college were Dr. Sarah Boston, the Jean Imparato Endowed Term Professor in Canine Oncology, and Dr. David Freeman, the Martha and Arthur Appleton Endowed Professor in Equine Studies.

Boston is a veterinary surgical oncologist and an associate professor of surgical oncology in the college’s department of small animal clinical sciences. She is past president of the Veterinary Society of Surgical Oncology and a recipient of the Withrow Award from the VSSO, which recognizes veterinary surgical oncologists for advancing the art and science of surgical oncology. Boston’s 2014 best-selling memoir, “Lucky Dog: How Being a Veterinarian Saved My Life,” chronicles her journey with thyroid cancer, as well as her work treating veterinary patients with cancer.

Her research interests include staging of cancers, soft tissue sarcoma, osteosarcoma and hemangiosarcoma. Boston received her D.V.M. degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1996 and completed a residency in small animal surgery and a doctor of veterinary science at the University of Guelph in 2003. She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in surgical oncology at Colorado State University in 2005.

Dean Jim Lloyd with Dr. David Freeman, one of 27 newly endowed professors honored during the UF Health Science Center’s fifth annual Celebrating Distinction Ceremony.

Freeman, a professor in the college’s department of large animal clinical sciences, is a board-certified equine surgeon. He also serves as director of the Island Whirl Colic Research Laboratory, which studies the equine gastrointestinal tract to better treat and prevent colic. Freeman’s own management strategies and methods for equine colic surgery have led to an increase in survival rates and a reduction of complications. As part of his three-year professorship, he will lead a progressive graduate training program, recruiting and advising students as they work toward their degrees.

In 2011, he was recognized by the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, for his outstanding contribution to the development of equine surgery worldwide. Freeman received his bachelor’s degree in veterinary medicine from the University College of Dublin’s Veterinary College of Ireland and his doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s department of comparative medical sciences.