Heise named Distinguished Alumna
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Sybil Heise, DVM, of Guymon, Oklahoma, has been named a 2015 Distinguished Alumna by Oklahoma State University Center for Veterinary Health Sciences.
Her veterinary medicine career will be celebrated at a luncheon on Nov. 20, 2015, in Wes Watkins Center on the OSU-Stillwater campus. The public is invited and tickets can be purchased for $35.
Heise earned her DVM degree from OSU in 1971. She then completed a small animal medicine and surgery internship at the University of California-Davis. She married Don Heise, DVM in 1972. From 1972 to 1979, she worked at Liberal Animal Hospital in Liberal, Kansas.
In 1979, she and her husband built Town and Country Veterinary Clinic in Guymon. Sybil handled the small animal medicine and surgery while Don handled the livestock cases. The mixed animal veterinary practice achieved AAHA certification in the 1980s.
Heise has been a member of the Oklahoma Veterinary Medical Association, the American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Animal Hospital Association often serving on executive boards and committees. She also volunteers in the Victory Memorial United Methodist Church and the Guymon community.
Heise has promoted veterinary medicine in Guymon public school programs K-12 and has mentored many students over the years who have gone on to become veterinarians. In 2012, she received the Companion Animal Practitioner Award from the Oklahoma Veterinary Medical Association.
“I appreciate not only the opportunity that OSU gave this Louisiana girl to become a veterinarian, but also the timely support I have received from OSU’s Center for Veterinary Health Sciences over the years,” Heise said. “I agree with a remark Dr. Ron Green once made, 'We call it the practice of veterinary medicine because if we practice long and hard enough, we just might get it right someday’.”
Also being honored in November are alumni Drs. Demarious Keller Frey of Corpus Christi, Texas, and Merlin Ekstrom of Farmington Hills, Michigan.