Nick Ballenger earned his bachelor’s degree in biology and will begin studying at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine this fall. (Photo by Derik Holtmann)
Nick Ballenger had settled on his chosen career long before arriving at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.
“I always knew I wanted to do something with animals or nature or both,” said Ballenger, whose passion was stoked during regular visits to the Saint Louis Zoo with his family growing up.
The recent biology graduate also attended camps at the zoo each summer and later became a volunteer there during his teenage years.
His love of animals was just as evident at home, where he kept every manner of pet – dog, fish, hamsters, birds, a tortoise.
“I wanted a snake,” Ballenger said, “but my dad was afraid of snakes, so I never was able to get one.”
Still, it surprised no one when, during his time as a student at Lutheran North High School, Ballenger set his sights on one day studying veterinary medicine.
“I was pretty good at my science classes,” Ballenger said. “I liked taking biology courses and learning anatomy, but I also knew I would never be like a medical doctor, like a human medical doctor. Combining those passions together – biology, physiology and animals – it just led me down that path. I think veterinary medicine seemed right for me.”
With the experiences he’s had at UMSL over the past four years, Ballenger is finally poised to live out that dream beginning this fall at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine.
A perfect fit
Ballenger began his college search with his ultimate destination in mind. He set out to find a school that offered a strong biology department and provided opportunities to strengthen his academic resume by adding research experience, while also remaining affordable.
“No matter how you slice it, if you go to professional school, it’s going to be expensive,” Ballenger said. “I didn’t want to be strapped with debt before going and getting more debt.”
His mother, an UMSL graduate, suggested Ballenger look at her alma mater and apply to the Opportunity Scholars Program through the Pierre Laclede Honors College. The program provides all-inclusive four-year scholarships to academically gifted students from across the St. Louis region to help them reach their academic and career goals. It is meant to support first-generation college students or students who face challenges accessing a university education.
Ballenger interviewed for the scholarship in the spring of 2022 and was elated when he learned he was chosen as one of five recipients that year.
“It was this feeling like this isn’t real,” Ballenger said. “I was excited and relieved, because it’d been a little stressful senior year of high school just trying to figure out where you’re going to go to college. I wanted to go somewhere where they invested in me.”
UMSL provided Ballenger everything he needed to reach his long-range goal.
The university was big enough to offer the variety of courses he needed and wanted but not so big that he ever felt lost or like just a number in a class of hundreds. He formed personal relationships with many of his professors, so they knew who he was, saw that he was engaged in class sessions and were available to help when he needed it.
Ballenger’s academic experience was further enhanced by the Honors College.
“I think it’s a pretty central part of UMSL,” Ballenger said. “You really get to interact with the professors and the students. It’s just like a very strong community that we have there. It’s like everybody kind of knows each other. It’s a good place for people of different backgrounds, people of different interests, to kind of come together, especially in those discussion-based classes, because there’s people that are interested in majoring in all different things, and it’s interesting to see everybody’s different perspective on the topic when we discuss in class. I feel like the main thing it dealt me is being a more well-rounded student.”
Beyond the classroom
Ballenger met doctoral candidate Becky Hansis-O’Neill when enrolled in the one-hour Introduction to the Biology Major course she taught his freshman year. She wound up helping facilitate his initial involvement in undergraduate research in Professor Aimee Dunlap’s Cognitive Ecology Lab during his sophomore year.
“I worked with the Dunlap Lab over a couple semesters,” Ballenger said. “First, I started off with the bee colonies that they have. We were doing a lot of behavioral training and things like that with bees, as far as their foraging habits and things like that.”
He later got to join Hansis-O’Neill in the field, conducting surveys of brown tarantulas in glades around Missouri as part of her ongoing research.
“I always love when students like Nick start early on research because they have a chance to get involved in different parts of our lab,” Dunlap said.
Ballenger also spent some time in Assistant Professor Sara Miller’s lab, doing work with paper wasps. Last summer, he helped document facial patterns in the wasps as well as nesting patterns as they worked to gauge the impact of the May 16 tornado on local wasp nests.
He believes those experiences helped expand his knowledge and understanding while also strengthening his qualifications for vet school.
“I think it really helped me to stand out,” Ballenger said. “A lot of professional schools specifically, like med school, vet school, they do look for research.”
It also reinforced what he wanted to do in the future.
“It showed me what I could do if I wasn’t to be a vet,” Ballenger said. “But while I was great doing that, I still wanted to do more practitioner type of things.”
Learning on the job
Ballenger has found some opportunities to learn from practitioners over the past four years, as well. He started out shadowing veterinarians at the Howdershell Animal Clinic near his home in north St. Louis County.
In the summer between his sophomore and junior year, Ballenger landed a part-time job as an assistant at Veterinary Emergency Group’s 24-hour animal hospital in Brentwood. He started out working two 10-hour shifts per week and has increased it to two 12-hour shifts in the past year. He’s worked mostly on weekends so that it wouldn’t interfere with his studies.
“They’re so good there as far as training,” he said. “When I first started working there, I didn’t have as much hands-on experience. I was just like shadowing at that point. But through their training and just getting exposure, I’ve been able to do a lot more. So, I’m more confident going to vet school because I already know I’ve done a bunch of blood draws, placing IV catheters, understanding treatment plans, doing all those diagnostics and things like that – understanding what that work is like.”
A lot of those hands-on activities fall to nurses, not vets, in the clinical setting, but Ballenger believes the perspective he has gained can only help strengthen his relationships with the people around him once he completes his professional degree and moves into practice.
Full circle
Working at VEG also led Ballenger to adopt his own dog, Onyx, a 2-year-old pitbull-German shepherd mix.
Onyx was a stray when he showed up at the hospital with a broken leg about a year and a half ago, and Ballenger wound up bringing him home and helping nurse him back to health. The two have been inseparable since.
Ballenger was taking Onyx for a walk in Forest Park during a break between classes one afternoon in late February. He’d already received an acceptance from the vet school at the University of Illinois but had been awaiting a decision from Mizzou before making his final choice.
They were near the zoo when Ballenger got the news he’d be hoping for that he’d been accepted.
“I just felt that it was a sign, knowing that I grew up in Forest Park, grew up going to the zoo, and that’s where I kind of wanted to get into veterinary medicine,” he said. “Getting that notification with my dog by the zoo, it just felt really like full circle and that I was meant to go there.”
He’s eager to get started in August.
Ballenger is continuing to work at VEG this summer and has also been looking to spend some time shadowing with an equine veterinarian to improve his knowledge of large animals before he moves to Columbia to formally begin his studies.
The people who helped mentor Ballenger at UMSL have been excited to witness his success.
“It’s been a pleasure to see Nick grow from a new biology major into a fully-fledged veterinary student,” Hansis-O’Neill said. “As a teacher and mentor, it makes the job worth it to support students like Nick in achieving their educational and professional goals.”
