Jean Meade

Jean grew up on a dairy farm in rural Virginia where her love for animals and fascination with veterinary medicine began. She received her undergraduate degree in Biology from the College of William and Mary and then went on to obtain her Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine from the University of Georgia and her Ph.D. in Zoology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She conducted the field studies associated with her dissertation research in the Amboseli National Park, Kenya working on a primate parasitology project involving Masai tribesmen and two species of non-human primates, baboons and vervet monkeys. She spent the last year of her Ph.D. program working in the neurobiology and behavior lab at Cornell University.

Those years working with animal behaviorists and ecologists gave her an appreciation for conservation biology and sparked her interest in wildlife biology. In 1985, Jean bought her first practice in a small town in North Carolina, two years later she bought a second practice in Asheboro, NC. She became very involved in the communities where she lived and worked, and served on the Board of Directors for the Montgomery County Health Department, the Randolph County Humane Society and the American Raptor Propagation Project. She was awarded the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission, Gold Conservation Award of Merit for her volunteer work in wildlife rehabilitation. She also worked with church and scout groups educating children in the proper care and appreciation of animals.

In 1992, due to her parents’ failing health, Jean returned to Richmond, VA with the intention of starting a new practice there. As an interim position, she accepted a research faculty position at the Medical College of Virginia in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. Much to her surprise, she fell in love with research and teaching and continued there while doing some relief veterinary work to maintain her clinical skills.

In 1997, she was offered a position here in Morgantown in the new Health Effects Laboratory Division of NIOSH where she became the team leader of the Immunotoxicology research group. The group’s research focuses on the effects of chemical exposure on the immune system in the areas of allergy, autoimmunity and immune suppression. She became an adjunct faculty member in several departments where she continued to train graduate students. Once settled in Morgantown, she began looking for a mechanism to get back into clinical practice and engage in community outreach. She reopened Cheat Lake Animal Hospital in 2000, and along with her late husband, Al Munson, founded The Human Animal Bond, Inc.

Jean graduated from WVU med school, retired from NIOSH in 2015, and is now very active in the management and training at CLAH. She continues to be extremely active in program development at WVU and in the community with several ongoing projects.