After completing her internship in small animal medicine and surgery, Dr. Hirsch practiced general small animal and exotic animal medicine in Cape Cod, Massachusetts; Gaborone, Botswana; Queens, New York; Fort Worth, Benbrook, and Granbury, Texas; and finally Great Falls, Virginia where she concentrated on cats and dogs. Along the way she gained experience in shelter medicine (both during her internship with the MSPCA and in spay and neuter clinics with the Fort Worth SPCA), conservation education, zoo and wildlife medicine (including running a mobile clinical pathology lab in Botswana), relief practice, and long-term general care. In 2018 she began her move back to Ithaca and the CVM, working first as a tutor in Block 1 and then also Block 3a in 2019. In the spring of 2020, she took over as the lead instructor for the Small Animal Euthanasia distribution course. She accepted a full-time position with the Department of Biomedical Sciences as a lecturer in 2021. In 2022-23 she completed the Teaching Certification course offered by the Royal Veterinary College of London, UK.

Her goal in teaching is to meet individual students where they are and help them find and fill in the gaps in their knowledge; support good learning habits; get first year students off to the best possible start; and help all veterinary students understand that they don’t have to know “everything” to be a good veterinarian. Being a “good” (or great) veterinarian means being willing to track down the answers, taking the time to listen to and respond to client concerns, and providing the optimal care for each given patient and client.