Rachel Toaff-Rosenstein, 26, a fourth-year student at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine, was presented with a Penn Vet Student Inspiration Award on Tuesday during ceremonies in Philadelphia.

She and another student - Warren Waybright, of Gettysburg, Pa. - were picked from among 21 applicants, said Alan M. Kelly, the school's dean emeritus, who chaired the selection panel.

"She's a bright young lady," Kelly said. "She has a clear vision of where she wants to go. She wants to get into animal welfare, an increasingly important area."

The two student awards were given after presentation of the Penn Vet World Award to Bernard Vallat, director general of the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris.

The three were the first recipients of the awards, which are expected to be ongoing. Each award carries an unrestricted stipend of $100,000 given by the family of Vernon Hill, founder and retired chairman of Commerce Bank.

The impetus for the awards grew out of his service on the veterinary school's board of directors during the last several years, Hill said.

The school wanted to honor a person who has "dramatically changed the practice and image" of veterinary medicine; the school also wanted to foster its own students who might bring about change.

Toaff-Rosenstein was one of six semifinalists asked to give a talk on their plans before the eight-member faculty selection committee. Hill said the panel liked her ideas.

"We saw this as a life-changing award, to let people like her go out and do something they wouldn't otherwise be able to do," Hill said.

Toaff-Rosenstein plans to use the prize money to pay off student loans and provide sustenance during five years of postgraduate study.

Her fourth year of vet school starts this week, with graduation set for the spring of 2009. In the next 12 months, she'll rotate through different facets of animal medicine, including a stop at New Bolton Center, the school's large-animal hospital in Kennett Square.

Her long-term work will focus on the welfare of animals raised together for meat, milk, eggs, and the fibers from their coats, which are woven into garments.

What isn't widely known, Toaff-Rosenstein said, is that globally, farm animals far outnumber wild, laboratory and zoo animals.

"They're in need of a lot of advocacy," she said. "There are not enough vets for this field because of the difficult conditions, the worse pay, you're out in all weather, and you have to go out to less-populated areas."

But Toaff-Rosenstein won't be going, James Herriot-like, to deliver calves in drafty barns on the English moors and then write a best seller.

Instead, she'll be researching the ways farmers coax the highest production from farm animals and how those animals are kept. Then she'll create an intellectual model for animal farming, factoring in the interests of farmers, their animals and the consumer.

She hopes to become so well-schooled that she'll be able to influence public policy and teach other veterinarians to do the same. If she's successful, the expanded role would change the impact of the veterinary profession.

"That's in the spirit of Mr. Hill and these awards," said Tom Parsons, director of the Swine Teaching and Research Center at New Bolton and Toaff-Rosenstein's mentor.

His work with breeding sows is on the cutting edge of animal-welfare research; it lets sows feed as individuals from a special electrically controlled chute, but also mingle as a social group.

The public is increasingly interested in knowing where its food comes from and the toll that might be taking on the animals' lives, Parsons said.

In recent years, for example, there has been a public outcry against intensive farming of animals such as breeding sows, who have been housed in enclosures so small that they can't turn around.

On the flip side, there's a need to produce affordable food here and elsewhere, Parsons said.

Complicating the issue is what happens when farming animals are allowed to mingle; they become vulnerable to disease, injury, and attacks from other herd members. Preventing that raises the cost to the consumer.

Both Parsons and Toaff-Rosenstein realize the goal she has set for herself might engender controversy, but Parsons said she's up to it.

"If you don't reach for the sky, nothing will happen," Parsons said. "She's just going to start working for this. If she gets a third of what she has planned done, it's a pretty decent path."