In a festive ceremony on September 10, 1977, the Zoo's new Zoo hospital facility, the Jennings Center for Zoological Medicine, was formally dedicated. Here, Zoo veterinarian Dr. Phillip Robinson, at the right carrying the ceremonial keys to the new center, shows the operating room to a group during the open house. The Jennings Center marked the fulfillment of a longtime dream of the veterinary staff to expand and modernize the Zoo Hospital, to better meet the ever-growing needs of treating the Zoological Society's animals. Funded by the Joseph B. Jennings family and a large group of generous donors, the planning and building of the Jennings Center was overseen by Zoo veterinarians Dr. Phillip Robinson and Dr. Charles Sedgwick. The new facility expanded the hospital to 2 stories and 10,000 square feet, with a surgical amphitheater, a versatile hydraulic surgery table, a small animal treatment room, an isolation room, a special care ward, an x-ray room, and a padded recovery room, along with offices, a medical library, and a clinical pathology laboratory. At the dedication, invited speaker Dr. Murray Fowler, chairman of the Department of Medicine at the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of California at Davis, praised the San Diego Zoo for establishing an internship program to train zoo veterinarians, and said that, "Zoological medicine has come of age in recent years....Now, with this marvelous addition to the hospital and research facility, the San Diego Zoo stands out as the preeminent training facility in the world for zoo veterinarians."