El Jefe
Mark 16:18
I'm a little late to the thread....but....
Actually, the PhD is in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology, Masters in Zoology and BS in Biology. That said, the degrees are one thing, the experience is something else. In most graduate programs your degree is in a general topic and your research is much more specific. For example, my research for both PhD and MS—although in different states (SC and OK)—was focused on timber rattlesnakes as the animal and general autecology (life history, behavior, etc.) of the population as the research topic. For both studies I utilized radio transmitters to track snake movements throughout the year. While doing my research I also took many graduate courses from Herpetology to Statistics to Advanced GIS mapping to Forest Management.
Depending on your future career, all those steps can determine what you will end up doing. The actual degree, the research, and the classes you took while getting the degree all play a role. I am currently a faculty member in the Department of Natural Sciences at Middle Georgia State College in Macon, GA. To teach many of the courses at my school (Vertebrate Zoology, Wildlife Management, Intro Bio, etc.), I have to be "credentialed" in certain subjects. That credentialing mostly comes from my graduate classes and typically public institutions have more restrictions than private institutions. I did not have advanced microbiology or molecular biology and therefore at many institutions I cannot teach those courses for majors. I did not really have an advanced ecology course either but my research focused heavily on ecology so that would allow me to be credentialed. Although my research is on ecology, it was limited largely to herps. I consider myself a fairly competent naturalist and am quite familiar with many of the mammals and birds in the southeast but I do not have graduate classes or research that indicates this knowledge. As a result, I would not be competitive for jobs that were looking at those systems unless my background was way better than others in the marketplace. I.e. if I was up against only undergrads with BS degrees I might stand a chance. Applying for a PhD faculty position that is looking for an ornithologist…forget it.
Working at a zoo…been there, done that. Actually, one of my first career choices was to work at the zoo. I knew having a MS degree would make me more competitive so I grabbed that right after undergrad and then started applying to zoos. I eventually landed the tropical reptile keeper job at Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, SC and worked there for a year. It was a blast! I got to work with king cobras, eyelash vipers, anacondas, crocs, monitors, and a bunch of other awesome herps. At the end of the day, however, I was an animal keeper and that meant I was largely responsible for cleaning cages and feeding critters. I had a lot of animals under my jurisdiction so hours and hours could not be spent with one individual critter. Herps do not get the “play time” that other animals get as it is often thought that herps do not need the stimulation that mammals and birds require. As a result, I spent a lot of time putting food in the cage and cleaning up poop. Occasionally, I would get to talk to visitors or be on one of the many TV morning shows educating the public about the different critters we had at the zoo and I absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, the opportunities for doing that were few and far between as the zoo actually had a dedicated education division. Eventually, cleaning poop and throwing food in cages did not work for me and I decided to embark on my own education adventure.
I founded my own company where I traveled with reptiles and educated people throughout the southeast. I brought reptiles to schools, boy scouts, churches, home school groups and even headlined many of the Repticon shows in SC, NC, FL, and GA. Something was still missing… I yearned for the research that I did during my Masters and I wanted to teach on a bigger level. College. To teach at college, however, I needed a PhD so I started searching out grants and eventually landed a big one to study timber rattlesnakes in SC. I continued my reptile business (education and captive critters…cornsnakes being one!) and pursued my doctorate. Four years later I graduated with my PhD and embarked on the road to becoming a faculty member at a college or university. My first stint was a one year post-doc in SC so I continued research and started teaching college classes. Soon, I had secured a job teaching full time…but it was in GA.
One of the harder decisions in my life was to accept that job in Georgia. Due to the convoluted laws in Georgia, the acceptance of the faculty position came required an end to my cornsnake collection and many of my animals I used in education. Instead of keeping a few, I went scorched earth and sold or gave away every herp I owned. It was hard…very hard. Luckily for me, I was able to donate a large portion of my educational collection to a good friend and to this day still have access to some of those animals for the occasional educational display. The job, however, was worth it!
It has been a great dream of mine to teach college level classes. I get to take students on field trips and explore the environment from an academic perspective. My department is organizing study abroad trips to the southwestern U.S., Costa Rica, and even the Galapagos Islands. I have a Herpetology Lab at the school that works with turtles and we are gearing up for spring frog work. Snake research will eventually come but they are a hard critter to study in the field due to rarity of large number of specimens needed for statistical significance. Frogs and turtles have much higher numbers and are easy for undergrads to study.
And…that is how I did it and where I currently am positioned. More than you probably cared for but it is at the very least one way to climb the mountain. :dancer:
Actually, the PhD is in Wildlife and Fisheries Biology, Masters in Zoology and BS in Biology. That said, the degrees are one thing, the experience is something else. In most graduate programs your degree is in a general topic and your research is much more specific. For example, my research for both PhD and MS—although in different states (SC and OK)—was focused on timber rattlesnakes as the animal and general autecology (life history, behavior, etc.) of the population as the research topic. For both studies I utilized radio transmitters to track snake movements throughout the year. While doing my research I also took many graduate courses from Herpetology to Statistics to Advanced GIS mapping to Forest Management.
Depending on your future career, all those steps can determine what you will end up doing. The actual degree, the research, and the classes you took while getting the degree all play a role. I am currently a faculty member in the Department of Natural Sciences at Middle Georgia State College in Macon, GA. To teach many of the courses at my school (Vertebrate Zoology, Wildlife Management, Intro Bio, etc.), I have to be "credentialed" in certain subjects. That credentialing mostly comes from my graduate classes and typically public institutions have more restrictions than private institutions. I did not have advanced microbiology or molecular biology and therefore at many institutions I cannot teach those courses for majors. I did not really have an advanced ecology course either but my research focused heavily on ecology so that would allow me to be credentialed. Although my research is on ecology, it was limited largely to herps. I consider myself a fairly competent naturalist and am quite familiar with many of the mammals and birds in the southeast but I do not have graduate classes or research that indicates this knowledge. As a result, I would not be competitive for jobs that were looking at those systems unless my background was way better than others in the marketplace. I.e. if I was up against only undergrads with BS degrees I might stand a chance. Applying for a PhD faculty position that is looking for an ornithologist…forget it.
Working at a zoo…been there, done that. Actually, one of my first career choices was to work at the zoo. I knew having a MS degree would make me more competitive so I grabbed that right after undergrad and then started applying to zoos. I eventually landed the tropical reptile keeper job at Riverbanks Zoo and Garden in Columbia, SC and worked there for a year. It was a blast! I got to work with king cobras, eyelash vipers, anacondas, crocs, monitors, and a bunch of other awesome herps. At the end of the day, however, I was an animal keeper and that meant I was largely responsible for cleaning cages and feeding critters. I had a lot of animals under my jurisdiction so hours and hours could not be spent with one individual critter. Herps do not get the “play time” that other animals get as it is often thought that herps do not need the stimulation that mammals and birds require. As a result, I spent a lot of time putting food in the cage and cleaning up poop. Occasionally, I would get to talk to visitors or be on one of the many TV morning shows educating the public about the different critters we had at the zoo and I absolutely loved it. Unfortunately, the opportunities for doing that were few and far between as the zoo actually had a dedicated education division. Eventually, cleaning poop and throwing food in cages did not work for me and I decided to embark on my own education adventure.
I founded my own company where I traveled with reptiles and educated people throughout the southeast. I brought reptiles to schools, boy scouts, churches, home school groups and even headlined many of the Repticon shows in SC, NC, FL, and GA. Something was still missing… I yearned for the research that I did during my Masters and I wanted to teach on a bigger level. College. To teach at college, however, I needed a PhD so I started searching out grants and eventually landed a big one to study timber rattlesnakes in SC. I continued my reptile business (education and captive critters…cornsnakes being one!) and pursued my doctorate. Four years later I graduated with my PhD and embarked on the road to becoming a faculty member at a college or university. My first stint was a one year post-doc in SC so I continued research and started teaching college classes. Soon, I had secured a job teaching full time…but it was in GA.
One of the harder decisions in my life was to accept that job in Georgia. Due to the convoluted laws in Georgia, the acceptance of the faculty position came required an end to my cornsnake collection and many of my animals I used in education. Instead of keeping a few, I went scorched earth and sold or gave away every herp I owned. It was hard…very hard. Luckily for me, I was able to donate a large portion of my educational collection to a good friend and to this day still have access to some of those animals for the occasional educational display. The job, however, was worth it!
It has been a great dream of mine to teach college level classes. I get to take students on field trips and explore the environment from an academic perspective. My department is organizing study abroad trips to the southwestern U.S., Costa Rica, and even the Galapagos Islands. I have a Herpetology Lab at the school that works with turtles and we are gearing up for spring frog work. Snake research will eventually come but they are a hard critter to study in the field due to rarity of large number of specimens needed for statistical significance. Frogs and turtles have much higher numbers and are easy for undergrads to study.
And…that is how I did it and where I currently am positioned. More than you probably cared for but it is at the very least one way to climb the mountain. :dancer:
