Hello and Happy Groundhog's Day

S

Summer Tanager

Well-Known Member
Hello from Oklahoma. I've visited Zoo Chat many times over the past five years, and decided to join today. I'm a professional wildlife biologist with a B.S. and an M.S. in Zoology, although I don't work for a zoo. I'm interested in the full spectrum of vertebrate taxa but my primary interests are the avian ones (although lizards and antelopes are other interests of mine). I'm impressed by the many comments and photos that I've seen on this site from Zoos all around the world and I hope to contribute in some way.
Summer Tanager
 
Summer Tanager said:
Hello from Oklahoma. I've visited Zoo Chat many times over the past five years, and decided to join today. I'm a professional wildlife biologist with a B.S. and an M.S. in Zoology, although I don't work for a zoo. I'm interested in the full spectrum of vertebrate taxa but my primary interests are the avian ones (although lizards and antelopes are other interests of mine). I'm impressed by the many comments and photos that I've seen on this site from Zoos all around the world and I hope to contribute in some way.
Summer Tanager
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Welcome to ZooChat!
 
Summer Tanager said:
Hello from Oklahoma. I've visited Zoo Chat many times over the past five years, and decided to join today. I'm a professional wildlife biologist with a B.S. and an M.S. in Zoology, although I don't work for a zoo. I'm interested in the full spectrum of vertebrate taxa but my primary interests are the avian ones (although lizards and antelopes are other interests of mine). I'm impressed by the many comments and photos that I've seen on this site from Zoos all around the world and I hope to contribute in some way.
Summer Tanager
Click to expand...

Welcome, Summer!
 
Hi
I just joined today. I am at a cross roads and not in the ‘industry’ now but looking to pursue a degree.. Curious; what do you do as a career with your zoology degrees?
 
Lifechange46 said:
Hi
I just joined today. I am at a cross roads and not in the ‘industry’ now but looking to pursue a degree.. Curious; what do you do as a career with your zoology degrees?
Click to expand...

Hello and I'm sorry that I didn't see this until today (two years later). I don't know if you're still at a cross roads, but I received my Zoology degrees some time ago - the B.S. in Zoology from the University of Oklahoma in 1986 and the M.S. in Zoology from the University of South Florida in 1990. Birds are my passion and interest, but work with a wide range of species now. After college, I worked a few temporary jobs on research projects, then got lucky and was hired to fill a vacant biologist position at the state wildlife agency in Oklahoma. I've been doing that for a little over 30 years now. I feel like a do a little of everything: I conduct monitoring programs for birds, I'm a grant manager for some of our pass-through grants, I conduct some very basic applied research, I make technical assistance visits to landowners, and I do about a dozen outreach presentations each year and write a few article for the agency website and magazine. In graduate school, I was a teaching assistant, and that training has become very valuable to me in the presentations that I give and the articles that I write. I don't know if that helps, but I'm a proponent of obtaining two degrees (B.S. and M.S.) if you have the financial ability to do so - it can make you more marketable and gives you some research and public speaking experience that a B.S. won't give you. I don't think that a PhD is a bad thing, but I think it's over-kill for most of the conservation jobs unless you're interested in a college-level teaching or research position. Some of the people with which I went to school are in teaching positions, some work for state or federal wildlife agencies, a few work for environmental consulting firms, and a few have left the field altogether for higher paying fields.
 
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