1. School year internships (BIO 494) available at the VA State Agricultural Diagnostic Lab, Harrisonburg, working with Drs. David Brown (large animals) and Meza (poultry). This is a one term, 3 credit course that would allow you to work alongside vets and veterinary staff doing postmortems, necropsies, and seratological, PCR and microbiological tests to identify pathogens and other causes of death in farm animals from this vicinity. See Dr. Chris Rose if you are interested. Proposal must be written and submitted the term before registration.

2. Summer internships available through the Summer Intern Program (SIP) of the United States Department of Agriculture. SIP provides interested students a chance to earn money while working for the U.S.D.A during the summer months and gain valuable work experience. Applications for the positions will open on www.usajobs.gov on January 28 and will remain open until March 24th. Check http://www.usda.gov/da/employ/MRP2008SummerInternAnns.htm for a list of internships available and contact information.

3. Dr. Baker, Dept. of Psychology, will once again be offering her course on Cat and Dog behavior (Psyc 200 Companion Animal Behavior) . The course will meet MWF at 10:10. GPsyc 101 is the only prerequisite. During the initial registration process, the course will be limited to psyc majors only, but interested pre-vet students should fill out an on-line override request form ("course waiting list /prerequisite exception form") which they can link to via the Psyc Dept web page. Dr. Baker will review the requests and let additional students in who are not psyc majors.

Psych 200 provides an introduction to the basic principles of animal behavior through a detailed look at the behavior of the two most popular companion animals, cats and dogs.  We will examine social behavior, communication patterns, evolutionary history, and learning/cognition in these two species.  We will also examine the relationships between humans and these species through a variety of topics, including behavior problems of dogs and cats.

Students will:

  • learn about various behaviors of dogs and cats
  • learn about basic animal behavior theories and principles as they apply to dogs and cats
  • learn about the processes of evolution, selection, and domestication of cats and dogs
  • learn about basic research methods used in studying animal behavior
  • get experience in reading, analyzing, and critiquing basic scientific literature
  • learn about the role of animal behaviorists in treating various behavior problems of cats and dogs