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 at the time of registration and there are often students in line for this, so please see me before the start of the term of intent.
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. For information on PreHealth summer undergraduate enrichment programs, check www.explorehealthcareers.org.
4. Summer 2009 Adventures in Veterinary Medicine program at Tufts University. The sessions for college students are being held June 1-5 and June 8-12, 2009. Currently entering its 18th year, Adventures in Veterinary Medicine is a career-exploration program designed to provide participants with direct insights into the realities and opportunities of a career in veterinary medicine. Our week-long sessions for college students include lectures, demonstrations, panel discussions, admissions advice, case studies and rotation through our hospitals. Many of our past participants have successfully gained admission to veterinary school here at Tufts University and at other schools. We encourage interested students to visit our web site at www.tufts.edu/vet/avm/ for more information. As our program continues to attract bright, motivated students who are seriously considering a career in veterinary medicine, admission remains competitive. There is no deadline for applying, however, as each session has limited seats, it is highly recommended that applications be submitted by early February. The admissions selection process begins in February and continues on a rolling basis until the sessions are full. For more information on the program, including eligibility, tuition and the online application, please visit our web site at www.tufts.edu/vet/avm or contact us at AVM@tufts.edu or 508-839-7962.
5. 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: