By
Jose Ceja
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Biologists can be lawyers, teachers, writers or doctors,
Forty years ago, biologists' options were relatively simple.
Today, however, technology has fueled a demand for biologists in fields as diverse as criminal justice, firefighting, business and genetics.
Saturday's Biology Career Day at the University of Arizona developed to address the growing complexity of the field and provide students with a glimpse of the countless paths their careers could take.
The forum featured 44 panelists - 25 of whom are UA alumni - in fields as diverse as business, education, health, law, research and science writing.
Carol Bender, director of the Undergraduate Biology Research Program, said many students are unaware of the options available to them in biology.
With technology creating new fields for biologists, such an event is necessary to inform students of their options, she said.
"There are just so many things (biologists) can do now," she said.
UA President Peter Likins' opening remarks jump started the daylong event by stressing the importance of keeping an open mind for career opportunities that might present themselves.
Likins told the group of about 300 students to accept that their careers will develop in ways they cannot imagine, and that life will generally be full of options.
"Unless you get married," he added jokingly.
Likins also told them to make connections with people, develop an ethical dimension to their work and life, and absorb the knowledge an education in biology provides.
"All I can do is urge you to stay loose," he said.
Biology Career Day gave students the chance to attend forums with people such as Leslie Boyer, medical director of the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center.
Boyer is a good example of Likins' idea of staying "loose."
Boyer, who majored in chemistry as an undergraduate, told the group of about 30 students attending her forum about her experience going to medical school, which she always told herself she wouldn't do, and her eventual job in pediatrics, something else she said she was not originally drawn to.
Boyer told the students that while working in pediatrics, she saw a patient with a scorpion sting, which led her to a fellowship at the Poison Control Center working with insects. This landed her a position as a director at the center, which takes up to 300 calls a day from people who have done something "nasty."
For Celeste Lopez, a molecular and cellular biology senior, such career changes were easy to relate to.
Lopez, who started college as an English and political science major, said she came to the conference to learn more about the careers available to biology majors.
Although Lopez plans to go to medical school, she said the insight Biology Career Day gave her was useful.
"We just assume there are only a couple of paths," she said. "This gives you more perspective."
