Meeting Minutes (11/10/15)

The advising meeting was very helpful with Terra Rentz, an AWB certified graduate student of ESF and President of TWS' Northeast Section, lending out tips as to what to take in order to become Associate Wildlife Biologist certified.

Before I get to that, we have Winter Raptor Surveys coming up on. They are done on Wednesdays one hour before sunset and we can expect to be there for at least two hours. If you'd like to sign up, please fill out the form: http://goo.gl/forms/ihdQ92vRYa.

The Certification Program
The program was started to ensure that students got a broad understanding of what a wildlife biologist should know to complement the specialization of our academic requirements. To get certified, you must fill out the application after graduating and pay the fee. Doing it within the six months after graduation is cheaper. Also, you must be member of the national Wildlife Society to apply. If after being reviewed by the certification review board,you are not unanimously accepted, you will can not get certified. You can appeal this and it is usually successful. To prevent all that, just take all the right courses.
Courses
The application is all about what courses you took and what categories they qualify for. The description of the course is key. The online catalog course description will most likely not be enough because you really have to explain what you did in that course. Use key words from the category itself.
Credits from courses can be split but not for less than two credits and you can not double-count courses. As for transfers, if the course didn't qualify to transfer then they will most likely not count at all. Grades are not asked for in the application but you should not use any course that you got less than a C-.  If it counts, put it down - if you have a course that qualifies for a category put it in, even if you have more than enough credits for that category..
The wildlife management and biology section of the application is crucial. You may be short on other sections but not these. For the wildlife biology section, fish and insect courses don't count. For the botany section, you can split credits from diversity of life and the required Cranberry Lake course. However, make sure you have at least one course with taxonomy of vascular plants (e.g. Diversity of Flowering Plants).
Where people in the Wildlife Science major fall short is in Quantitative Sciences, Communications, and Policy Administration and Law. For those in Con. Bio., it is much the same except you must also take the following for the wildlife management category: Wildlife Ecology and Management and Wildlife Habitats and Populations.


For more info, click here,  and scroll to the very bottom to download the application.
If you have any more questions about what courses to take, talk to your adviser or contact Terra Rentz at tarentz@syr.edu.