Internships

Herbarium Internship

Offered every quarter

Interns will help accession and digitize plant specimens from around the Central Coast of California. In addition to helping press, mount and label regional specimens students will help scan images at the Norris Center. Skills gained include plant taxonomy, herbarium organization and curation, plant morphology and online databasing. Internships are 6 hours a week. There are mandatory meetings for this internship. Check back for details.

Taxidermy Internship

Offered every quarter

Interns will work to turn dead, salvaged birds or small mammals into scientific museum study skins or for skeletal preparations. Following detailed taxidermy instructions, students will skin and prepare birds to be used by researchers and classes at the Norris Center. Skills gained will include bird identification, bird morphology, museum collection curation and taxidermy. Internships are 6 hours a week. There are mandatory meetings for this internship. Check back for details.

Entomology Internship

Offered every quarter

Interns will learn the foundations of professional insect curation using the Randall Morgan Hymenoptera (bees, ants, wasps) collection. Curation will involve moving and labeling already-pinned specimens between unit trays with the goal of creating an organized reference collection of all of our bees. We are looking for students with an invested interest in insect curation and a strong attention to detail. Internships are 6 hours per week. There are mandatory meetings for this internship. Check back for details.

Fungi Internship

Offered every quarter

Interns will learn the foundations of professional fungi curation using the extensive Norris Center fungi collection. Curation will involve identifying, labeling, organizing, and digitizing specimens with the goal of creating an organized reference collection for fungi. We are looking for students with an invested interest in fungi curation and a strong attention to detail. Internships are 6 hours per week. There are mandatory meetings for this internship. Check back for details.

Mammal Projects

Offered every quarter

Interns will help skeletonize a Mt. lion to prepare it for the museum. Interns may help to identify bones and work on bone rearticulation. Interns may help place camera traps out on campus to document mammalian behavior, and other related tasks. Skills gained include strong museum curation skills, taxonomic knowledge of mammals, preparing a mammalian skeleton for display. Internships are 6 hours per week. There are mandatory meetings for this internship. Check back for details.

Internships offered Intermittently

Offered intermittently

Special internships such as Museum Curation and Museum Display are offered intermittently.

Check back for updates on these internships.