Careers in Biology
Training in biology provides biology majors with a wide variety of potential career options. The choice of potential careers is wide, even within a specific area of biology. Further, biologists often fulfill a large number of roles even within one career track. The choice of potential employers is wide, and includes federal and government agencies, as well as agriculture and pharmaceuticals, and other private and public industries. In addition, the amount of education required depends largely upon a specific career choice. Choosing a career in biology is about matching a wide number of factors, including personal ethics, salary, and personal interests.
Within biology itself, there is a wide diversity of potential careers that exists even within fields that are seemingly small. Winter and Belikoff note, "The classification of biologists as botanists, zoologists, or microbiologists gives little hint of the wide variety of biological disciplines that exist. For example, a microbiologist whose primary interests involve bacteriology may perform very different duties from those carried out by a microbiologist working in virology" (4).
The American Institute of Biological Sciences notes that biology careers tend to fall into four main areas of specialization. These are: 1) research, 2) health care, 3) the great outdoors, and 4) education.
Within the research area, most jobs are as research biologists. These researchers learn how living systems work, and can include research scientists at a university or private institution like a pharmaceutical...
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