Trails wind around a cluster of buildings, past open pens and wired cages that comprise the heavily wooded 10-acre zoo. Over 200 native and exotic mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians representing 75 different species live on the grounds. This is not your typical classroom.

It's the Teaching Zoo at Santa Fe Community College (SFCC, Gainesville, FL), where students turn their love of animals into a career. According to zoo director, Jack A. Brown, 90 percent of the graduates go on to work as zookeepers, veterinarian assistants, or become employed in other animal-related positions. Although there are now similar schools throughout the country, when SFCC established the Teaching Zoo in 1972, it was the first of its kind in the United States.

Student Habitat
Studies range from general education courses in the college at the bottom of the hill, to open-air classrooms where living creatures take the place of books. Students enrolled in the Zoo Animal Technology program get hands-on training that leads to an associate of science degree.

"The students do everything," Brown says. "They build and maintain enclosures, take care of the animals daily, and give guided tours to the public." As part of the training, students are required to work between semesters, so break-time provides another opportunity to learn.

In a building housing the kitchen, two young women are chopping up carrots, greens, potatoes, and fruit to feed the animals. "It's fun," Sarah Williams, 19 years old, says as she heaps food onto a blue plate. "I love working with animals, and the small classes in the zoo program."

Her chopping partner, Susan Gould from West Palm Beach, FL, can't wait to finish the program so she can do it full-time as a career. "My ultimate dream is to work in marine rehabilitation," she says.

Many students are from out of state, and occasionally from other countries. Although the majority is between the ages of 20 to 23, a few, like Jason Cassell, are working toward a second career.

"I did record-keeping for an accounting firm," the Columbus, OH, native says, "but I used to work in a pet store. My main interest is animals, so when a zookeeper I know in Columbus told me he'd gone to SFCC, I enrolled."

Animal Planet
Carrying a pan of fish to an enclosure housing a pair of bald eagles, Jason points out that the one named George is blind in one eye, and the female Ariel, is the bigger of the two. He explains that they breed once a year and the offspring are sent to the Florida Game and Freshwater Fish Commission and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in a cooperative protection program.

Other endangered species, such as the Zoo's white-handed gibbons and red-ruffed lemur, are under the Species Survival Plan. This international effort is coordinated by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, which has accredited the SFCC Teaching Zoo.

"The program is everything I expected," says Jason. "There's so much variety. I've worked with reptiles, exotics, birds, primates... and I like being with people who have a similar internet."

Hands-On Zoo
Krista Anderson, originally from New York, NY, claims she always wanted to be a zookeeper "in a southern state where there's no snow." After earning a degree in math at West Connecticut State University (Danbury, CT), she worked as an office manager in a small construction company for three years before going to SFCC. Since she already has a degree, Krista met the general education requirements.

The career education credits are another story. In the Zoo Animal Technology program, classes include animal nutrition and animal breeding, aviculture (birds), and herpeculture (reptiles and amphibians), among others. In the four animal management labs, students spend an entire semester working with the species assigned to that particular area, as well as the Zoo commissary and medical area.

By leading tours of the Teaching Zoo, students get to practice public speaking and interacting with zoo visitors. When students explain how Galapagos tortoises can live anywhere from 100-200 years, Jason feels it not only educates the public, but helps them retain what they learn about the animals they care for every day.

"It's fantastic knowing I can get up in the morning and come to a zoo," Krista says. Eighteen-year-old Vanessa Rivera from Deltona, FL, who would like to get a job at Busch Gardens in Tampa once she graduates, looks up from feeding a red-foot tortoise long enough to echo her opinion. "I like the hands-on interaction with the animals of just being in a classroom," she says.

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