Organization: Northwest Trek
(AZA Member)
Location: Eatonville, WA, United States
Job or Internship: Internship
PLEASE NOTE: APPLICATIONS NO LONGER BEING ACCEPTED FOR SUMMER 2012; APPLICATIONS FOR FALL 2012 AND LATER ARE BEING PROCESSED NOW. Interns work as volunteer keeper assistants in our Zoological Department. They learn to prepare diets and assist paid staff with any duties related to care of the animals and general park operations that keepers get involved in. Duties include feeding, cleaning, and all kinds of support work, and often involve significant physical labor -- grunt work – usually working outside, at times on rough or slippery surfaces, in all manner of weather. Successful candidates have to be willing to get dirty, doing whatever it takes to do the job. We ask for a minimum commitment of 20 hours/week for a minimum of 10 weeks. Most interns work 40 hours/week for more than 10 weeks. Interns are unpaid, sad to say. You must have your own health insurance. Individuals committing to at least 32 hrs/wk are eligible for on-site housing, space available. We have a 3-bedroom, 4-bed, 1-bath house available rent-free on a first come basis. Occupants must agree to perform basic upkeep (cleaning, household chores, and generally keeping the place presentable) while they live there. It is co-ed, so the mix of genders living there influences whether someone shares a bedroom or not. Full-time keepers have animals they are principally responsible for. Interns are typically assigned to a given keeper on a given day and assist that person with whatever their duties are. As part of the role, interns get trained on daily commissary duties and are routinely assigned to perform those functions. Also, the vet that provides our clinical services comes out regularly three days a week and on an emergency basis. Interns may or may not get involved in those vet procedures that we undertake, and this position may not be suitable for pre-vets looking to get significant exposure to the medical end of things. We don’t have a staff scientist onboard conducting research. We intermittently collaborate with researchers from other institutions who need a venue for specific data collection. In general, little actual research is usually going on that an intern could plug into as part of their experience. If you are in college, and your institution supports your volunteer time here as appropriate for school credit, we are happy to fill out the paperwork typically required to document your efforts. You should know that gaining employment here is extremely competitive, and that volunteering would not be a ticket to a job. A person should only undertake this course if a purely volunteer experience is worth their while. We take interns year round. Internships roughly correspond to the seasons. We will accumulate applications up to several months in advance, then process all of those that are complete (online application, cover letter, resume), begin offering interviews to the strongest candidates, and eventually offer positions to the most competitive of those. We don’t have set deadlines for when all of this will unfold, nor formal start/end dates for internships – those can be negotiable. If current interns are performing well, and express the desire to extend their internships, we do honor those requests at times. If we do, it does mean there are fewer available spots for new aspirants in that next season. That said, we are not sure how many open spots will actually be available from season to season. The online application is at Trek’s website: www.nwtrek.org. If you have questions regarding Trek's Keeper Internship Program, please don't hesitate to contact: Dan Belting, Education Curator, dan.belting@nwtrek.org, 360-832-7162.