Zoo InternQuest is a seven-week career exploration program for San Diego County high school juniors and seniors. Students have the unique opportunity to meet professionals working for the San Diego Zoo, Safari Park, and Institute for Conservation Research, learn about their jobs, and then blog about their experience online. Follow their adventures here on the Zoo’s website!
Have you ever hid in a dirt pit, and then jumped out and tried to grab a huge, unsuspecting bird with a nine and a half foot wingspan? Seems pretty difficult, almost impossible! Well, that’s how the San Diego Zoo’s Institute of Conservation Research kept the California condor from becoming extinct. The Institute’s Conservation Education Division is tasked with educating the public on the important efforts the Zoo makes towards conservation, and the animals, such as the condor, it helps protect. This week, we met with Ms. Maggie Reinbold, Director of Conservation Education at the Institute. Ms. Reinbold not only shared with us the incredible recovery story of the California condor, and the important role her department played, but the career path that led her to create the Conservation Education Division.
In two months, it will be the ten year anniversary since Ms. Reinbold founded the Conservation Education Division at the Institute, which is one of the largest conservation institute associated with a zoo worldwide. Ms. Reinbold began her journey knowing three things: she loved the outdoors, she enjoyed sharing her passion for science with others, and she knew her heart belonged to the field of biology. Ms. Reinbold earned her undergraduate degree in zoology and then her master’s in evolutionary biology at our very own San Diego State University. As a graduate student, she studied the population genetics of aquatic insects native to the crystal blue waters of Baja California, Mexico. After graduating, she tried her legs as a science teacher in various educational settings, even teaching communities in Arctic Alaska. In 2005, she joined the Institute’s Genetics Division as a summer research fellow, researching the critically endangered Anegada rock iguana, and never looked back.
After her fellowship, Ms. Reinbold was offered a unique opportunity to create a new division at the Institute for Conservation Research, Conservation Education. The Conservation Education lab serves as gateway between the community and the conservation researchers at the Zoo. During the school year, the lab hosts middle school, high school, and college students where the students are taught the importance of the genetic and lab-based aspects of conservation and learn in creative and hands-on settings. During the summer, teachers are brought in to learn how to develop and incorporate science conservation into their curricula and classrooms. The Division even sponsors a master’s program through Miami University! Now, Ms. Reinbold spends most of her time creating new curricula, fundraising, and writing reports. Although she misses the hands-on aspects of teaching that drew her to the job, she has found a new passion, her employees. Just as she loves inspiring a passion for nature and conservation in her students, Ms. Reinbold now focuses her energies on her employees. She enjoys helping them discover and pursue their own passions’, as well as helping them develop on a professional level.
The impact of the important work that Ms. Reinbold spearheads as Director of Conservation Education reaches far beyond our own community. The Division works in situ, on site, in many locations ranging from Peru to Kenya. Community based research teams work with locals to instill the value of conservation and make tangible changes to their lifestyles to better promote the conservation of locally endangered species. For example, in Peru, research teams are working with the communities to build more effective wood burning stoves, which in turn, helps the native Andean bear. Ms. Reinbold wisely stated that humans are the problem, but also the solution. Ms. Reinbold has created a program that not only engages the public, but shares her passions with the world.
Glenna, Careers Team
Week Two, Winter Session 2016
