On Feb. 28, SUNY Oswego alumnus Rob Katz presented a biological sciences seminar titled “Ever Since Oswego” to discuss his time pursuing a Zoology B.S. at Oswego and the subsequent opportunities he has had after his undergraduate career in terms of employment and higher education. First noting his childhood experiences at the Field Museum in Chicago, Katz highlights the study of paleontology as his first exploration into animal sciences.

“I fell in love with dinosaurs and museums before Sue [the T. Rex] was there, but walking into this museum and seeing Sue standing there every time I went as a kid is so ingrained in my memory,” Katz said. “My whole life I was like, ‘I want to be a paleontologist. I want to work in a museum. I want to go out into the field, out West, and dig up fossils.’”

Katz was adamant in noting that though his breakthrough into animal sciences had an early onset that steered him directly toward paleontology – and inevitably zoology – other students did not need to realize their future career goals so early. In addition, he stated that adroitness is just as critical to developing career opportunities as lived experiences, taking his time excavating fossils as an example.

Nonetheless, Katz gravitated toward SUNY Oswego for a myriad of reasons that aligned with his personal ambitions.

“This might not be true now, but when I was looking, Oswego was the only public school in New York that had a zoology program,” Katz said. “Immediately, Oswego stuck out to me. It was in the SUNY system, which is great. For all its faults, SUNY is pretty awesome. There were [also] a lot of opportunities to get involved with field work.”

Many institutions belonging to the SUNY system have since incorporated biology programs (either Bachelor of Arts [B.A.] or Bachelor of Science [B.S.]) with concentrations in zoological/ecological studies, with well-regarded schools including Stony Brook (located on Long Island), Binghamton, Albany, and the College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF). According to the official SUNY website, however, SUNY Oswego is the only state institution to explicitly offer a Zoology B.S. degree.

Per the United States Department of Education (I.P.E.D.S.), 2.7% of 2023 graduates from SUNY Oswego held a Zoology B.S. degree, outranking other physical sciences such as chemistry, meteorology, and geology, which had 2023 graduation percentages of 1.2%, 1.1%, and 0.9%, respectively. Only biology eclipsed zoology with a comparative graduation percentage of 3.1% during the same year.

Katz also mentioned the abundant research possibilities that stemmed from the Rice Creek Field Station (where he was involved in ecology-based projects), located south of the university with a “primary function [of] serving as an academic resource for students ranging from biology to art,” according to SUNY Oswego’s official facilities website.

With SUNY Oswego laying out a robust educational foundation for him, Katz would graduate with his Zoology B.S. in 2016; yet, his future was peppered with uncertainty.

“After Oswego, I really wasn’t sure where I wanted to go next,” Katz said. “I spent a lot of time here getting involved with research, really developing the skills that I imagined I would need as a scientist, as someone who was emerging into a hard sciences field.”

“I really thought that by the end of my [time at Oswego], I had built this really nice framework of skills that I could take to whatever the next step was going to be; if it was going to be working in the field right away, I could have a lot to pull from to show what I had done with my time here,” Katz said. “If I wanted to go into graduate school, I thought I had built a pretty good network and gained some experience and was able to talk about my passions and what I was interested in, which is important when you are looking for a specific degree program.”

“But I couldn’t decide,” Katz said. “Did I want to go into higher education right away after [graduating]? Did I want to take time off and go do something? Did I want to go right into the job market? And, the answer was all those things mashed together.”

Katz detailed his time in southwestern Wyoming immediately proceeding his undergraduate career and later his return to academia via matriculation into the Cooperstown Graduate Program in Otsego County, New York. Katz would receive his first Master’s degree in Science Museum Studies, which enabled him to combine his undergraduate background with a graduate-level specialization.

“CGP is really great at looking at museums as these dynamic, community-oriented institutions,” Katz said. “So lots of hands-on opportunity, lots of real-world experience through CGP, and what I was… able to do was work [in] museums and schools developing science programs in very informal ways, which is something that I really enjoyed.”

“So that was two years of being in the museum studies program where I was able to… dive into and draw from [my] zoology and science background, and apply it in a way I hadn’t considered before,” Katz said. “It was a lot of fun. It was a lot of work, but it was great because I was still able to activate that part of my brain that got into zoology in the first place, just in a way I hadn’t considered before.”

It is this branching out that catalyzed Katz’s flexibility between occupations since graduating with an Oswego-specific Zoology B.S. degree: from working at a child’s camp in Denver, Colorado during the COVID-19 pandemic, to holding the position of Manager of School Programs at The Farmer’s Museum and Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, and Community Engagement Coordinator at the Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca, Katz’s background in zoology has consistently been applied.

In the present day, Katz has left the job market to pursue a secondary Master’s degree in landscape architecture at ESF, which he envisions as an optimal blend between his focuses on ecological conservationism and zoology. Katz’s journey since SUNY Oswego exemplifies the nonlinear nature of post-graduation life capable of unfolding with a Zoology B.S., a unique degree that opens up the doors to even more specialized yet highly practical career possibilities.