18 Animals to Assessment: Life’s Unexpected Changes

Program assessment was not my intended career — on the contrary, I always wanted to work with animals! I grew up in the city that was once the agricultural hub of the world, Chicago.  But when the stockyards closed, it became a big city with little exposure to animal agriculture.  Ever since elementary school, I was enamored with animals, especially horses. I read every book about horses I could, with my favorite being Walter Farley’s The Black Stallion. I wanted a horse so much but it was never going to happen while I lived in the city. Therefore, it seemed logical to me to be a veterinarian because I thought that was the only profession in which I could work with horses.

How wrong I was! Majoring in animal science as an undergraduate opened my eyes to a whole world of animal-related professions. My first spring break took me on a school trip to visit various places associated with the animal industry. We went to a mink farm, wildlife preserve, wolf park, horse farms, and a pet food plant. As I think back, I’m sure the intention of this trip was for us to see the different perspectives of the industry. The trip featured everything from saving wolves to raising mink for coats. At the end of the week, while recognizing I was not an expert in any of these specific animal areas, I was able to form a more educated take on the various animal industries. I may not have agreed in principle with using mink to make coats, but I understood the process and why it was done. The trip made quite an impression on me.

Afterwards, I was also able to better understand why I had to take general education courses. For example, at the mink farm, we learned that they fed a “least cost ration,” which means they adjust the diet of the animals based on daily market prices of the various feed components. (Oh, so that is why I was required to take the economics general education course — to understand the financial nuances of such industries!)

My senior year, I got involved in a research project. I fed horses a diet supplemented with Vitamin E and measured their immune responses. It was my responsibility to draw blood from the horses and do the lab work. This project got me really interested in cause and effect. Working beside graduate students, I enjoyed the bullpen sessions where we would talk about various research ideas. By this time I was really on the fence about vet school. Doing actual hands-on research helped me to build connections between my foundational and general education courses and my animal science courses. It was then that I realized I should be in graduate school (teaching and research) instead of vet school (animal health).

During both my master’s and doctoral programs in animal sciences, I had the opportunity to travel to several professional conferences and present my research. This is when I truly appreciated that speech communication class I took as an undergrad. Getting up at an equine meeting and talking to the most renowned people in your profession is a bit overwhelming. But at my very first meeting, and my first presentation, I actually won the graduate student award for the best presentation. Thank you, speech class!

After graduating with my PhD in Animal Sciences, I decided that teaching was going to be the most satisfying job for me. After eight years of teaching at a community college, I moved on to the UA where, over the years, I have worn several hats as a faculty member: advisor, teacher, and administrator. One of my greatest honors was teaching my Gen Ed course to a class of 800 students. It was an incredible amount of work, but it was also exhilarating for me as I got to teach all of these students about how animals and humans have interacted through time.

They say timing is everything. (Who is “they”? No idea!) After 15 years, life happened and I left my faculty position. Over the years, I had worked with the assessment people in the Office of Instruction and Assessment and I was asked to interview some candidates for an assessment position. After interviewing the first candidate, I got to thinking: wait, I can do this job! Did the assessment position have anything to do with animal science? Absolutely not! But I had an open mind and was willing to apply my lifelong learner skills, such as communicating effectively and critical thinking, to do the job. I applied for that position, interviewed, and was hired.

After six years in this position, I look back at my career and would never have guessed that I would not be in the classroom teaching about animals. Now I work mainly with faculty instead of students. It is a different perspective from which I am now working, but without a well-rounded educational base, I would not have transitioned so readily.

Life has taught me that nothing is guaranteed and you have to be flexible enough to accept change. I never imagined working in assessment, but not because I did not like it, but because I was not directly trained for it. This career change allowed me to reflect on my many experiences and to use the skills I learned without realizing I had learned them. This job required me to do more writing and communication with faculty and staff, which is different than teaching students. I am working with faculty from across the University — not just in my area of expertise — so having some base knowledge of the humanities, social sciences, and arts helped me make better connections with people.

Hopefully, as you reflect back on your Gen Ed courses, you will identify many of the skills and competencies that you have obtained that will allow you to be successful in life, no matter if you trained for the specific job you have or not.

About the author

name: Elaine Marchello

Elaine Marchello is the Assessment Director for the Gen Ed program. One of her main goals is helping programs across campus and in Gen Ed assess student learning.  She lives in Marana, AZ on a small ranch with her sisters, horses, donkeys, chickens, and dogs.