Michelle Ferguson Email and Phone Number

My job is to help guide students who wish to study abroad. I speak about my own personal study abroad experience to open houses, classrooms, and interested students who attend the international fairs held on campus. This is a part-time position while I am still attending classes at RU.

My primary job was to assist veterinarians in their appointments. This included properly handling animals, lifting animals, recording weights, and taking rectal temperatures. Drawing up canine rabies, distemper/ parvovirus, bordetella, leptospirosis, and canine flu vaccines occurred daily. Feline rabies, distemper/parvovirus, and leukemia vaccines were drawn up as well. Holding veins off for front leg, back leg, and jugular sticks were everyday tasks. Obtaining free-catch urine samples to run urinalyses was also included. I kept track of simple heartworm and other tick born disease tests that were taken by a 4DX snap test and recorded results on the online file keeper. Slides that were obtained with blood and tissue samples were stained by me for microscopy. Assisting with taking blood pressure, X-Rays, sonograms, dental surgeries, and other surgeries was performed with veterinarians as well as veterinarian technicians. This includes intubating animals before surgery. When needed by reception, I helped aid in prescription-filling and explaining veterinarian prescriptions to the owners. Other duties in the hospital included cleaning/sterilizing surgical equipment and folding/wrapping up of surgical laundry. Keeping the pet treatment area clean as well as surgery, X-Ray, sonogram, prep, and isolation was also a very important daily task.

Working under one of the biotechnicians of the pathology lab, my job was to help manage the National Zoo’s fluid tissue collection. I worked with a team to take the collection, which was previously stored in formaldehyde solution, and gradually changed it to be stored in a 70% ethanol solution. My duties included creating 20%, 50%, and 70% ethanol, as well as storing all collection materials in the correct place within the pod located in the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum laboratory, located in Suitland, MD. Indexing and cataloging were very important aspects of this job. Half of the week was spent in Suitland, where the majority of the collection is present, while the remainder half of the week was spent in the pathology lab at the National Zoo. Work at the National Zoo included rinsing specimen tissues of remaining formalin, and placing them in a vacuum sealed tight bag with the correct labeling tag. These tissues would be transferred to Suitland later on. All collection specimens were logged and kept track by my team and I on the computer. Presentations by specialists working for the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum were given at random to educate and inform us about their current research, including projects relating to the BP oil spill of 2010. (Mentor: Esther Langan, former Pathologist at Smithsonian’s National Zoo)

For two consecutive years, I worked as a kennel assistant while attending high school. In this position, I was primarily responsible for taking care of animals in boarding and in hospital. Duties included walking dogs, cleaning cages, runs, and bedding, as well as sanitizing the floors. I was responsible for feeding all pets as well as cleaning dishes. Other responsibilities included making sure patients were doing well, and if not, to report it to a veterinarian or veterinarian technician. When needed, assistance was give to veterinarian technicians such as holding animals properly and holding veins off to obtain blood.