Museum Scientist and Preparation Lab Manager, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, UC Berkeley
Theresa “Terri” Barclay got her “dissection chops” in the SRJC labs, working on mountain lions. Today, 11 years later, her work days are spent in the Preparation Lab of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology at the University of California, Berkeley, where she manages and mentors the interns and the entire workload involving cutting open and preserving birds, exotic animals, snakes, raptors or guiding her bone-cleaning (flesh-eating) domestic beetle colony. Her official title is Museum Scientist and Preparation Lab Manager, though if she has to explain her work to people who are not used with the scientific field, she might say “academic taxidermist,” because she preserves with so much care all those special animals for people to see in a museum.