I'm working on finishing up an AS degree (this whole work part time/school part time thing takes a long time...). Should be done next spring. I've been planning on being done with school when I get it finished up, but the past several days I've been kind of toying with the idea of transfering to a 4 year school and going for a bachelors degree in animal behavior.

In thinking about this, I've pretty much got this summer to decide what I want to pursure and where so I could start applying to schools/for scholarships for fall 2012. So that means I need to start doing some leg work now.

I'm looking around online a bit, but most of what I'm finding is farm animal based or graduate programs. Does anyone know of schools, preferably in the midwest, tht have programs that also incorporate comanion animal behavior courses of study?

Bergin Univeristy of Canine Studies has a BS program. It is in California and from what I know they mostly deal with service dogs. I don't really know anything about the school though so hopefully someone will give you more info. Here is the link

http://www.berginU.edu/

I think that the University of Wisconsin, Madison has a large animal behavior department. It is ag-based, but within that broad framework I bet you could find interesting course work.

You may want to contact one of the profs at Michigan State University, Animal Behavior & Welfare Group. Their curriculum may allow some level of focus on companion-animal study/research.

I scraped a couple of links from MSU that mentioned "companion-animal"

https://www.msu.edu/~zanella/bio_janice.html
In addition to my work on production animals, I also work on companion animals. I currently have several projects with Janet Smith of the Capital Area Humane Society (http://www.cahs-lansing.org/) including examining owner’s perception of aggression in dogs, studying outcomes of temperament testing in dogs, and validating a feline temperament test for use in shelters. I am also available to assist individual owners with behavior problems of their dogs and cats.

http://animalwelfare.msu.edu/animalwelfare/hot_topic

https://www.msu.edu/~zanella/past.html
Dr. James Serpell - University of Pennsylvania Human-animal interactions. Dr. Serpell holds the position of Associate Professor of Humane Ethics & Animal Welfare at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool in 1979. His research has focused on human-animal interactions, more specifically the benefits of pet ownership on some aspects of human well-being.

Is there anything specifically that you are hoping to do with the degree? Are you just looking for the piece of paper or are you looking to gain a specific set of skills?

Lot of universities will get you the piece of paper. I've seen some of those people try to apply their skills and they are useless.

Moorpark College does an exotic animal training/behavior curriculum but it's marker based and so is fairly universal. It's also very time consuming as the students run the zoo including all of the animal care tasks.

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Is there anything specifically that you are hoping to do with the degree? Are you just looking for the piece of paper or are you looking to gain a specific set of skills?

It's kind of two fold. First, I'd like expand my knowledge and experience about animals and their behavior. Second, to have a 4 year degree because it's really good tool in the tool box.

I returned to school after working and volunteering for several years after high school and I've been plugging along at my AS degree for a couple years now as I'm working part time so I've only been doing about 10 hrs/each semester. So I'm kind of thinking in order to get through two years of school full time, I'm going to need to be studying something that I find highly interesting and applicable to what my long term goals are, so that led me to animal behavior. I hope that makes sense!!

While I know that 6-8 weeks at the ME school will probably get me more insight into dog behavior than the majority of colleges, that piece of paper from a well respected college is pretty helpful in opening up opportunities.

I am in MI, so I'm going to be emailing a professor at MSU as Tim suggested to see if there are course that they offer that would line up with these interests.