Science Technicians
Science technicians are those people you see in the white lab coats in shows like CSI. They’re not confined to forensics and police work though, you can work as a technician in just about every science there is. The job is, while it varies across the different branches of science, to set up and operate the experiemnts, to collect the results and, in some industrial jobs, to work out why processes are not working as well as they should.
Another way of thinking about it is that you’ll be doing the hands on science, not just the ivory tower thinking and experimentation.
From that description it’s obviously fairly easy to work out which type from our EQSQ personality tests will be best suited to this job: the systemizers or male brain types.
The education is usually a two year college degree in science although there are expections to this. Some technical schools offer one year certificate programs and there are also those who have a full four year college degree in an appropriate subject. But whether it’s nuclear technicians, chemical, forensic, or any other of the myriad possibilities in the different flavors of science, the most usual entry level qualification is a two year college degree.
Pay varies across the different specialties and can be from $14 an hour to nearly $30 (which is from about average for all jobs in the US to just over double it)
February 20th, 2007 at 8:19 am
I didn’t realize such little education was required for this work. I also didn’t realize that primary and secondary schools had science technicians in the UK. Is that true anywhere over here? I learned this from the blog of a man who is a science technician at Musselburgh Grammar School: http://exc-el.org.uk/blogs/brian/2006/12/.
I wonder if he wears the white coat to school each day?
February 20th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Ah, some intelligence for you about Grammar schools in the UK. They would be like what you might call a charter school or a magnet one. They are very academically minded and take only 10% or so of the population. Regular high schools would be called comprehensives and yes, they might have a lab technician, might not (the bigger ones, with 800 pupils or more I would think).
I really wouldn’t think that primary schools would though.
Of course, my intelligence could be wrong. I haven’t lived in the UK in nearly 15 years and haven’t put children through the educational system either.