Generic Job Description
Animal Technician IV
GRADE D
Representative Duties:
- Oversees the daily operation and support staff of an animal unit. Serves as a principal source of information and instructs investigators and support staff on animal handling, husbandry and sanitation techniques. Maintains quality control standards.
- Prepares, evaluates and modifies specialized protocol and operating procedures. Ensures compliance with rules and regulation governing research animals.
- Using specialized working knowledge in one or more areas of animal husbandry and technology, conducts husbandry, sanitation, maintenance, and other care related activities for animals.
- Performs care under veterinary supervision including drug administration, blood collection, and pre and post operative care. Maintains records of treatments.
- Prepares reports related to animal care activities.
- Receives and houses new animals.
- Maintains inventory of supplies.
- Performs additional functions incidental to animal technology activities.
Family: Research-Support
Job Code: 628 Date: 2/89
The job duties listed above are representative and characteristic of the duties required and the level of the work performed in the job title. The duties will vary from incumbent to incumbent in the job title.
Yale
University Clerical and Technical Job Description
Job: 628 Animal Technician IV Grade
D
Required Knowledge:
- Specialized college-level coursework; detailed but narrow knowledge in one or several work-related areas; substantial knowledge of broader field of learning.
- Limited knowledge of business, accounting, or commercial procedures with detailed knowledge in these particular areas.
- Limited knowledge of University organizational policies and procedures generally; detailed knowledge of a narrow area of University rules and procedures.
Required Skills:
- Copies data from standard or easily understandable formats.
- Use of one or several standard reference works.
- Classifies material for filing; use of straightforward or complex filing systems.
- Screens complex, technical or specialized literature for referral.
- Write simple internal memoranda, fills out complex forms.
- Occasional use of more complex machines, such as word processors or personal computers.
- Performs complex experiments from start to finish.
- Experiments include multiple procedures performed in combination and/or sequence.
Office and Administrative Skills:
- Enters and retrieves data from given sources on a personal computer.
- Refers callers and visitors to the appropriate individual.
Experience, Education, and Formal Training:
- Two years of related work experience in the same job family and a Bachelor degree in a related field; or an equivalent combination of experience and education.
Complexity and Organization:
- Wide variety of complicated job tasks requiring coordinating numerous processes/methods.
- Often coordinates or organizes the work of others.
Interpersonal Relations:
- Ongoing involvement outside immediate work unit.
- Offers or obtains specialized information and provides assistance on complex matters.
- Trains, instructs, or teaches others in academic, research, or other professional matters.
Supervisory Guidelines:
- Work is subject to general review on an occasional basis.
- Incumbent plans
and schedules own work and/or the work of others based on an understanding
of broadly defined objectives and priorities; supervisor reviews work
after its completion.
Instruction provided only in new situations, methods, procedures that are not clearly related to existing tasks and duties.
Independent Judgment
- Established procedures/policies govern some work situations.
- Regular exercise of independent judgment or initiative.
- Problems solved by choosing solutions from among several alternatives that are not necessarily governed by established procedures.
Leadership Responsibility
- Often provides work guidance, instruction or orientation of others.
- Often distributes and monitors work.
Impact and Consequence of Error
- Work affects outside immediate work unit, but rarely outside the University.
- Errors are difficult to recognize and correct and can cause harm or financial loss to individuals, departments, and the University, or to other individuals and groups.
Working Conditions
- Ongoing possibility of safety risks.
- Occasional conflicting demands, deadlines, emergencies, or time pressures.
- Regular sustained concentration.
- Some physical effort or dexterity.
Certification
- AALAS
- Laboratory Animal Technologist Certification preferred.
Example 1
Animal Technician
(628)
Salary: D
General purpose:
An Animal Technician
for a large research lab responsible for over 3,500 mice to provide technical
support for transgenic/knockout facility. Responsible for maintaining
colonies, shipping, receiving, and inventory control for the colony along
with all the necessary paperwork and documents
Essential duties of position:
- Assure sufficient numbers of appropriate strain animals to fulfill (20) Principal Investigators experimental protocol.
- Maintain breeding innumerous transgenic mice lines as directed by Principal Investigator. Supply both superovulation and pseudopregnant mice daily.
- Perform weaning, tail docking and numbering of potential transgenic mouse pups, as well as subsequent retrieval of transgenic mice to bred and use in experiments.
- Plan superovulation injection rota and perform injections. Coordinate weekend hormone injection schedule with lab personnel, which includes participating in weekend injection rotation.
- Prepare census of all mice and submit reports to Principal Investigators on a weekly basis. Verify YARC animal order and census data on a monthly basis. Order mice weekly.
- Coordinate receipt and dispatch shipments of experimental mice and ensure necessary paperwork is in order.
- Assist and instruct lab personnel on acceptable procedures. Assure adherence to YACUC protocol by lab members.
- Report census and protocol irregularities to Principal Investigator.
- Meet with interdepartmental animal facility user's committee monthly to review breeding requirements, census, protocols, and other pertinent information.
Education and training:
- Two years of related work experience in the same job family and a Bachelor degree in a related field; or an equivalent combination of experience and education.
- Preferred: Bachelors in Biology.
Skills and abilities:
- Record keeping accuracy organizational skills.
- Ability to accurately determine plugging in mated females.
- Ability to transfer several hundred animals between rooms efficiently on a weekly basis.
- Preferred: AALAS Laboratory Animal Technologist Certification. Some computer experience.
Example 2
Animal Technician
(628)
Salary: D
General purpose:
An Animal Technician
for a large research lab responsible for over 3,500 mice to provide technical
support for transgenic/knockout facility. Responsible for maintaining
colonies, shipping, receiving, and inventory control for the colony along
with all the necessary paperwork and documents
Essential duties of position:
- Assure sufficient numbers of appropriate strain animals to fulfill (20) Principal Investigators experimental protocol.
- Maintain breeding innumerous transgenic mice lines as directed by Principal Investigator. Supply both superovulation and pseudopregnant mice daily.
- Perform weaning, tail docking and numbering of potential transgenic mouse pups, as well as subsequent retrieval of transgenic mice to bred and use in experiments.
- Plan superovulation injection rota and perform injections. Coordinate weekend hormone injection schedule with lab personnel, which includes participating in weekend injection rotation.
- Prepare census of all mice and submit reports to Principal Investigators on a weekly basis. Verify YARC animal order and census data on a monthly basis. Order mice weekly.
- Coordinate receipt and dispatch shipments of experimental mice and ensure necessary paperwork is in order.
- Assist and instruct lab personnel on acceptable procedures. Assure adherence to YACUC protocol by lab members.
- Report census and protocol irregularities to Principal Investigator.
- Meet with interdepartmental animal facility user's committee monthly to review breeding requirements, census, protocols, and other pertinent information.
Education and training:
- Two years of related work experience in the same job family and a Bachelor degree in a related field; or an equivalent combination of experience and education.
- Preferred: Bachelors in Biology.
Skills and abilities:
- Record keeping accuracy organizational skills.
- Ability to accurately determine plugging in mated females.
- Ability to transfer several hundred animals between rooms efficiently on a weekly basis.
- Preferred: AALAS Laboratory Animal Technologist Certification. Some computer experience.
