College Life

Private Schools That Are Well Known for This Major

• Purdue University
• Cornell University
• Clemson University
• Duke University
• Rutgers University

State Schools That Are Well Known for This Major

• Texas A&M University, University of Florida
• University of Nebraska—Lincoln
• University of California—Davis
• Michigan State University

Classes in the Major

Veterinary Entomology. No, you're not learning how to take care of someone's pet tarantula. That's an arachnid, and thus, not your specialty. Easy mistake to make. This course is about the insects associated with livestock. In other words, you're learning how to deal with the parasites that feed on our food supply. And by "deal with," we mean destroy. Let's not mince words.

Evolution of Insect Structure. To understand a form of life, you have to understand how it came to be what it is in the first place. Insects evolved as a type of organism a long time ago, but after that, they changed in more subtle ways. Hundreds of millions of years ago, we had dragonflies the size of hawks. You know if you're destined to be an entomologist if that thought made you squeal with joy.

Forensic Entomology. Insects can be evidence in criminal cases. And no, no one's calling a moth to the stand and grilling him about that sweater he ate. This gets a little gross, so bear with us. As dead things decay, insects like to lay eggs in them, because bugs literally cannot help themselves from being awful. Time of death can be determined by what sort of insect life is hanging around in a corpse. This course teaches you about all of that, and presumably how to wake up from nightmares, screaming.

Principles of Insect Pest Management. Where there's an insect, there's someone that wants it dead. Sometimes, these people have fairly good reasons for it. In any case, the goal is to get rid of pests without hurting the environment too much. As it turns out, indiscriminately spraying poison all over everything can catch some unintended targets. There are chemical, biological, cultural, and physical tactics to controlling pests, and you'll learn every one of them. The hope is to build some kind of pest-control Voltron out of all the various methods.

Insects and Human Society. Ever get jealous of all those sociology majors? Here you are, in this hard science, learning about things that make most people's skin crawl. Yet entomology and insects don't exist in a vacuum. Insects have been incredibly important to human civilization over the years. There's a reason locust swarms are indelibly associated with famine. Insects spread the Black Death, which killed one third of Europe. On a brighter note, domestic insects give us things like honey and silk. The point is that insects help shape human society, and the more you learn about that, the more you learn about insects themselves.