spending half your workweek in a laboratory filled with flies, termites, and ants might not sound like the ideal career to most people, but it's a dream job for animal behavior specialist Duane Jackson.

Jackson, an associate professor of psychology at Morehouse College in Atlanta, decided at the age of 8 that he wanted to study animals, but he didn't think he'd end up specializing in insects: "I thought I'd end up working with small- to mid-sized woodland animals from the dog family. such as foxes [or] wolves. I was also fascinated by marine mammals. Insects were just a hobby."

Jackson, a Chicago native, had planned on attending UCLA or the University of Hawaii with the hope of one day working in a zoo or natural history museum and perhaps producing documentaries. His father, however, insisted that he attend Morehouse, an HBCU. Jackson's father was a minister who had graduated from Morehouse, and he secretly arranged for his son to meet Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during a college visit in 1964. "He said, 'Are you too good to go to Morehouse? My father went to Morehouse, I went to Morehouse, and your father went to Morehouse. And what you're going to do is come to Morehouse.'" said Jackson, recalling King's words.

The civil rights activist's presence intimidated the 16-year-old Jackson. He enrolled in Morehouse and became a biology major. But after taking a psychology course, he realized that what he was really interested in was the behavior of animals, not their makeup. He was able to satisfy his own interests and his academic requirements through the classes in animal behavior that were offered in the college's psychology department.

Jackson, 56, has been teaching in Morehouse's psychology department since 1987. He received his Ph.D. in comparative psychology/behavior genetics from the University of Illinois in 1990. The pay scale for someone in Jackson's position, at a college about the size of Morehouse, is between $58,000 and $63,000. A larger institution would likely pay $10,000 to $15,000 more.

Jackson is currently researching aggression in termites. Termites, ants, and humans are the only animals known to engage in large-scale organized aggression--or what we call war. Jackson explains, "Other animals engage in a sort of street fight, where every animal does everything. Termites have different roles: individual, specific duties to perform [in war], much like humans are trained in the military."

Jackson is also investigating termites' repulsion to light with Morehouse physicist Dr. Willie Rockward. "Collaborating on looking at termites' reaction to light under different wavelenghts may reveal that light can be used as a deterrent for termite infestations," Jackson says.

by Christina Morgan (source: BlackEnterprise.com)