August 7, 2009 

Training the Next Generation of Forensic Scientists

By Darren McRoy

Kids love a good mystery, and child sleuths like Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys have been solving them in the pages of young-adult novels for decades. Now a series of summer programs are introducing teens to the real-life mystery-solving world of forensic science.

At Camp Darden in Courtland, Virginia, for instance, the Girl Scout Council of Colonial Coast (GSCCC) offered the second year of their Camp Scene Forensics program this summer. At the week-long camp session, middle-school Girl Scouts between 11 and 14 mixed ordinary camp fun with an engaging course in forensics. The girls fingerprinted each other and analyzed the prints, experimented in extracting DNA from fruit, and performed blood-spatter analysis on a mock crime scene.

“Forensic science is a great way to not only introduce girls to crime scene investigation, but to give them practice in teamwork, problem-solving, scientific experiments, and critical thinking,” said Elizabeth Farry, community relations manager for the GSCCC. “Girl Scouts all over the country are dedicated to a national initiative created to provide opportunities for girls to learn about and get involved with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Forensics, of course, covers all of those and has great hands-on learning opportunities.

“It is never too early to get girls excited about science!” Farry added.

A thousand miles to the southwest, the Cyber Innovation Center (CIC) in northwestern Louisiana is teaching digital forensics to kids a couple years older. At the inaugural Cyber Forensics Camp at Northwestern State University, teams of tenth-graders from six Louisiana schools—each team accompanied by two teachers—spend a week attempting to solve a mysterious (fake) crime. They pull clues from a cell phone and a hard drive, examine a Facebook page for hints, and learn how to recognize a digitally enhanced photo, alongside more conventional forensics such as testing liquids. By the end of the week, the camp attendees must testify their case before a panel of “judges,” pulled from the local community.

Training the teachers alongside the students is part of a program to induce long-term systematic change, says G. B. Cazes, vice president of the CIC. In the future, those teachers can themselves pass on their new knowledge to their students. That way, “you get [students] engaged and you keep them engaged all through their education,” Cazes said. “And then when they graduate, you’ve been linking them into career pathways, and they step into that without missing a beat… When the kids are so engaged and so excited, that’s when you know you’re making a difference.”

And they might find the next step on that career path across the pond, at the United Kingdom’s University of Leicester, which held its first iteration of a summer undergraduate forensics course this year. At the intensive three-week program, 21 students—all from the U.S.—participated in the equivalent of a minor course in forensic science: capturing, testing, analyzing, and presenting “crime-scene” evidence. With instructors and lecturers from both the United States and the U.K., the course offers a dual perspective on forensic science in two countries.

“It is very important for young scientists to learn the opportunities for using their skills in forensic science,” said Dr. John W. Bond, an Honorary Research Fellow at Leicester, who is co-running the program. “This is also a very good way of introducing young people to science and to get their interest through something that they see on TV and easily captures their imagination.”

Bond says his class was so popular, it was oversubscribed, and intends to continue and expand the program to meet demand. “Seeing so many young people really keen on science and its practical application is a great reward and tells me we are doing something that is useful and worthwhile,” Bond said.

Indeed, from middle school all the way through college, and across the planet, forensics is fascinating the next generation to inherit the mantle of a noble and seminal science.