WVU offers Free Forensic Workshops for Middle & High School Students

The popular CBS television show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, has manipulated the public into believing that crime scene evidence can be instantaneously analyzed, evaluated, and eventually linked to suspect; all within a 60 minute episode. This can be best described as the CSI effect.

Institutions across the United States want to bring the public back to reality from this fictional ideology, WVU is no acceptation. Charles Bily is an instructional coordinator with West Virginia University’s Next Generation Forensic Science Initiative, which is offering free workshops to both middle and school students. Fingerprints, Footwear impression evidence, Firearm identification, and Bloodstain pattern analysis workshops will each take place on February 22, March 22, April 26, and May 24, at West Virginia University’s Crime Scene Complex. Students who attend these workshops will learn both the process and value of lifting fingerprints and footwear impression; the importance of ammunition in firearms identification, and how to interpret bloodstain patterns at a crime scene.

Bily stated that it is a “really neat experience for the kids to take classes in that complex because that normally is reserved for the forensic science majors, So this is an opportunity for kids that don’t go to school here to get some experience in that complex.” Workshops are one and a half hour long, limited to a maximum enrollment of 25 students and are filled on a first-come, first served basis.

For the full article and to register for these workshops click here!

Source: Charleston Gazette

[Abstract written by Noel Andres, ForensIQ Intern, 2/12/14]