Posted on Thursday, May 13, 2010
¾¨Ó㴫ý students in the "Detective Fiction/ Forensic Science" cluster course staged a mock crime scene and presented the results May 10 in the McKelvey Campus Center.
A cluster course is two linked courses taught by at least two faculty from different disciplines to the same group of students. This cluster focused on the evolution of detective fiction and forensic science, and the ways these two fields of study-both born in the mid-19th century-parallel and intersect with each other.
"The novels we read in the detective fiction course reflected the development of forensics," said Dr. Deborah Mitchell, ¾¨Ó㴫ý associate professor of English and film studies. "We moved from a Sherlock Holmes story and British 'armchair' detective fiction to the American 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction. The last novel we read, Jeffery Deaver's The Blue Nowhere, dealt with a new area of forensics: cyber forensics."
"In the forensic science course, we covered topics ranging from processing the crime scene to DNA analysis to crime scene reconstruction," said Dr. Helen Boyan, ¾¨Ó㴫ý associate professor of chemistry. "As a cluster, we evaluated the forensic science written about in detective fiction to determine whether it is 'good science.'"
The cluster built to a mock crime scene, involving faculty, staff, and student volunteers as victim, witnesses, and the "perp." Dr. Scott Mackenzie, associate professor of theatre, was the bludgeoned "victim."
Students processed the scene, putting into practice a variety of techniques learned in the lab: proper documentation and collection of evidence; microscopy of hair; document examination, fingerprint analysis; and gas chromatography mass spectrometry. They tracked down leads and interviewed suspects and witnesses to solve the case. Their findings were given in a poster presentation and written as a short story incorporating the details of the case.
As part of the poster presentation, the students "arrested" Dr. Katherine Robertson, ¾¨Ó㴫ý assistant professor of biology, who "killed" Mackenzie to protect her career.
Contact Mitchell at (724) 946-7030 (e-mail dmitchel@westminster.edu) or Boylan at (724) 946-6293 (e-mail boylanhm@westminster.edu) for additional information.
