Published: July 03, 2008 08:01 am      

EKU grads will make television appearance

Two recent graduates of Eastern Kentucky University’s nationally prominent Forensic Science Program will appear this summer in the Crime Scene University (CSU) program on the Investigation Discovery television channel.

Erin Strickland and Josh Barr were selected to be among 12 participants in a six-week crime scene investigation course last summer at Penn State University that formed the basis for the six-part series.

Typically, the students attended a crime scene investigation lecture-style class each morning, followed by a laboratory session and then a crime scene in the evening.

“We were participating in the class one way or another for about 12 hours a day and sometimes longer,” said Strickland, a Douglasville, Ga., native who is beginning graduate studies in chemistry this fall at Duke University.

“Most of the time our afternoons and evenings involved processing mock crime scenes that had been set up by our instructors as well as the (TV) production crew,” Barr said. “For TV purposes, we were separated into two teams of six students each. This was done to create a competition because we used two somewhat similar houses and the instructors tried to set up the scenes as similar as possible.”

Barr, a Circleville, Ohio, native now working with the Hamilton County (Ohio) Medical Examiner lab, said the Penn State course was taught by a group of scientists “with an immense amount of experience in a wide variety of forensic specialties. We covered a very broad range of topics in the field of crime investigation and I hope that the viewer will get a realistic appreciation of how important science at the crime scene really is.”

Strickland called the course “an amazing experience. The strong chemistry and lab background I obtained from EKU allowed me to understand some of the techniques used at the crime scene. The connection between the work in the lab and the work on the crime scene was more evident.”

Strickland said viewers of the CSU program “can expect to see what crime scene investigation is really like, in contrast to CSI and other Hollywood shows, the difficulties in interpreting the evidence correctly to get the true events of what happened at a crime scene and the great lengths, work and time it takes to finish a good, thorough investigation.”

The other participants were from Penn State, Arcadia University, Duquesne University, Cedar Crest College, Virginia Commonwealth University and Slippery Rock University.

“I think the most important thing I brought back from this course is an extra appreciation for the quality of our forensic science program here at EKU,” Barr said. “It’s hard to realize how good something really is until you get the chance to go out and measure yourself against other students that have gone through similar programs at other schools. I realize each program has its advantages and disadvantages, but it’s a good feeling after four years of hard work to know that you studied at one of the best programs in the country.”

The first program in the series airs at 8 and 11 p.m. Thursday.