Forensic Science (Graduate)

Jennifer Leier, 2009 NWU Forensic Science Graduate, has just graduated from the Montana Law Enforcement Academy and will now begin an intensive field training officer program for the Great Falls Police Department in Montana. Congratulations Jennifer!

As NWU starts classes, five forenisc science graduates and students start a new job at American Systems in Virginia as latent fingerprint technicians. Graduates Gabrielle Toy, Alisha Engle, and Cody Olander and students Tanine Rennick and Kevin Curry have all been hired by a company that provides forensic science services to clients.

Kelly Sobilo was hired as a quality assurance/safety officer with American Systems, a Department of Defense contractor, assisting with a state of the art forensic lab being built. Once the lab is up and running, she will transition into a Senior Latent Print/ Trace Evidence Technician position. Congratulations Kelly!

Congratulations to Heather Birch who starts Feb 1, 2011 as a diener at the El Paso County Coroner Office in Colorado Springs, Colorado.Heather completed her FORSC599 internship in Colorado Springs and made the contacts that helped her in the hiring process.

Congratulations to Kimberly Van Den Akker (MFS ’10), Maggie Horan, and Lindsay Liddell on their recent hire by the Omaha Police Department Crime Lab. All three are starting this month!

Gabrielle Toy was recently hired by the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office as a Deputy. She will also be presenting her research project on avian scavenging in Nebraska at the research symposium on Dec. 11 in Callen Conference Center. Congratulations, Deputy toy!

Students in a seminar on external ballistics sweated through a particularly warm morning on the shooting range at the Izaak Walton shooting facility. They each shot several different weapons through a chronograph to measure velocity and into ballistic gel to look at trajectory.

Douglas Scott, PhD, and member of the Association of Firearm and Toolmark Examiners, will teach a seminar in external ballistics on July 17. Students will learn what bullets do after they leave the barrel of a gun and how they penetrate different media. They will be using ballistic gel, also known tissue simulant, to look at the trajectory of the bullets passing through the gel.

A Nebraska Wesleyan University forensic science professor has returned home after a two-week mission in Haiti where she helped identify Americans who perished in the January 12 earthquake.

A Nebraska Wesleyan University forensic science professor has been deployed to Haiti where she will spend two weeks working in a mobile morgue.

“We train for this,” said Melissa Connor, professor and director of Nebraska Wesleyan’s Forensic Science Program. “These are the situations you deal with when you work in the forensic science field.”