Purpose/scope: utica's proposed 1,200 square foot crime laboratory will provide an open floor plan space that will support a full range of crime scene investigation activities

This Project Grant award from the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), under the Congressionally-Identified Projects program (CFDA 11.617), will fund the construction of a 1,200 square foot Crime Laboratory at Utica University. The flexible, open-floor design of the lab will enable faculty and students from various disciplines to develop, stage, and investigate simulated crime scenes. Expected outcomes include providing over 100 students per semester from programs such as Criminal Justice, Biology, Nursing, and Theater a hands-on learning experience in crime scene investigation, security planning, and incident response. The $709,830 grant award has a performance period from August 1, 2023 to July 31, 2026.

Activities

The crime laboratory will be located in bull hall, a state-of-the-art, 23,000 square foot academic building located on the southeast side of campus, near the burrstone road entrance, and the principal home of the school of business and justice studies, of which criminal justice is a part.

Expected outcomes

Faculty members in criminal justice, biology, nursing, and theater have developed an extended exercise that simulates a domestic violence case. After significant scripting and preparation, theater students will play the roles of the perpetrator, victim, and other witnesses. Nursing students will practice clinically interviewing the patient/victim and documenting their findings. Criminal justice students will work the crime scene, interview the victim, perpetrator, and nurses, and work with biology students to appropriately collect, store, and analyze biological/chemical evidence. Crime scene investigations often employ crime scene mapping technologies or computer-assisted drafting programs. The construction management program would therefore also potentially work with the criminal justice students to help develop realistic, three-dimensional renderings of the crime scene. This cooperative exercise will provide more than one hundred students with a hands-on learning activity that cuts across criminal justice, health professions, stem fields, and the arts.finally, the crime laboratory will also be used for security and anti-terrorism training. Various scenarios will be set up, for example, students will be asked to design a security plan for an event in which a visiting dignitary gives a lecture. Students will create a core planning team, develop a security plan including a budget, list the needs from cooperating law enforcement agencies, create a contingency plan, perform a threat and vulnerability assessment, execute event-based security, crowd screening and control, VIP protection services, and practice crisis management and incident control. Like with a crime scene investigation scenario, security and anti-terrorism training will utilize students from other academic programs, including public relations and journalism and theatre.

Intended beneficiaries

Each semester more than one hundred seventy-five criminal justice students and approximately seventy-five students from biology, chemistry, theater, nursing, and public relations/journalism will participate in dynamic learning activities in the crime lab.

Subrecipient activities

Noneuseful life: 20 years