Our culture has a fascination with crime. Many of us played cops and robbers as children. The true crime genre of books and magazines has now grown to include some of the most popular podcasts. Mysteries and detective shows are among the top-rated TV series, and at least one iteration of the CSI franchise has aired each year since the turn of the millennium.

It should come as no surprise then that Jillian Harvalis’ Forensic Science class is perennially popular with Cadets. As a high school student, Harvalis herself was hooked on the Forensic Files documentary series, and she still brings the same enthusiasm to her classroom, outdoors activities, and field trips.

Her own love for forensic science continued beyond high school, giving her an understanding of how the juniors and seniors in her class may expand their interest in the subject after graduation. “I found forensics as a great way to apply chemistry, which was always one of my favorite subjects,” she said. “In college, I joined the forensic society club. I applied for unique internship opportunities, and for one of them I got to photograph crime scenes, and I really enjoyed it. The boys in this class see applications of science they’ve never seen before. They see other career options in science beyond doctor or engineer.”

Cadets have fun indulging their fascination while learning – not just from Harvalis, but also the world-class experts they meet on field trips. For example, at St. Paul’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, students explore toxicology, DNA analysis, and the firearms and ballistics lab.

“That’s one of their favorite stops,” Harvalis said. “The boys gravitate to ballistics due to spending time around firearms and their educations in gun safety. They learn how to calculate where the people involved in a shooting would have stood, and they start putting together the puzzle. I’ve always been pleasantly surprised at how much they want to be part of a solution. They’re not interested in the most disgusting, gruesome details of a crime scene, but in working toward solutions.”

The curriculum starts with study of the 7s’s of crime scene investigations:

• Secure the Scene.
• Separate the Witnesses.
• Scan the Scene.
• See the Scene.
• Sketch the Scene.
• Search for Evidence.
• Secure and Collect Evidence.

Outdoor activities include Harvalis placing crime scene clues in the forest on campus as part of a mock investigation and splitting students into two teams to collect and process the evidence. “They have very little to go on, maybe just a 911 call and an interview with a first responding officer,” Harvalis said. “The boys have to discuss which questions to ask, and they start getting invested in the case. We do fingerprinting in a lab, which they love, and we do DNA analysis.”

Some of the mock investigations are based on real-life cases and scenarios. In one, Cadets study a case of two sets of twins being swapped at birth, looking at photos of the babies and other pieces of evidence to determine which are blood-related.

Additional units focus on how to question a witness, a facial-reconstruction project in the Academy’s Innovation Center, and criminal psychology of the type used to determine a defendant’s sanity. Beyond the investigations, Harvalis also conducts mock trials, where she acts as a lawyer and has “guest stars” serving as the judge and bailiff. “Their grade is based on my trying to trip them up,” she said. “They have to be confident in the evidence they’ve found and how they present it.”

As in many classes at the Academy, students benefit from polishing interpersonal skills necessary for team and individual success in the classroom and beyond. “They enjoy collaborating, and that reflects real life in the field of forensic science,” Harvalis said. “It’s not just them alone in the lab. Also, they get to feel the satisfaction of reaching a conclusion, whereas so much of science is trial and error without necessarily reaching a conclusion.”

For all the chance to immerse themselves in one of our culture’s “guilty pleasures” around the fascination with crime, students still take away a great deal of hard knowledge and soft skills. “This is a fun, hands-on, lab-based class,” Harvalis said. “It’s a lot of doing. And it’s not a high school version of the lab. It’s what they would actually be doing as professionals.”