Biomed Class Yields Critical Eye at Dunbar

New Elective Equips Students to Conduct Criminal Investigation

Twenty-five years ago, a sci-fi TV show called “The X Files” prompted a generation of young women to pursue STEM careers. These days, programs like “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and “Bones” continue to spur interest in forensic science at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School. A new elective, “Principles of Biomedical Sciences,” drew so much interest that Keia Scott-Newsome is teaching four sections of the class this fall.

Biomed has attracted a variety of students, from freshmen with little laboratory experience to upperclassmen in the school’s Math, Science, and Technology Center (MSTC) program. It is part of Project Lead The Way (PLTW), a platform with clusters of career and technical education (CTE) courses. “I want to do something in the medical field, and this class helps me know what’s going on with the body,” said junior Carley Biddulph. “It’s good for figuring out stuff and problem-solving. We do a lot of tests, and it’s never boring.”

These past two weeks, for instance, the students have investigated a suspicious death after discovering a woman’s body on the floor in the back of their classroom. (Not to worry. Anna, a mannequin staged to play this role, is now safely tucked away in a supply closet.) The classes pored over the scene for clues like strands of hair and fingerprints and blood spatter, questioned suspects and interpreted polygraph tests, checked Anna’s body temperature to calculate the time of death, and completed an autopsy report. The students also donned safety goggles and rubber gloves to conduct toxicology lab tests and planned to dissect Anna’s heart (actually a sheep heart) – all the while working in small groups to hash out a hypothesis on her cause of death.

Their teacher stands back and proudly watches the progress as the teens connect their school projects to real-life experiences. Suddenly her students are watching crime stories on the nightly news with a critical eye and sharing their informed opinions.

“This class gets them moving and talking and agreeing to disagree,” said Scott-Newsome, who is in her ninth year at Dunbar. “I’m just the facilitator. They’re the doers.”