Community School science teacher Barbara Christian helps (from left) Bailey Martin, Jonathan Tornberg, and Tyler Sholes fill out paper work on observations. Click photo for a slide show. (Bill Giduz photo)

By EMILY MATRAS
Davidson College News Office

Blood samples, microscopes, and saliva swabs are common props on the “CSI” television program, but sixth and seventh graders from Davidson’s Community School got to use all three on Monday in a Davidson classroom. Biology majors in Associate Professor Karen Bernd’s seminar “Forensic Serology” created their own “whodunit” mystery murder for the 12 seventh graders and 10 sixth graders.

The victim? None other than the Davidson Wildcat.A large component of the seminar is oral communication, Ms. Bernd explained. So she set up the project with middle schoolers to give her students practice in communicating what they’ve learned. “The best way to find out if you really know something is to teach it to somebody else,” she said.

During the previous four years she has offered the seminar, students have set up simulations for Boy Scouts and students at Davidson IB middle school. The college students are totally responsible for creating and carrying out the simulation. In fact, they didn’t even tell Ms. Bernd who the final culprit was!

To figure out who killed the Wildcat, the Community School students engaged in hands-on activities at three stations. Their experiments identified the gender and blood type of the killer, helping eliminate suspects.

“Basically we’re giving kids an idea of what happens behind the scenes of a crime lab,” said Kevin Cook ’09, a double biology and political science major. “The goal is to introduce them to lab techniques to hopefully interest them in science.”

The collegiate bio majors worked on the project for a month. They created a complex murder story to make the experience as authentic as possible.  “We wanted to use a Davidson public figure as the murder victim, but not an actual person because we didn’t want to offend anyone. That’s why we used the Wildcat,” Mr. Cook explained.

The Davidson students took pictures of the elaborate “crime scene” at the Wildcat Den in Baker Sports Complex, complete with a bloody wrench that was the murder weapon. There were six suspects, all of whom were Davidson students and friends of the students in the forensics seminar.

One suspect’s possible motive was anger over losing to the Wildcat in a game of Mario Kart. Another suspected the cat of stealing his Koolaid. The actual culprit was a transfer student who just didn’t like Wildcat basketball.

Seventh grade Community School teacher Kristen Patterson appreciated the effort put into the project. “We want our students to get an idea of what real science in a lab is like, and they’ve certainly been able to experience that here,” she said. “Plus, college is always a cool thing for these kids to see.”

Sixth grader Calli Holshouser was glad that she got to participate. “Being in a college lab and learning a lot has been really fun,” she said. “Doing experiments like this makes me like science even more.”