Gators around the country apply medical knowledge to solve crime with forensic medicine distance education program
The program prepares students for careers in medico-legal death investigations
Sept. 1, 2022 — Students slowly move through the woods, using what looks like a small lawnmower with a screen attached to methodically search below the soil. This piece of equipment, called a ground penetrating radar, or GPR, is one of the tools commonly used by forensics teams to explore crime scenes for evidence below the surface.
The GPR used in this hands-on lab course, offered as a component of the UF College of Medicine William R. Maples Center for Forensic Medicine’s forensic medicine distance education program, gives students from across the country a chance to gain real-world experience using tools that are essential in medico-legal death investigations as part of their education in forensic medicine.
Jason Byrd, Ph.D., center, and Lerah Sutton, Ph.D., right, demonstrate how to use ground penetrating radar with a student in UF's forensic medicine distance education program.
The department of pathology, immunology and laboratory medicine’s program, the first in the world to offer a master’s degree for this discipline that can be completed 100% online, has experienced significant growth as hundreds of students each year complete classes preparing them for careers as medico-legal death investigators, crime scene investigators, medical examiners, coroners or autopsy technicians.
The forensic medicine distance education program launched in 2018 after the Maples Center enjoyed nearly a decade of success within with other distance education programs. The first program began in 2009 in veterinary forensic sciences, which then expanded into wildlife forensic sciences and shelter medicine, said Jason Byrd, Ph.D., a professor and the associate director of the Maples Center.
“Nobody offered that kind of program before us,” Byrd said. “Our veterinary forensics sciences graduate certificate soon grew into a master’s concentration, and it later morphed to include diversified species, due to student concern about stopping worldwide animal poaching as well as companion and large animal abuse, cruelty and neglect.”
Lerah Sutton, Ph.D., assistant director of the Maples Center, was one of the first graduate students to participate in the veterinary forensic sciences graduate certificate at UF as the first recipient of the veterinary forensic sciences graduate assistantship. While pursuing a multidisciplinary doctoral degree at UF across several forensic disciplines, she developed the plan for the forensic medicine distance education program, creating a new master’s program at UF focusing medico-legal death investigations. Sutton has been the program director for the forensic medicine program and an instructor of numerous forensic courses since its launch in 2018.
By offering these courses completely online, Sutton said, working professionals have a chance to earn credentials that would allow them to advance in their field.
“It offers a lot more flexibility for students, many of whom are working professionals, to get an education in a way that doesn’t disrupt what they’re doing in their 40-hour day job,” she said.
Graduates of UF’s forensic medicine program have gone on to work for some of the busiest and most prestigious law enforcement agencies and medical examiner’s offices in the U.S.
The program consists of 37 credit hours that are usually completed in about two years, with seven core courses. While the program’s core courses — which include trauma analysis, principles of osteology, principles of crime scene investigation and more — can all be completed remotely, students have the option of taking one-week, in-person elective lab courses to supplement the information they learned online. One such course is the lab on artifacts of decomposition, during which students learn how to search for and excavate remains using mock graves, the same way they would on a real crime scene.
“That’s something we teach in a theoretical framework in our online courses,” Sutton said. “Students become familiar with it within their core curriculum, and then we give them the opportunity to work with this highly specialized, highly technical equipment that is regularly deployed by law enforcement agencies if they take the lab class associated with the course.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the forensic medicine program has experienced significant growth. Classes started in 2018 with about 30 students, but nearly 300 are now enrolled.
Sutton said the pandemic’s equalizing force of making all higher education courses online, even temporarily, helped legitimize online education. The UF forensic medicine program also continued to add new instructors and courses during this time. Using the programmatic infrastructure created by these distance education programs, the Maples Center seeks to support growth in distance education programs throughout the College of Medicine and UF Health.
“Even in the midst of the pandemic, we continued to expand our course offerings and launch new elective courses to innovate our curriculum and offer new learning opportunities for our students,” Sutton said. “Rather than stagnating, we continued to grow internally. Students saw that and decided this is a program in which they wanted to be involved.”
