From Las Vegas to Miami to Penn State -- students have the opportunity to experience crime scene investigation first hand with the creation of a forensic science major.

The new major will be housed in the Eberly College of Science and will be offered mainly to incoming students in August 2005.

"We're putting the pieces in place that will make it one of the top programs in the country," Penn State President Graham Spanier said at his Faculty Senate address last Tuesday.

The Eberly College of Science has been working with the College of the Liberal Arts and the College of Health and Human Development to develop courses specifically for the major.

The major has an emphasis on science but also draws from interdisciplinary areas such as sociology, anthropology, and health and human development, said Eberly College of Science Associate Dean Norman Freed.

"The university has a huge reservoir of faculty and courses that are already available that we have pulled together and added our own new material," Freed said.

The closest option that was available prior to this major was a pre-forensic option offered by the sociology department, Freed said. The program, which had about 12 students enrolled, will be eliminated with the creation of the major.

John Kramer, professor of sociology and criminal justice, said the students will be allowed to continue with the pre-forensic option until they graduate but will also be offered the chance to enroll in the forensic science major.

Bob Shaler, chief forensic biologist in New York City and a Penn State graduate, suggested that the university develop the major. Kramer said Shaler may join the staff as the program's director, but nothing has been finalized.

Kramer is on the planning advisory committee, and he developed the major's crime, law and justice course, which will focus on the ethics of falsifying evidence and the role of the courts. "Clearly, the interest is higher now than I think it will be in two to three years from now, because of the popularity of [the television series] CSI," Kramer said.

Dan Sykes, director of analytical instructional laboratory in chemistry, will also be teaching two courses in the program: forensic chemistry and a quantitative analysis course, which will prepare students for the type of work involved in crime lab facilities.

"A good forensic scientist is a good scientist first and requires seeing the big picture not only in the sciences but the public policy issues also," he said.

Freed said the college is aiming for about 60 graduates per year, a number influenced by the laboratory facilities' capacity.

The program will also involve crime scene investigations in a specialized laboratory.

The program will only be available for undergraduates but will serve as a launching pad for graduates who want to pursue a post-baccalaureate in a more specialized area of forensics, said Penn State spokesman Tysen Kendig. "We think it's a field of the future so we're very excited to be involved with it," Freed said.