\n<\/p>\n
Inside an unoccupied house, a student gingerly pushes open a creaky door and takes a wary step into a dark room\u2014only to find the walls completely splattered with blood.<\/p>\n
It sounds like the clich\u00e9 climax in a horror movie, but for students in the criminal justice program at Gwynedd Mercy University, it\u2019s a regular class assignment.<\/p>\n
This fall, Gwynedd Mercy unveiled a new Crime Scene House, a three-story home that features various staged rooms for experiential learning in forensic science. Students now have a space for simulated criminal investigations, with each room configured to resemble a different crime scene they might encounter, including the blood spatter room.<\/p>\n
Gwynedd Mercy is one of a dozen-plus colleges across the country that turn houses into mock crime scenes; West Virginia University claims the title for largest hands-on training complex in the U.S., boasting four crime scene houses, a vehicle processing garage, a ballistics test center and designated grounds for excavation. <\/p>\n
The not-so-haunted houses are designed to give students a safe, supervised space to immerse themselves in a crime scene. Plus, it\u2019s a great enrollment draw for students who get a thrill out of murder mysteries.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re very excited about the opportunity to have students come into our program and learn the how-to, so then they walk out of here and they say, \u2018This is what I want to do,\u2019\u201d said Patrick McGrain, associate professor of criminal justice and the program director at Gwynedd Mercy. \u201cIt really is for the benefit of creating a more professional law enforcement community.\u201d<\/p>\n
From convent to crime scene: <\/strong>McGrain and university leaders aspired to open a crime scene house on campus for years. In July, the dream became a reality when the Catholic university\u2019s administrators identified an older building that used to house the Sisters of Mercy. The building was in disarray, and when McGrain was offered the opportunity to revamp it for students, he jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n The Crime Scene House holds a variety of staged rooms to practice different investigations including a kitchen, a bathroom, two bedrooms and an office. In addition, the house features spaces for other simulated experiences, including an interrogation room, an evidence area to analyze fingerprints and a model \u201cflophouse,\u201d or a low-rent motel room used for drugs. And of course, the blood spatter room.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to teach students how to analyze blood splatter, the analysis of the trajectory,\u201d McGrain said.<\/p>\n Every element of the house is available for students to manipulate and investigate, even the flooring.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have carpet laid down that they cut out pieces, use luminol and then take it over to the lab, well, what is it that we have?\u201d McGrain explained. \u201cIs it feces, it is urine, is it semen, is it blood? What is it that we\u2019re looking at and what do you think happened in this room?\u201d<\/p>\n Faculty can track students\u2019 progress solving the investigations through cameras mounted in each of the rooms. <\/p>\n While the home at times may resemble an escape room, with CCTV cameras and a mystery to solve, \u201cthe only person locked in is the one who\u2019s been kidnapped, and that\u2019s been planned, and it\u2019s a dummy,\u201d McGrain said.<\/p>\n The university allocated a small budget for furniture, but a significant number of items came directly from campus community members, who donated household items or clothing.<\/p>\n \u201cI even had two students who found a couch on the side of the road, grabbed it, put it in their trunk and brought it in,\u201d McGrain said. \u201cIt is now the couch that sits in the living room.\u201d<\/p>\n Because the house is designed to be ransacked and torn up by \u201ccriminals,\u201d the university also keeps backup furniture and wall decor.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we want to break something, if we need to tear something, we do,\u201d McGrain said. \u201cThe hands-on learning knows no limits.\u201d<\/p>\n Experiential learning: <\/strong>Other academic programs, including nursing, psychology and social work, have simulation labs integrated into the curriculum to allow students to practice their skills. In the same way, the house gives criminal justice students a chance to gain career skills. <\/p>\n Before the Crime Scene House was established, Gwynedd Mercy faculty would set up a classroom to resemble the crime scene.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not nearly as detailed,\u201d McGrain said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have the furniture. You don\u2019t have the fake drugs or guns.\u201d<\/p>\n The facility has also served as a resource for law enforcement to train new detectives on how to use tech tools, such as digital photography and indoor drones.<\/p>\n Jerome Mathew, a junior criminal justice student, said having the Crime Scene House is a game-changer\u2014especially for getting incoming students amped about studying criminal justice.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were really thrilled about seeing all the different fake drugs, money, different rooms, the cameras and how monitored everything was,\u201d Mathew said.<\/p>\n Gwynedd Mercy has plans to grow the criminal science major and launch a forensic science minor. The Crime Scene House will be an integral piece of that, McGrain said. \u201cWe\u2019re expecting to see a spike in applications and a spike in admissions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Inside an unoccupied house, a student gingerly pushes open a creaky door and takes a wary step into a dark room\u2014only to find the walls completely splattered with blood. It sounds like the clich\u00e9 climax in a horror movie, but for students in the criminal justice program at Gwynedd Mercy University, it\u2019s a regular class<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[2173,18466,671,658,2664,393,908],"class_list":{"0":"post-31820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-gmercyu","10":"tag-house","11":"tag-investigations","12":"tag-scene","13":"tag-student","14":"tag-unveils"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31820\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}