..On the cover of Rolling Stonewell no.
While the cover of this months Rolling Stone Magazine features Wallflowers lead singer Jakob Dylan, West Virginia University appears in the publication on page 103 in an article about unique career-oriented undergraduate programs around the country.
The magazine, which is already appearing on newsstands, features WVUs Forensic Identification Program among those at Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, MIT and others.
The article focuses on helping students find a”dream major thats going to help launch your career.”
Beginning on page 69, the article includes a photograph of the WVU “crime house”or more formally the WVU Forensic Identification Laboratory, showing students working with state police crime lab Section Head Mark Neal at a mock kidnapping scene.
The article continues on page 103, describing the program as having a”more scientific and technological bent”than law enforcement and criminal justice programs.
It describes the programs multidisciplinary content:”You graduate with a B.S., and within the major you sample different disciplines: DNA testing taught by medical-school faculty, crime-scene photography from creative arts professors, plus digital finger-print identification using computer technology.”
The programs director, not a Stone reader, was nevertheless happy to hear about the article.”Were very pleased and excited to have this exposure in a magazine that has such national and international circulation,”Michael Yura said.”Weve built a major that trains students to be experts in forensic identification and biometrics, and since this is a field that is growing, with many career options, Im happy that students from all over will be exposed to what WVU has to offer.”
The program began when WVU and the FBI signed an agreement in 1997 that led the way for WVU to become the first university in the world to offer this kind of undergraduate degree.
Since then, the University has added a”crime house,”where students, their professors and professionals interact to solve mock crimes everything from murder to kidnapping. Recently, WVU received $3 million in federal funding for program enhancement, and the University has begun a collaboration with the U.S. Army, which is opening a Biometrics Fusion Center in Bridgeport, W.Va. The University hopes to provide testing and evaluation of biometric products and may begin a graduate program in information assurance verification that electronic data is what it claims to be.
“Discover Magazines recent issue ran a list of things that will be obsolete within 20 years,”commented Yura,”and the second on the list was the written signature. I think our program is just in time to train students for a changing world where even data such as a signature will be electronic and where highly trained college graduates will be needed to ensure that such data is what its represented to be.”