From Crime Scene to Lake Sample, STEMstart Students Dive In

STEMstart students investigate a “crime”on campus, then head to the lab to test the “evidence.”

Even before classes started, a group of Biological Sciences and Chemistry & Biochemistry students were able to get a sneak peak of their first semester and a jumpstart on success in the sciences.

STEMstart is a new week-long program offered by the College of Arts & Sciences. This science quick start program is designed to help students transition from high school into college-level biology, chemistry and math courses.

Students study aquatic biology in the field (above) and check out the law at Stroud’s Run State Park by canoe (below).

Students get to know faculty members and get experience in classroom lectures, lab experiments, field trips, and study skills. They get to know peer mentors who’ve been there—and know how to navigate that first year of math, chem and bio successfully. They tour campus resources that can help them wade through the expectations and challenges that make college different from high school.

The Athens News covered the program in an article on “Pre-semester STEM program puts students in the field.”

Yellow crime-tape and an abandoned pick-up truck set the scene for the mock crime that a group of incoming first-year Ohio University students helped solve during last week’s STEMstart program….

“STEMstart was an absolute blast,” one student, Alyson Bretthauer wrote in an email after the program ended. Her favorite activities included conducting DNA tests, experimenting with chemical reactions, and the CSI-style mock crime scene set up by OU biological sciences professor emeritus Scott Moody.
Moody said he spent an entire weekend planting evidence next to the Life Sciences Building in preparation. The items included chewing gum with teeth imprints, feathers, a used condom wrapper, and the focal feature, a mannequin acting as the victim. Some items were related to the crime and some were not, which forced the students to use critical thinking.
“They [the students] got to use the techniques that a crime lab would use,” Moody said.

After the students collected the evidence, they went to the lab to perform tests, such as comparing blood slides of human and animal DNA using a microscope.

Networking with alumni capped the week of events.