The Science of getting Students involved

A skull rests on the top of a desk. Infant maggots float around in a glass jar nearby.

A young girl picks up the skull and holds it up to her own head questioning her mother if this skull is as big as her head.

Ten year-old Ashley Washington and her mother, of Towson, are just two of the over 100 people who filled the Smith Hall lecture room on September 27 for the Saturday Science Series aimed at getting students from kindergarten through 12 grade involved in the sciences. The program of the day asks students to think about “Skin and Bones: Using Science to solve crimes.”

Young Washington said before the lecture began she hopes to learn more about “bones and solving crimes” from the presentation. She says she likes science “a lot” and wants to be a Veterinarian when she grows up.

Presented by Towson University Professor, Dr. Dana Kollmann, the lecture focused on teaching the audience about the technology she used during her decade’s worth of service to the Baltimore County Police Department. Kollmann wants students to see “forensics and science are not boring and can actually be applied to real life situations”. The doctor selected a few from the audience to engage in a few activities including making a caste in order to get fingerprints from the deceased, using luminal to detect blood spatters at crime scenes and how to get a shoe print from mud or dust. 

A participant in the lecture’s interactivity, 11 year-old Tristan Day, of northeastern Baltimore City, said the part he enjoyed the most was “mixing the chemicals to get the luminal to glow in the dark.” Tristan also said he “wants to be like Dr. Kollmann and be a field investigator when he grows up.”

The next lecture in the Saturday Science Series will be hosted on October 11, and will focus on “Remote Sensing: Adventures in Earth and Space Science.” Thomas wants people to start “thinking outside the box to discover new ideas for themselves.”