Christine Grace, 16, traces her interest in blood splatters, tire tracks and ballistics to the night when she saw these detectives solving the most heinous murder by the thread of a single hair. She was watching the television show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.
"I was just, like, how could they solve crimes from a hair?" Christine said.
Last fall, she enrolled in a new forensic science class at Dulaney High School in Timonium, and ever since, she has wanted to be a forensic scientist, collecting evidence at crime scenes.
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Forensic science is all the rage, as high schoolers such as Christine have been inspired by well-publicized trials and by television to study the fine points of fingerprints and to dream of careers swabbing saliva.
Educators say they haven't seen such attention paid to a science since young Americans dreamed of space in the 1960s. And practitioners turn incredulous when asked whether there's a national trend here.
"Are you kidding?" said Lawrence Kobilinsky, a forensic scientist and associate provost at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, whose forensic science program has doubled in size over the past five years to 800 students.
"You've got kids coming out of Ivy League colleges that are interested in forensics," said Kobilinsky, president of the Council of Forensic Education. "Before, you know, it was, `I want to be a doctor or lawyer.' Now, it's, `I want to be a forensic scientist.'"
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But piqued by trials including O.J. Simpson's and engrossed by television shows featuring forensic science such as Law & Order and Crossing Jordan, interested youths are showing up faster than a latent fingerprint on Formica.
Solving the puzzle
"It's kind of like a big puzzle, and you get to put the pieces together," said Christine, who's from Cockeysville. She had been thinking vaguely of becoming a doctor before watching the first episode three years ago of CSI with her mother, who works in insurance.
In classrooms, forensic science is now one subject that excites even jaded youths. From Boston to Seattle, thousands of schools and colleges around the country have established courses in response to an outpouring of student interest.
The Bronx High School of Science has four forensic biology classes with 120 students taking the full-year course.
