Northeastern University is currently ranked 12th nationally in the best Criminal Justice/Criminology schools. Despite this, Northeastern’s commitment to developing a curriculum for forensic science has been lacking. This lack of commitment to forensic science was highlighted by their move many years ago to discontinue the “Introduction to Forensic Science” course they once offered. Currently, the only forensic science/psychology classes with credits relating to a Criminal Justice and Criminology degree are Psychology of Crime and Law and Psychology. While these courses may be insightful in other ways, they fail to fully capture even the basics of the forensic science field. In order to create a more well rounded Criminal Justice/Criminology program we would like to have the following:

1. Bring back the Forensic Science class and allow it to be a CJ elective. The CHEM department discontinued the Forensic Science class due to low registration. Allowing the Forensic Science class to become a CRIM elective would open the course to many more students, helping to achieve a better registration rate.

2. Right now the two classes offered by Northeastern, while useful in other ways, do not capture the neuropsychology perspective that many students are interested in. This creates a gap of knowledge in students' educations. To have consistency in the concepts being taught across different sections, it may be useful for current staff to have training centered around the topics that will be brought up in the course.

3. Create more forensic science and forensic psychology classes within the school. Comparable Criminal Justice programs have many such classes relating to forensic science/psychology including: Victimology (UMD, ASU, Penn State, SUNY Albany, Temple, UML), Psychology of Criminal Behavior (UMD, Temple, UML), Crime and Forensic Mental Health (ASU, UML), Crime Analysis (ASU, SUNY Albany), Criminal Investigation Skills (UC, Temple), Criminal Profiling (UML), Forensic Psychology (UML). Northeastern should offer courses like the above to help draw in prospective students and give current students interested in forensics another path to follow.

We understand that currently there is a lack of staff who are able to teach courses like these in the School. We hope that through this petition the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, as well as Northeastern, are able to see the number of students who are interested in taking these classes so that when hiring staff they can choose candidates who are able to bring these classes to life.