Katie Schultz
News Editor

As Mesa State continues to receive recognition for its new state-of-the art facilities, another new project is underway that is straight out of a CSI episode. The criminal justice department is in the final approval stages for the “Body Farm,” a forensic anthropology study research center.
The project, headed by assistant criminal justice professor Micheal Bozeman will create only the fifth facility of its kind in the nation. It will be used by students majoring in criminal justice, forensic nursing and biology. Local and state law enforcement agencies will use it to monitor how various conditions affect the ways bodies decompose.
Yet, to Bozeman any major could use the potential facility. He sees it as an opportunity for everyone.
“Mesa State is like a family,” Bozeman said, “and that family crosses many disciplines.” This opportunity for a multidisciplinary approach led Bozeman to propose a facility like the body farm.
However, the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department, which is funding the project from the departmental budget, is still waiting for approval.
According to Bozeman the approval process starts with research.
“We don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” Bozeman said. Therefore, he has been studying how other body farms conduct their research. The ways in which this lab would be different from others in the nation is not only the multidisciplinary approach, but also the climate and geology of the Grand Valley. No other lab is in such a location, and in the words of Bozeman this would allow MSC to be on the “cutting edge.”
The next step is to propose such research and facility to MSC Institutional Research and the administration. This allows time to not only review the logistics of running a body farm but also the ethics as well.
President of the college Tim Foster sees this as one more thing that would separate MSC from the rest. According to him this would make the MSC criminal justice programs one of the besProxy-Connection: keep-alive
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in the state. Not only does it have great instructors, According to him this would make the MSC criminal justice programs one of the best in the state. Not only does it have great instructors, “it will give students great hands on experience.”
It is this experience that students are looking forward to. “This is a cool opportunity for Mesa State,” said Alex Tait, a junior criminal justice major, “(We) can actually see how the body decomposes, instead of watching it on TV we can actually experience it.”
The final step is to receive accreditation for the facility.
This facility, however, would benefit more than just the students of MSC. This facility would also be available for law enforcement to use from not just the county but also from state agencies such as the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI). According to Bozeman no formal agreement has been made between such groups but he hopes that a partnership will eventually form.
The location for the facility is undisclosed, but according to Bozeman it will be close enough to be practical for students to reach it, but far enough away to not be “offensive to the community.”
One such offense could be odor, yet according to Bozeman there will only be one or two “donations” on site at a time. “Unless you’re directly on top of the site, the smell will not go much beyond,” Bozeman said.
“(The facility) is a great opportunity for students to take what they learn and actually apply it in the field,” Bozeman said, “making them more marketable in the real world.”