International Classroom:Â Experiences with Exchange Programs in Forensic Science
Forensic scientists may be involved in casework with an international dimension. For instance Disaster Victim Identification (DVI), wild life forensics, smuggling, air plane crash investigations and cases of sports doping. In such casework it is important to realize that cross border communication and cooperation is needed and international, rather than national, regulations and standards must be followed.
For students it would be of benefit to experience cooperation with class mates with different cultural background to train capabilities to work on such cases. Therefore 3 semester programs are made available for exchange students, stimulating a multi-cultural and multi-lingual environment. The programs are: International Forensics, Forensic Biology and Forensic Chemistry and are taught in English, rather than Dutch. All the three programs have classes, practicals and project work combined, and the different aspects of the mentioned themes are incorporated in the subjects.
We like to share our experience in the development and teaching of the exchange programs in the last 4 years, and we invite other universities to participate in our international student exchange programs.
Ben de Rooij started as a lecturer in analytical and forensic chemistry at Avans University of Applied Sciences in 2006. Currently, he is coordinator of the major forensic laboratory science. This major is a bachelor program focused on chemical- and biological information from pieces of evidence.
His research focus is on the development of analytical methodology for forensic-, and clinical sciences. Recent projects are steroid profiles in serum and saliva, colorants in textile and activity of renin by LC-MS/MS.
In the period 1998 – 2005 he took responsibility for projects and quality assurance in contract laboratories and pharmaceutical production facilities. Before that he was Ph.D.-student and post-doc at the Leiden-Amsterdam Center for Drug Research (LACDR).