Walking into Room 128, the first things you might notice are the conspicuous masking tape outlines of corpses scattered around the floor, fingerprint classification charts and DNA posters hanging on the walls. This is the home of Alisa Jeremica’s three forensics classes, the first ones ever taught at Liberty.

Jeremica student-taught a forensics class at Lakes High School six years ago, and asked for a forensics class at Liberty after she began teaching here in 2007. Approval for the class didn’t come from the Issaquah School District until May of this year, however.

“With first-year classes, there is usually a lack of experience and a lack of equipment,” junior forensics student Alyssa Nanney said. “But Forensics has really been put together quite well and Mrs. Jeremica has done a very good job of integrating what we know from other science classes with the new information she teaches us.”

Forensics is not your traditional science course. Covering topics from DNA analysis and fingerprinting to crime scene investigation, its criminal and CSI appeal has drawn a combined 93 seniors and juniors to take the class. Students have examined mock crime scenes where they traced physical evidence to a student in the school, and recently, they inspected their own fingerprints to determine how easy they would be to catch if they were to commit a crime.

“Forensics is more of an application class than the other, more traditional sciences,” Jeremica said. “We learn one specific idea or technique from the different sciences, like biology, chemistry, and physics, and then we apply that to some situation in order to solve a crime or process a certain kind of evidence.”

Although Forensics relies on many biology, chemistry, and physics concepts, it is not an overly rigorous science class.

“I’d say that a student with a pretty strong biology background, a basic understanding of chemistry and some reasonable math skills would be just fine taking my class,” Jeremica said.