Photograph by Stephanie Coren


Criminal justice students help put in the back patio deck.

The building and construction management students and the criminal justice students will be hosting a grand opening of the new forensics investigation crime scene house at 1-4 p.m. on Tuesday, May 4. There will be hors d’oeuvre served and a ribbon cutting ceremony at 1:15 p.m. This semester’s project managers, Rob Crowley and Gretchen Goodenough, the first women project manager in UW-Platteville history, will be providing guided tours for all that attend. This building is a state building that many groups will be able to use. The forensic investigation team, the criminal justice department, the BCM students, the Platteville police department and the Platteville fire department will all be able to utilize the house.

This house was built with special walls for ballistic testing as well as walls painted with special epoxy paint so that blood spatter could be thrown on the walls and cleaned off completely. Throughout the house, special motion sensor cameras have been placed so the professor can view the activities from his office and the class can record their activities and assess them at a later time. There is a room specifically for interrogation practice, and there is also a room in the house with a two-way mirror so that the professor can observe without being in the way of the experiment in process.

This project was started in the fall semester of 2009 when the BCM classes began building the framework of the house. Everything was built by the BCM students besides the decks, which were then created by the criminal justice students. The criminal justince students also created the layout of the interior of the house.

The Platteville community, students at the university and state officials are all invited to the grand opening May 4 located on College Farm Road, directly behind the swine center.