Do you go through the “forensic” or the “anthropologist”?
I’ve been idly fantasizing (VERY idly) about going back to grad school to be one. I find the nuts and bolts parts of Kathy Reichs’ books fascinating, and it really makes me curious - how do you end up in that job? Do most people start out, say, in pre-med and wander over to medical examiner and then to the floaters, the crispies, the skeletons? Or do you start out studying physical anthropology in the homo habilis vein and end up sifting through WTC wreckage somehow?
Somewhat more specifically, how exactly do people who took a completely different undergrad go BACK to school for that sort of thing? It’s my impression that there’s a sort of “post-grad pre-med” track where you go a summer or a few semesters and get, I don’t know, horrible classes like o-chem that you missed in college because you were taking, say, Latin Prose Composition (well, I didn’t go to college for utility, did I?) - but how do you go back to school for something that’s not as well defined and popular as medicine or law but that has nothing to do with your humanities degree? Is it possible? Is it done?
Finally, is that the sort of thing you have to go to a specific school for? I know there aren’t so many forensic anthropologists in the world as all that - is it like vets where they all went to a very few select schools? Do you have to study with a master? Is it more of an academia thing or more of a criminal justice thing?
The whole area is just so fascinating to me, and I’d like to know more about it for my “take this job and shove it” fantasies.
A very good place to go is Univ. of Tenn-Knoxville, they have the famous body farm where they research how bodies decay by putting actual bodies outside in all kinds of conditions.
I parked very near the body farm not long after it opened but at the time I did not know it was there.
Bijou Drains, you beat me to it. I don’t know how there could be better “hands on” training than at the farm. They have provided much research information about how bodies decay under all sorts of circumstances.
I had seen a “tour” of the farm on a television program and assumed that it was somewhat removed from the regular UT campus. Not so! It is adjacent to a campus parking lot.
I think Patricia Cornwell (Cornwall?) has connected one of her novels with the place.
Bless all who perform this service to mankind, but YMMV. (You Make Me Vomit)
I am in the middle of an Archaeology degree. Within that degree (or, I believe, within a general Anthropology degree you can major in Forensic Anthropology simply by taking and passing the first year anthropology and/or archaeology courses alongside a particular set of first year biology courses available to non-Science School students for exactly that purpose. Then you take some Biological Anthropology courses in second year, THEN the specific, focused Forensic courses become open to you.
That is not the only way you can get that major and according to those I know from my classes there is some migration from the Medical School into F. Anth through course crossover. Anth/Arch come under Arts here, so it is fun to share classes with 3rd year Med students and watch them be stunned at the comparatively minimal workload.
Of course, this is at an Australian university, so YMMV (the other, non-vomit YMMV ;)) but it might be worth checking out the general Anthropology/Archaeology departments, as well as Medicine, of wherever you’d like to go to see under what circumstances they offer Forensic studies, if at all.
Why don’t you write an email to the department of anthropology at the local state schools and ask them what they want? A quick glance at the University of South Carolina’s anthro department’s website shows that they have a specialization in medical anthropology, but I don’t think that’s the same as forensic anthropology. There are definitely one year programs to help people get into med school, but a couple biology classes might be enough.
FWIW, I majored in anthropology, and avoided physical anthro as much as possible, but I did have to take intro to human evolution and we had one of the forensic anthropologists on the faculty come in for a guest lecture. She showed us slides. Slides that are burned into brain. It was horrible.
And then I decided I really wanted to focus on culture and religion.
BTW, I ended up going to grad school for public policy, for which my anthro degree has not exactly come in super handy (most of my classmates majored in economics or poli sci or whatever) and I made it work! I think that the couple of econ classes I took before I applied showed them I was serious. Sign up for intro to bio or intro to human evolution at the local community college and see what advice your professor can give you.
The UT body farm is next to the parking lot of the UT hospital but that is across the river from the main campus. I am sure it was put there to keep it away from most students who don’t go to the hospital unless they are sick and the student infirmary is closed.
It is possible and is done. I had an acquaintance who got an undegraduate degree in philosophy, worked at non-profits like CAlPIRG for several years where she developed an interest in ecology, went back to school to get a masters in biology, then a doctorate from this interdisciplinary program. As you noted she basically had to make up a number of lower division requirements while in her masters program, including minor bugbears like o-chem.
I suspect doing a masters first, rather than going straight into a doctoral program, might be a better first step for just that reason. It depends on how flexible the doctoral program is, but if there is any sort of time constraint, getting up to speed on basic coursework like human anatomy might be easier done while getting a masters. However I know some folks consider masters programs unnecessary dithering and hand-holding ;). I’d follow Kyla’s advice and e-mail some local programs to see what their thoughts are.