S-STEM Scholar Belinda Chesser's Blog

 I always find it difficult to imagine what the future will look like. Whenever I'm asked questions like "Where do you see yourself in five years?" my first thought is that there's no way I can answer that. Five years is a long time and so many things can happen between now and then. But I'm learning to think of it more as a kind of visualization of where I would like to be in the future.  Professionally, in one year, I should be one semester away from graduating with my bachelor's degree in Forensic Science. In five years, I hope to be knee-deep into a Ph.D. program in anthropology. In ten years, I hope to either be at the tail-end of the Ph.D. program or be beginning work as a Forensic Anthropologist, assisting law enforcement. Ideally I would like to make an impact on the field by contributing research that improves identification methods so that there are fewer and fewer people who go unidentified in death. The societal challenges that matter to me are iss...

Three years ago, I had a basic understanding of what Forensic Anthropology was. Of course, I'd seen shows like "Bones" which centers around an anthropologist who works with the FBI (and writes novels on the side), and although I know that shows often exaggerate and sensationalize the work of forensics, the basics of the profession are there. So I knew that things like biological sex and ancestry could be determined through the examination of certain bones. Then I took an introductory course on Forensic Anthropology at GCC that showed me there is so much more information contained within our bones. The story of our life can be found in our bones. In addition to age, biological sex, ancestry, and height, they can offer clues to our hobbies and occupations as areas of bone build up or wear away from repeated movements, our past and present illnesses, our childhood circumstances if we grow up without a healthy diet, and potentially how we die. I found that incredibly fascinat...