Edmond set for two new forensic science labs

Journal Record, The (Oklahoma City), Mar 30, 2007 by Kelley Chambers

Graduate from one University of Central Oklahoma program and you might be able to simply cross the street for your first job.

Forensic science students and their professional counterparts will soon be within a hair sample's breadth of one another when two building projects are complete.

In 2005, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation announced it would build a new headquarters across from the University of Central Oklahoma campus on Second Street. Now the university has plans of its own for a forensic science center across the street from the state lab.

The OSBI has been operating out of a much smaller space on NE 36th Street since 1972.

Philip McNayr, the architect for both projects, said the new $29 million 87,000-square-foot OSBI building is about 75-percent compete.

The new building will include office and lab space for OSBI as well as classroom and training space for forensic science students.

But UCO has plans to start work on its own forensic science building as soon as this fall, across the street from the OSBI building.

Steve Kreidler, executive vice president at UCO, said it will be a single-story building with about 22,000 square feet of space.

Kreidler said the construction costs will be about $4.6 million funded by a state higher education bond. When the building and labs are fully equipped, however, the cost could climb to about $10 million in public and private money, Kreidler said.

Kreidler said without a dedicated space, the forensic science students are forced to take their courses in several buildings around campus.

Specifications are still being worked out for equipping the university's building by its director, Dwight E. Adams, the former director of the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va., who was hired last year to oversee the Forensic Science Institute at UCO.

Kreidler also said the city of Edmond has approved an elevated walkway over Second Street to connect the buildings, although those plans are not in the project's immediate future.

Charles Curtis, criminalistic services division director with OSBI, said the two buildings will benefit both the crime lab experts and students pursuing a degree in the field.

"A lot of times we didn't really have a space for students to work because in the laboratory we're working with actual casework," he said. "We thought what would be ideal is to have a place where they could work where they're not interfering or tying up the instrumentation we use in casework."

Jerry Hire, special projects officer with OSBI, said the bureau's new building is patterned after some of the best crime labs they saw around the country.

One of those they visited was Adams' former stomping ground at the FBI lab at Quantico.

"We kind of took the best of everything we saw and incorporated it in to our square-footage limitations," Hire said.

Curtis added that although the OSBI building is fully funded for construction, the bureau is requesting about $750,000 in operating costs from the state Legislature.