The worlds of Kassidy Owens ’25 and Mattie Smith ’25 are about to collide—and the two newly minted Longwood graduates couldn’t be more delighted.
Even though they entered Longwood at the same time and were headed toward the same career field, they never crossed paths on campus until shortly before Commencement this May.
Now they’re happy to know there will be a fellow Lancer in the forensic science master’s degree program at VCU when they begin the next chapter in their lives there this fall. (In addition to admission to the highly competitive program, both also snagged one of the limited paid graduate teaching assistantships in the program.)
Thanks to the proliferation of television shows showcasing the work of forensic scientists, both Owens and Smith were fascinated with the field at an early age.
“Growing up, NCIS and Forensics Files were always somewhere on TV in my house,” said Owens, who majored in chemistry. “Then in seventh grade I started watching The Flash, which is based on a superhero whose daytime job is being a forensic scientist.”
Smith, a biology major who was a first-generation college student, had a similar experience.
I grew up watching criminal investigation shows like Criminal Minds and CSI with my mom,” she said. “It was always in the back of my mind that I’d like to have that kind of job, but I didn’t really know how to get there.
Mattie Smith ’25
“I grew up watching criminal investigation shows like Criminal Minds and CSI with my mom,” she said. “It was always in the back of my mind that I’d like to have that kind of job, but I didn’t really know how to get there.”
For Owens, another strong influence was a class she took in high school that focused on The Innocence Project, which takes on cases where evidence and circumstances point to a person’s having been wrongly convicted. Innocence Project staff work to exonerate the convicted person using DNA and other scientific evidence.
“I decided I wanted to pursue a career in forensic science because it seemed like a way I could help keep my community safe and make sure innocent people don’t get locked away,” Owens said.
Both Owens and Smith thought criminal justice would be the right major to prepare them for their dream job, but they switched majors when Longwood faculty pointed them in the right direction.
For Owens, that advice came from Dr. Sarah Porter, professor of chemistry, during a Zoom meeting set up by the Admissions office. “She said I should major in chemistry because that would help me get to my career goal,” said Owens, who took Porter’s advice and later picked up a biochemistry concentration.
For Smith the advice came a little later.
“I had a meeting with my advisor in the criminal justice program, and he told me, ‘You’re in a good place to be a police officer or a lawyer.’ I said, no, no, no. I don’t think I want that,” Smith recalled. Her advisor, Dr. William Burger, now retired, then asked what she did want. Her answer: “I’m really interested in forensic science.” And his reply: “Why don’t you just switch to biology and then get your master’s in forensics?”
Smith called her mother with the news that she now had a solid plan for becoming a forensic scientist—“I was ecstatic,” she said, “and so was my mom”—and the next day she filled out the form to switch to biology.
With those choices made, both Owens and Smith knew they were in the right majors, discovering a passion for science and for research, which they conducted side by side with Longwood faculty.
In her research project with chemistry professor Dr. Jonathan White, Owens discovered that methionine—which is used as a nutrient in yeast culture media—can inhibit the toxicity of platinum anti-cancer drugs. This can lead to inaccurate conclusions and potentially eliminating new and effective anti-cancer drugs.
“Our conclusion was that a different yeast strain that doesn’t require methionine as a nutrient should be used to study new anti-cancer drugs— and that any previous studies should be scrutinized,” Owens said. She had the opportunity to present her research at the American Chemical Society (ACS) national conference in San Diego.
Smith’s research focused on pollen identification, an important area of forensic paleontology because each plant has a unique and identifiable pollen. She and her professor tested an alternative method of identifying pollens that, unlike the traditional method, doesn’t rely on dangerous, highly acidic chemicals to prep the slides. Using pollen grains collected from plants in Longwood’s herbarium and equipment in her professor’s lab, Smith used a gold coating machine to prep the grains for examination under the scanning electron microscope.
I was telling everyone how fortunate I was to have access to these sophisticated and very expensive pieces of equipment.
Mattie Smith ’25
“I was telling everyone how fortunate I was to have access to these sophisticated and very expensive pieces of equipment,” Smith said, adding that the research showed the alternate method was superior to the traditional method both in terms of safety and of the quality of the pollen images that were created, as well as how quickly samples could be prepped for analysis—less than two minutes compared with anywhere from three hours to a day for the traditional method. Smith was invited to present her research at the Virginia Academy of Science annual meeting held at the University of Virginia May 22.
When it came time to choose a graduate school, the forensic science program at VCU was the first choice for both Owens and Smith, but Smith says she probably would not have gotten in without the help of her advisor in biology, Dr. Mark Fink. “As a first-gen student, I had no idea how to go about looking at graduate schools. I told Dr. Fink, I’m really going to need your help because I don’t what to do,” she said.
She shouldn’t have worried.
Fink helped her evaluate graduate program options, and, once she settled on VCU, he researched the undergraduate courses she needed to be eligible for admission there. He noticed that one critical course was missing from her degree plan—Organic Chemistry II—which he helped her fit into her schedule before graduation.
Owens got help from her advisor as well, taking some biology classes at his suggestion. And she gives some of the credit for getting into the VCU program to the hands-on opportunities she had as an undergraduate at Longwood, especially the research she conducted and the lab equipment she had access to.
“I was exposed to so many different techniques, like gel electrophoresis, clonogenic assays and then GC-MS (gas chromatography-mass spectrometry) and HPLC (high-performance liquid chromatography), which are used in every single forensics lab. When you go to a bigger undergraduate school, you don’t get hands-on experience with any of that,” she said.
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