Please write a two-page paper (about 550-650 words) discussing one forensic discipline or sub-discipline.  Refer to your Readings and Discussions from Week 2 for more information about forensic disciplines.  You should do more research about your chosen discipline, writing about why that discipline interests you, what education is needed for this discipline, what types of evidence are examined under this discipline, what type of instrumentation is used in this discipline and what types of certification are available for this discipline. 

This paper will be graded heavily on grammar and English usage.  As shown in the Grading Rubric, 50% of your grade for this paper will from your content and 50% will be from your grammar and English usage. The majority of grading and feedback for this paper will be related to fundamental writing composition skills (sentence structure, verb agreement, spelling, grammar, etc.).  While this is not an English class, writing is a fundamental aspect of every job within the Investigative Forensic fields.  Therefore, this assignment should give you, as a writer, a better understanding of your writing weaknesses to help you understand where to focus your improvements.

To show your critical thinking and that you incorporated your outside references into your paper, no more than 10% of your paper may be quotations.  The majority of your paper must be written in your own words.

Make sure that you provide citations throughout your paper.  Remember that for any information you receive from outside sources, whether you quote it, paraphrase it or summarize it, you must provide citations telling the reader where that outside information came from.

Your paper should contain the following items:

Cover/Title Page

·         Body of Paper

o    550-650 words long

o    Introduction

o    Identification of chosen discipline

o    Why that discipline interests you

o    Education required for the discipline

o    Types of evidence examined in discipline

o    Types of instrumentation used in discipline

o    Types of Certification available in discipline

o    Conclusion

·         References Page

Format of Paper

·         Times New Roman font ONLY

·         12 point font

·         1 inch margins (you will have to change your margins if using Word 2003 or earlier)

·         Double Spaced

The paper does not need an abstract. It should be in APA format, including the citations and the References.