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By Elise Rolandson
Solving puzzles is Phoebe Stubblefield’s specialty, but it’s not jigsaw puzzles: Stubblefield is an assistant professor and director of the forensic science program.
As a practicing forensic anthropologist, Stubblefield does casework for North Dakota and Minnesota, along with teaching and directing the forensic science program at UND. She enjoys working with students and teaching Human Osteology and Intro to Forensic Science, which has gotten even better with the new state-of-the-art crime lab formatted-classroom. The classroom project is in its second year, and the goal is to improve science education for both majors and non-majors. The lab mirrors a regular crime lab design and even has security features and restricted access. Stubblefield keeps the class as realistic as she can, and gets students interested and involved.
She says the best thing about being a forensic anthropologist is the casework. “You can learn so much through skeletons. It’s history,” says Stubblefield. When asked about her favorite case, she says it was her first one. She was given the opportunity to reconstruct a skull that had been shot with a high caliber weapon. Another memorable case was after the Value Jet crash in 1996. She was involved in helping identify passengers on the flight. For the first time she realized how much it meant to the victim’s families to have some closure. It was the first time she realized her job was a public service, and that she was helping others.
When comparing public perceptions to her actual job, Stubblefield says that the public tends to view her as a pathologist who performs autopsies and facial reconstruction. In reality she does skeletal examinations and biological profiling. She can learn age, sex, stature, ancestry, and individualizing characteristics from skeletal structures. She also does trauma analysis when appropriate; this can help to accurately determine whether sharp force, blunt force, or ballistic injury occurred before, near the time of, or after death.
Stubblefield received her undergraduate degree from the University or California, Santa Barbara, her masters from the University of Texas, and her Ph.D. from the University of Florida.
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