A member of the Forensic Leadership Alliance sent in a question many labs are quietly living with: how can labs strengthen mentorship and collaboration between agencies, students, and providers to better prepare the next generation?
It’s easy to file that question under someday. Every lab already has more casework than hours, and a mentorship program can look like one more thing competing for time nobody has.
The FLA’s mentors don’t see it as competition.
Dr. Pamela Marshall on the Backlog You Already Have
Dr. Pamela Marshall opens with the reason this question keeps surfacing across the field. A generation of forensic scientists is heading toward retirement, and investing in academic programs, FEPAC-accredited or not, is how a lab makes sure the community it built stays in good hands once it’s gone.
That investment doesn’t have to start from scratch. Marshall’s next point is aimed squarely at the agencies that haven’t set up an internship program yet, the ones that assume they don’t have anything worth handing to a student:
“I guarantee you they already know they’ve got projects, they need something validated. They have a really good research project that they need done and they don’t have the manpower because you’ve got cases coming in.” – Dr. Pamela Marshall
The project doesn’t need to be invented. It’s already sitting in the queue, waiting on hours nobody has.
Marshall’s fix starts with formal channels. Partner with a FEPAC-accredited program at a local university, and bring students in as interns. Some agencies are going further with externships, where a student stays based at the university while working a real project for the agency. Fellow mentor Ray Wickenheiser makes the case for starting even earlier: a guest seminar or a talk at a local university, offered before a lab needs the pipeline, builds the same mentor network the next generation will eventually draw on.
The Mentors on Why It’s Worth the Extra Time
The panel didn’t pretend this comes free. Taking on a student is more time and energy than not doing it. But weighed against what a lab already invests in an employee over a career, the tradeoff holds up, and it works as a trial run for both sides: a chance to see who fits before either commits further. Universities need it too. Graduate students need real research projects, and a lab’s backlog already has them waiting. What comes back to the lab is staff who arrive with training and instincts a typical new hire doesn’t have yet.
About the Forensic Leadership Alliance
The FLA was created to give forensic lab leaders access to peer mentorship and practical tools that aren’t easy to find elsewhere. John Collins, Dr. Pamela Marshall, Julie Sikorsky, and Dr. Ray Wickenheiser have been working together since 2020 on leadership development for forensic scientists, with a focus on coaching, mentorship, and team empowerment.
Questions submitted to the FLA mentors are addressed directly, without softening the complexity of what forensic lab leadership actually involves. Topics span managing generational dynamics, navigating change, delegation, public engagement, and succession planning. These are the kinds of challenges that rarely appear in formal training but come up constantly in labs.
Join the Alliance
FLA members receive access to exclusive written and video content, one-on-one coaching sessions at ISHI, and a free leadership resource guide. Membership is free and open to forensic science professionals at any stage of their leadership path.
The FLA also hosts a full-day workshop at ISHI 37 on October 26, 2026 in Providence, Rhode Island. This year’s topic is succession planning as a product of intentional leadership culture: what it looks like when future leaders step forward because they want to, not because they were pressured.
The question that started this conversation belonged to one lab. The backlog sitting in every other lab is the same invitation.