This podcast features an interview with Martina Bison-Huckaby, the Director of the Center for Executive Education at West Virginia University's College of Business and Economics, in which she explains how West Virginia University, the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors (ASCLD), and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) are assisting forensic scientists seeking leadership training.
The Center for Executive Education offers a variety of business non-degree programs that are accessible to the business community through open enrollment offerings and customized specifically to meet the needs of the client/organization. Bison-Huckaby first explains the importance of cultivating leadership skills among forensic scientists in order to facilitate the efficiency and effectiveness of forensic labs. Her comments note the importance of leadership skills among forensic scientists even if they do not hold a specific lab management position. She views leadership as being the facilitation of interactions with coworkers that motivate behaviors and attitudes that maximize personnel performance in assigned tasks. The interview includes a discussion of the leadership training available for forensic lab personnel at West Virginia University, which focuses on the meaning and characteristics of leadership in forensic labs.