Former FBI profiler headlines ISU’s Science and Technology Week | Local Education

Mark Safarik, who spent 23 years with the FBI including 12 as a criminal profiler, will speak at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Brown Ballroom in the Bone Student Center.

He plans to start by laying out the general procedure he used in investigations and then use a case he worked on in California as a real-life example, he told The Pantagraph. 

“It’s a fascinating case because it has a lot of interesting behavioral dynamics (…) plus it’s not very bloody,” he said.

Safarik hopes his talk can dispel some of the myths about forensic evidence and behavioral analysis promoted in TV shows. He said those sorts of media have left people with a distorted sense of what investigators can do when retrieving and interpreting evidence, and that can be a problem for juries.

“I wish the public (…) would not have such high expectations for what we can do with evidence,” he said. “(…) It’s the shows on TV that foster this false sense of our abilities.”

Investigations have come a long way since he started in law enforcement, though. He started before computers were common in the field, instead using teletype for the earliest versions of national databases.

“I’ve watched a big transition since my first days in law enforcement,” Safarik said.

One of the biggest changes is the language used to describe some of the cases he worked on. It was not until the late 1970s that the word “serial killer” entered use in the United States, coined by Robert Ressler, whom Safarik later worked with at his consulting company Forensic Behavioral Services International.

“When you don’t have the type of individual you want to study, you don’t even have them defined, you can’t do research,” Safarik said.

Since his time at the FBI he has continued his involvement in law enforcement, including by providing expert testimony and as a member of the Vidocq Society, which gives input on cold cases. He has also served as a TV consultant and host of his own TV shows. 

ISU's Science and Technology Week is about celebrating advancements in the fields, and the College of Applied Science and Technology students and professionals who are making those advancements happen, CAST Assistant Dean Kara Snyder said. The first Science and Technology Week the college held was in 2000. The 2020 event was canceled due to the pandemic.

The week’s Women in Leadership event is newer, only about six years old, Snyder said. ISU President Terri Goss Kinzy will give this year's speech on Friday morning at the Bone Student Center. Before coming to ISU last summer, Kinzy spent years as a biochemist, including doing research while in administrative positions. 

While Safarik’s talk is free, the Women in Leadership session requires pre-registration. It is $15 for students and $30 for professionals. Registration can be found on the CAST website at cast.illinoisstate.edu.

The Women in Leadership event is important because seven of CAST’s eight departments graduate women into male-dominated fields, Snyder said. Family and Consumer Sciences, which includes majors like interior design and food nutrition and dietetics, is the one exception. 

The number of majors and departments in the college has led to a broad array of keynote speakers for Science and Technology Week, Snyder said.

“We actually have 28 majors within our college, so that really allows us a lot of variety in our speakers,” she said.

Past speakers have included Temple Grandin, Bill Nye and Tim Gunn.

The college will also recognize recent alumni on Thursday at the Academy of Achievement Induction Ceremony. The ceremony honors selected alumni from the past 20 years who have shown leadership in their respective fields. There is a coffee hour at 8:30 a.m. and the ceremony starts at 9:30 a.m. in the Old Main Room of the Bone Student Center.

All of the academic units are connected by their emphasis on applied learning, Snyder said.

“Our students really get jobs in hands-on fields (…) the word 'applied' is really key to who our students and faculty are,” she said.