CDO senior Beth Peters eyes a test tube full of an orange solution during her forensics class, which includes pill identification.

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There's a dead woman named Tina lying in a pool of blood in the office of Canyon del Oro High School.

But don't worry — the "body" is actually a mannequin, and it's part of a mock crime scene used by students involved in the school's forensic-science program.

It's the first year the high school has offered forensic-science courses, and interest in the program was immediate, Oro Valley police Officer Shawn Benjamin said.

Ninety students signed up for the yearlong class after Benjamin obtained a $9,000 grant from the Arizona Foundation for Legal Services and Education to fund the course, which is taught by Brenda Wolpa and Jill Christman.

The school was awarded an additional $5,000 grant to keep the program going next year.

Benjamin, who is Canyon del Oro's school resource officer, is involved in the class as much as her time permits.

She also is trying to implement forensic programs at Ironwood Ridge High School and at Wilson K-8 School.

"It's a great opportunity to get kids involved in science," Benjamin said.

Benjamin, Christman and Wolpa created the course curriculum, and students must have completed chemistry, biology and physics before they could enroll in one of the three forensic classes offered this school year.

"I think that the students getting a chance to apply a science to a real-world application has been really beneficial," said Christman, who also teaches chemistry at the high school. "They can actually see how the techniques they learned in chemistry, physics and biology can be used."

Last Friday, students were studying thin-layer chromatography — the technique used to separate chemical compounds.

Course topics also have included an introduction to forensics and the law; evidence collection; crime scenes; fingerprint, hair and fiber analysis; drugs and toxicology; DNA analysis; and human remains.

On the first day of the class, the students were dispatched to a crime scene, where they discovered Tina. The students had to assess the scene and hypothesize what happened.

Some of the evidence pointed to a possible suicide — there was a suicide note — but the students would learn otherwise after gathering evidence and processing it.

Only one piece of evidence — a tiny piece of latex glove — was overlooked by the students, Benjamin said.

So what did happen to Tina?

"I thought her boyfriend murdered her, but it turns out it was her boyfriend's sister," senior Chelsie Rechlin said.

Hair belonging to the boyfriend's sister was found at the scene, as was dog hair. The students learned the sister worked in a veterinary clinic.

Rechlin said the mock crime scene was a big part of why she enjoys the course.

For an exam in December, Rechlin and the other students had to investigate a fake homicide and document how they processed, preserved, analyzed and interpreted the crime scene.

The final qualified two Canyon del Oro teams for CSI Arizona, a forensic-science competition held by the Arizona Foundation for Legal Services and Education.

Three Phoenix-area high schools also will compete in the event, which will be held in May.

"If anything, I'm a little anxious to see if we can fit what we've done before into the one day they give us," junior Ben McRae said about the state competition. "The time restraints are the only thing I'm worried about."

McRae said the course has been informative.

"You learn so much about everything," he said. "How to do blood analysis. How to do drug analysis. If you want to go into forensics, it's definitely a good peephole into what's going on."

Senior Desiree Romo-Daniel said she can see herself as a criminal profiler, but she has found blood-splatter patterns and fingerprinting interesting.

"It's actually hard to lift a print," she said. "If you don't dust it the correct way, you can smudge it. When you lift it, you can lose a part of the print and you can lose it all. If you lose that, you lose a viable piece of evidence."

Romo-Daniel suggests that other Canyon del Oro students should consider taking the course.

"I think everybody should take this class. It's so much fun," she said. "We don't just sit there and learn about the table of elements."