April 02, 2026
BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Students from Trine University’s TAO chapter of the American Criminal Justice Association (ACJA) took top awards at the organization’s national conference, held March 8-13 in Bloomington, Minnesota.
A Trine team took first place in the upper division for crime scene investigation (CSI).
Team members were Silas Jones, an accounting major from Swayzee, Indiana, Braiden Wolfe, a mechanical engineering major from South Whitley, Indiana, and Cole Anderson, a criminal justice major from Nashville, Michigan.
For the competition, detectives from the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office set up a scene similarly to a case they had encountered where an elderly woman was killed during a robbery.
Teams had to mark evidence on the scene and decide what would need to be collected for DNA evidence. They also prepared a case report and a crime scene sketch.
“I think everyone’s jaws were on the floor when we won it,” said Jones. “Our team consisted of a mechanical engineer, a freshman criminal justice major, and an accounting major, so we figured there would be other teams that did better than us.”
Firearms, agility, testing, lip sync
Jones and Wolfe also were part of the firearms team that placed second in the upper division, along with Mila Stepanovich, a psychology major from Munster, Indiana.
Jones placed second individually on Cold Case testing and third place in Criminal Law testing.
“The Criminal Law test felt similar to the tests from Professor (Mike) Hess’s Criminal Law class,” Jones said. “Thankfully, I had just taken that class last semester, so there were multiple questions that I recognized as soon as I read them.”
Anderson placed second individually in physical agility.
Teammates Haleigh Loso, a criminal justice major from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and Ethan Parker, a criminal justice major from Coldwater, Michigan, joined Jones, Wolfe, Stepanovich and Cole Anderson to take third place in the lip sync competition, which raises money for ACJA’s scholarship fund.
Stu Hamblen, faculty advisor and director of campus safety at Trine, took third in the pro firearms competition.
Jones said the competition was one of his favorite college experiences.
“I am glad that I got to go before I graduated,” he said. “The week was full of fun events, and I made a lot of good friends while we were there.”
A Trine University senior design team developed a custom pediatric walker for Sophia Dillon, who cannot use common gait trainers or walkers due to multiple medical conditions.
Trine University has named Eric Yoder, who most recently served as chief executive officer of the YMCA of Steuben County, as its new vice president for operations, beginning in June.
Two amputations haven’t stopped Ben Masten from working as a paramedic, but he still faces challenges every day. A team of Trine University biomedical engineering majors worked this spring to help him overcome one of them.