The continuing transformation of our approaches to teaching chemistry and other science disciplines aims at fostering active and independent student engagement, a goal that requires experimentation with teaching methods. One of the important findings of the past two decades is the realization of the role played by the "real world" context and the way it connects to the concepts learned both in the classroom and the laboratory. Students commonly find participation in the context-driven tasks interesting and productive, and this positive learning experience encourages much greater levels of engagement with the taught material both in the classroom setting and as independent learners. One of the most effective ways to achieve these goals is based upon placing chemistry within a societal context, using themes such as health, environment and forensics. While the first two themes provide the context to which students can readily relate through their own experience, or as members of both local and global communities, forensics (fortunately) lies outside of the everyday experience of most students. Nevertheless, this field is frequently viewed by adolescents and young adults with a good measure of fascination, a phenomenon that can be attributed to the influence of the mass culture (the so-called CSI effect ). It is therefore not surprising that forensics has long been viewed by chemical educators as a teaching tool with great potential as far as providing inspiration for modifying chemistry curriculum and enhancing students' learning experience both in the lower and upper level courses (including chemistry for non-majors and for liberal arts students). An impressive array of experiments have been already published for the upper level chemistry laboratories (quantitative analysis and instrumental analysis) that emulate forensic work focusing on measuring blood alcohol level, detection and identification of drugs of abuse, analysis of trace evidence collected at the crime scene, arson investigation, and forensic DNA analysis. The vast majority of these experiments are based on adaptation of routine procedures that are already used in forensic laboratories around the country and the globe. However, forensic analysis is a very dynamic field, and even brief review of current literature yields a range of state-of-the-art techniques that show great promise for solving challenging problems in criminalistics, but have not yet become commonly accepted as routine analytical tools within the law enforcement and legal communities. Analytical instrumentation utilized in such pilot studies is frequently available on college campuses in both teaching and research laboratories, which not only allows the new cutting edge forensic technologies to be incorporated in the chemistry curriculum, but also provides a unique and exciting opportunity for students to make meaningful contributions to the ever growing arsenal of forensic analysis while learning important chemistry concepts.