Suzann Lafferty is an Assistant Professor and Program Director of Criminal Justice at Cumberland University. Prior to coming to Cumberland, Ms. Lafferty served as a Special Agent Forensic Scientist with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) for seventeen years. During this time, she was a member of the Violent Crime Response Team and processed complex crime scenes throughout the state of Tennessee, specializing in microanalysis and latent prints. As a forensic scientist in TBI’s Nashville crime laboratory, she was assigned to the latent print unit where she processed evidence for the presence of latent prints and compared submitted and developed latent prints to known impressions. Ms. Lafferty has been accepted in the state of Tennessee as an expert witness. 

During her last six years at TBI, Ms. Lafferty was assigned to the Training Division. In this capacity, she instructed in the TBI State Academy, TBI Special Agent Academy, and at the Tennessee Law Enforcement Training Academy. She additionally instructed courses for the TN Department of Children Services, TN Department of Human Services, Comptroller’s Office, and the Office of the Inspector General. She also led a multi-agency team to develop the curriculum for Just and Fair Policing, which was a mandatory four-hour course for law enforcement in Tennessee. Ms. Lafferty was also instrumental in implementing and developing TBI LEARN (Law Enforcement Access Right Now), an online platform that delivers training courses to law enforcement and other state agencies. 

During her time at TBI, she attended numerous training courses and conferences. Ms. Lafferty is a life-time member of the Tennessee Division of the International Association for Identification (TN IAI). She also previously served as president, vice-president, conference chair, and treasurer for the TN IAI. 

Prior to joining as full-time faculty, Ms. Lafferty also served as an adjunct instructor in Criminal Justice at Cumberland University for four years.