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From Benoit Blanc in “Knives Out” to Jonathan Ames in “Bored to Death,” private investigators in popular culture today have little in common with their hardboiled gumshoe predecessors Dick Tracy and Sam Spade. Hollywood has cemented the image of the eccentric investigator into the American imagination, inundating audiences with cop series, forensic shows and every kind of PI ranging from a Botswana-based female detective to a group of British retirees who gather to solve mysteries. But what kind of actual skills does it take to become a private investigator?

Established in 2001, the UW’s online certificate program in private investigation introduces students to the skills of the investigative profession. Structured over three courses that take eight months to complete, students learn about research, open-source intelligence and writing effective public records requests in their first class. In their second course, participants learn the skills of surveillance, tailing, interviewing and creating an undercover ruse. The program concludes with a course on criminal investigation and prepares students to take the Washington state exam for PI licensure.

Program alumna Patricia Murphy, ’24, host of KUOW Public Radio’s podcast “Seattle Now,” thought about the investigative profession as a potential retirement gig. “Working as a PI is similar to being “a [radio] producer for an attorney,” Murphy says. “You do all the research and legwork that they don’t want to do. You conduct interviews, pull data and research and find people that don’t want to be found. If I’d done it 15 years ago, I’d have found my calling sooner.”

Program instructor Kate Merriwether sees industry professionals who have been in private investigation or law enforcement enroll in the program. Merriwether, who went through the program in 2018, served in the military during Operation Desert Storm. “People love cop shows—we see a lot of media geared toward the prosecution,” she says. “But there’s rarely pop-culture explorations of the damage that people being falsely accused face, or of BIPOC being unfairly treated or railroaded.” Merriwether adds, “There are innocent people in prison that don’t get fair representation.”

There are even style investigators who work for The New York Times’ T Magazine “Style Detective” column who specialize in sleuthing down Bob Dylan’s patchwork denim jacket that Timothée Chalamet bought at auction.