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HONOR AND DIGNITY

Accreditation achieved; Funeral Science Department looks to grow

Officials with ASU-Mountain Home’s Funeral Science program say there are bright days ahead for the program. The department recently re-accredited with the American Board of Funeral Service Education, which program director Matt Buel considers the icing on the cake for the innovative department going forward.

“We’re one of the more forward-thinking programs, especially when it comes to new technology,” he said. “We were the first school of any kind in the state of Arkansas to have a synthetic cadaver, and now we have two of them. We use these to teach our students embalming skills, anatomy, physiology, all the scientific things that they need on the embalming side of things.

“We have also changed in order to make a more solid program, specifically, we have started putting our students into a fixed cohort system. Everyone starts at the same time, and everyone finishes at the same time,” said Buel.

These elements and more are attracting students from a wide cross-section of the region, including the northern two-thirds of Arkansas and the southern one-third of Missouri. Students not only learn job-specific skills, but also soft skills to help them succeed in the business world.

“Students need all kinds of soft-skill training,” Buell said. “The first year I took over, we implemented what we call training camp, which is four days where we work on things like how to get a deceased person out of an undignified situation as efficiently as possible. How to get them in a vehicle. How to handle families, how to compassionately arrange a funeral with a family and be empathetic and still get the job done.”

All of which have added up to high demand for the 20 seats in the ASUMH program, said Theressa Walker, funeral science program coordinator.

“We can recruit from wherever, but I’ll be honest, students come to us,” she said. “We are one of only two schools in the state. Ours is a seated program, and we have locations in Jonesboro and Beebe,” Walker added.

The flood of new funeral science students looks very different than just a few years ago. Buel said unlike past eras, most students are not following in their parent’s footsteps to one day run the family business. And there’s another important change in the student body as well.

“In the old days, if 10% of your student population was female that was miraculous,” he said. “Last year, when I filed my annual reports on people that are new admits into my program and people that graduated, it included zero males. Industry-wide, graduates are running 75% female, ours is closer to 80%.”

“The students we have are such a unique blend,” Walker added. “We have those students who are coming straight out of high school, and we have those students who are switching careers. We have those students who have been out of the workplace for 20 years, and they’ve decided this is something they want to do, whether they’ve had a death in the family or something else that’s given them a cause in this. It’s just remarkable how many students get into this program as a way to serve others.” ■

“It’s just remarkable how many students get into this program as a way to serve others. — Theressa Walker, funeral science program coordinator

Students in the ASUMH funeral science program receive hands-on learning.