Mortuary science: ‘A special calling’ for a new generation of students
“I think it’s a vocation where you don’t pick it; it picks you.”
Those words by Michael LuBrant, director of the University of Minnesota’s Program of Mortuary Science, punctuate a recent tour he gave for prospective students.
Over the years, the chosen few have made their mark in mortuary science in big numbers, going on to serve families across Minnesota and beyond. Since the program began in 1908 — as the first in the country housed at a state university — it has produced 4,400 alumni, with a current job placement rate of 96 percent.
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities is one of only four universities in the nation to offer mortuary science as a bachelor's degree, and being part of the University of Minnesota Medical School adds additional prestige to a unique career choice that has evolved significantly over the years.
A rapidly changing field
LuBrant is soft spoken and mellow, exuding a calm and tranquility that feels tailor-made for his profession. He came to the University of Minnesota in 1998 after stints at funeral homes in his native New York and elsewhere around the country, and became the director of the mortuary science program in 2002.
In his quarter-century heading the program, he’s witnessed the mortuary science industry change dramatically. Traditional burials used to be the norm, but now a majority of Americans are choosing cremation. Decades ago the field was dominated by men, but now two-thirds to three-quarters of the students are women, LuBrant says.
Many enter the University of Minnesota’s two-year program from another college. There are approximately 30 new students in a typical year, and in addition to their varied coursework, they partake in one semester-long and one three-week rotation at one of approximately 100 funeral homes around the state.
“It’s such a unique field and it isn’t something a lot of people think of,” he says. For that matter, he feels death “really is one of the few remaining taboos we have in our society,” and sometimes people don’t know what to say to students when they find out what they’re studying, other than “Well, somebody’s gotta do it.”
But the characteristics for success in the industry remain constant. They include the capacity for empathy, patience and “the ability to deal in a calm and rational manner when there is so much stress going on at so many levels,” LuBrant says.
Mental health is a big focus of the program, including balancing school and work, which he thinks is far more challenging today than it was a generation ago. To that end, the program is able to award significant scholarship money to students — about $100,000 this year, which supports most or all who apply, he says.
‘Describe what the inside of your coffin looks like’
Program alumna Carrie Rowell is one of eight teaching specialists in the Program of Mortuary Science.
Humor is a big part of Rowell’s repertoire, and she enriches her classes with exercises designed to connect with students and to spark discussion and introspection. (Example: “Describe what the inside of your coffin looks like.”) In her embalming lecture, she talks a lot about food, because, well… everybody eats.
“Our body of knowledge is huge and can be very scary and overwhelming and intimidating,” she says. “I want to bring it down to things that they understand and can connect with.”
Rowell feels that what sets the program apart is the well-rounded instruction that students receive. She teaches two of the three writing-enriched classes, and points out that students spend 15 weeks in an embalming lab working on actual human donors — a “gift beyond gifts” thanks to the generosity of donors to the University of Minnesota’s Anatomy Bequest Program.
Answering their own calls
Mortuary science student Sydney Dietz grew up in Morris, Minnesota. Her father was a funeral director there, which “made her more aware of the job,” but it was in shadowing a funeral director in a neighboring town as part of a class assignment that she discovered her career choice.
She then started working part-time at the funeral home in Morris, “and the more I learned about the industry itself, I just loved it, and haven’t looked back.”
She’s learning to put other people’s needs above her own, and “learning more about who I am and who I’m going to be as a professional, she says. “The University of Minnesota’s mortuary program is special because it’s on a Big Ten campus … whereas a lot of other mortuary science schools are either their own entity — and all you’re doing is speaking with other mortuary science students and professors — or they’re online or asynchronous.”
Here, there are opportunities to learn other things outside of your scope, she adds. “There are clubs. You can still be a college student no matter what age you are coming into the program. … You can still get that feel of community.”
Grace Flesland is in her second semester of the program and perhaps its youngest student, having just earned an AA degree last spring from MInnesota North College – Rainy River at the same time she graduated from International Falls (Minnesota) High School.
When her grandmother passed away, her town’s Green-Larsen Mortuary “gave my family a really good experience,” she says. “I remember I was very happy with it, and I was like, ‘I want every family to be treated like this.’ So it was kind of this desire of wanting to give other people the same experience that my family had.”
She’s enjoyed her science-based courses and is amazed at the diversity of her classmates — “their backgrounds and just kind of who they are,” she says. “It’s a very unexpected group of people. Everyone is just so nice and so welcoming. … And they’re the most caring people that you will ever meet.”
Flesland is aware of the burnout in the profession, and notes that mental health is a much addressed topic in her classes.
“There’s a lot of empathy. There’s a lot of caring. And there’s kind of a lot of dark humor, as well,” Flesland says. “Joking is a big coping mechanism.”
Observing (and embracing) the changes
Shortly after graduating from the mortuary science program in 2013, Colby Voigt joined Roberts Family Funeral Home in Forest Lake, Minnesota, where he serves as the funeral director.
Voigt confirms the massive shifts in disposition preferences, noting that the cremation rate in Forest Lake is now up to 90 percent. He also says that families have changed their expectations for memorial services.
“Forever, it’s been about just doing things the way they’ve always been done,” Voigt says. “We call the same funeral home. We go to the same church. We sit down and we say the same prayers, and eat the same crappy ham sandwiches.”
To adapt to a changing palate, Voigt has helped launch a new funeral home brand, SendOff – Funerals Reimagined, that hosts personalized events at venues across the Twin Cities and beyond. “We’re taking it out of the box and giving people what they want,” he says.
Voigt acknowledges the job’s lifestyle challenges, given death’s 24-7 spectre, especially for professionals with young families like his own. He’s seen a lot of his classmates burn out; of the approximately 30 in this class, only about a third remain in the field. And mental health is always an issue, begging the question, “Can you handle seeing these things day in and day out?”
But the rewards get to the core of who he is, and offer him unparalleled fulfillment.
“This is a very meaningful way that you can give back to your community,” he says. “You’re making a lasting impact on someone’s life. When they’re able to have that experience and when they’re able to grieve properly because of that … intrinsically, it’s the best feeling, and that’s what I love about this job. I wouldn’t be able to get that in any other career path.”
Building trust, and honoring the sacred
Sitting in his office, LuBrant reflects on the essence of the industry he’s embraced. When people lose someone they love, they’re incredibly vulnerable, he says, and he wants students to leave the program with deeper senses of their own capacity and their own empathy, “so that they can serve families in a manner that’s dignified, caring and proficient.”
“I think there really is a sense of the sacred to what we do,” he adds. “We’re talking about people’s loved ones — hands that you’ve held, lips that you’ve touched, bodies that you’ve hugged.
“Until it’s somebody that you knew, that you loved, that was dear to your heart, I don’t think one can fully understand the depth and the profundity of the impact of what we do.”