Kathryn Taylor, who is now a fourth year student, came to New Jersey from Alabama specifically to study Funeral Service in MCCC’s program.
Taylor says, “It’s a funny story. When I was younger we had to do a career project and I saw the word ‘undertaker’ when I was in like 6th grade, just like looking up general medical stuff. I got wrestler and [undertaker]. And so I was like ‘Well I don’t want to be a wrestler, so let me do my project on this profession.’ So basically [I’ve been interested in it] ever since 6th grade.”
The job Taylor found, “undertaker,” is someone who prepares dead bodies for burial or cremation and arranges funerals, but it is more commonly known as a funeral director.
Mercer is the only public Funeral Service education program in New Jersey. It has been around since 1976. The only other program in the state is a more expensive private one. People from everywhere come to take the college’s program, including students from Philadelphia, New York and Delaware. Alabama may be one of the farthest, though.
Taylor says of her move, “The closest school [in Alabama] was about a three hour driving distance and we didn’t have the money to get me setup with an apartment or on-campus housing. The next closest was up in Tennessee which was out of state, and out-of-state costs would have been even more.”
Fortunately, Taylor has an uncle in Neptune, NJ who was able to let her come live with him so she didn’t have to pay for housing.
Within Mercer’s program Taylor and the other students learn everything from business to law to biology to psychology.
One person who knows the business aspect well is Kurtis Hoffmann. He is a graduate of MCCC’s Funeral Service program and a director at the local Peppler Funeral Home.
Hoffmann says, “Every place is different. Some places are more corporate. We’re more of a family business. You try to do what you can to help people, but in the end it’s still a business.”
A major part of the college’s program is the hands-on learning. Students need to set up an internship with a funeral home to gain experience and must reach a quota of embalmings, funerals, and arrangements established by the American Board of Funeral Education.”
Hoffmann says his experience in getting an internship in the current funeral home where he works took some time. As it is a family business, they prioritized interning family first.
Taylor has found the same. She says, “If you were born into a funeral home, it’s different, but I personally was not. So it is very difficult for the non second, third, fourth generation funeral directors to get internships and get to finish everything just because internships are hard to come by if you’re not family and if you don’t know someone.”
At the end of the program, students have to take the National Board Exams and MCCC has had a strong pass rate on the exams. After they pass, students head out to find work.
But learning the business aspects of the job can be easier than handling the psychological aspects.
Taylor says, “Just in general with the funeral students, a lot of other students don’t quite realize, to put it plainly, the shit we have to go through, and by that I mean not only emotionally, but mentally, physically.”
When asked about how he teaches students how to handle the heavy emotional toll and making sure their job gets done, Professor Michael Daley, who is the Program Director for the Funeral Services at Mercer says, “You can either grieve for them or help them. You cannot do both.”
“Summer 2020 was especially hard because we couldn’t even teach an embalming lab in person. It was crazy because we were all still working at funeral homes and there was a spike in the death rate in 2020. At every funeral home I know, it just got bonkers” -Professor Michael Daley, MCCC Program Director for Funeral Services
Geralda Aldajuste, Associate Professor in Funeral Services at MCCC, says that graduates tend to stay with the Funeral homes they interned with because it is hard to get the job in the first place.
But concerns over finding an internship and following a career path was suddenly put on hold for all the Funeral Service students when the country went into COVID lockdown.
Professor Daley says, “Summer 2020 was especially hard because we couldn’t even teach an embalming lab in person. It was crazy because we were all still working at funeral homes and there was a spike in the death rate in 2020. And every funeral home I know, it just got bonkers.”
Both the program and funeral industry had to get creative on how they did things. Funeral homes gave virtual viewings on platforms like Zoom. Many funeral directors still did embalmings but with protection such as respirators.
One of the homes Prof. Daley worked for, allowed families to have viewings, but with longer viewing times to allow for people to have their time to pay respects and to align with social distancing precautions.
As for the program, both Prof. Daley and Prof. Aldajuste had to figure out how to put all their material online, including exams that used to only be taken in person. Prof. Daley recorded videos for students that they could use for reviews and studying.
As in person teaching has restarted, the professors are continuing to use many of the tools that were made to accommodate students.
Prof. Daley says, “It’s good to be back. Even my students have been saying the campus has come back to life.”
Note: This article has been updated to indicate that Peppler Funeral Home is in Allentown, NJ, not Hamilton, NJ and to correct the spelling of Kurtis Hoffmann’s last name.
