By Thomas A. Parmalee
American River College in Sacramento, California recently opened what can only be described as an on-campus mortuary – just not a licensed one – to help students learn the art of funeral directing.
Students can take advantage of a “full working mortuary,” which includes a chapel, embalming and restorative art lab, a display room and a reception area to greet families, said Valarie Rose, chair of the college’s funeral service program.
“We pretty much have it all – we just don’t have a retort,” she said, noting that the college is in a residential area, which made getting one impossible.
The mortuary facilities opened in April, and students and staff are looking forward to putting them to use, she said. It is a wing of the Career Technical Education Building at its College Oak Drive campus.
The Sacramento County Coroner’s indigent program enables the college to connect with families who would otherwise not be able to have a service for their loved one, she said.
Students have been overseeing such services for several years – just not at a college facility, Rose said, noting that the college teamed up with East Lawn Mortuary and Sierra Hills Memorial Park in Sacramento, where she previously as a manager for more than 20 years.
“They have a care center model, and they had a couple of rooms that were not being used and a chapel that was not used very often,” she explained.
While the college is grateful for the funeral home’s hospitality, it appreciates having its own facilities, as it was challenging to schedule services at convenient times for families when relying on an outside entity. Students who once learned in portable facilities also now get to enjoy a state-of-the-art classroom.
Moving forward, the college anticipates serving more indigent families. As a result, it recently implemented a new contract to carry out cremations with Sierra View Funeral Chapel & Crematory in Carmichael, Rose said.
“Now that we have our own place, we plan on having anywhere from six to eight services per week,” Rose said. “We will have the flexibility to do it.”
Previously, students and staff were serving one or two indigent families per week, she said.
Under the contract, Sierra View will transport the deceased to its facility after any service and carry out the cremation. The college will pick up the cremated remains, which will be sent to the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office, Rose said.
The college’s students are “tickled pink” about having their own mortuary on campus, Rose said.
“It is such a nice facility they have built for us,” she said. “We finally have a really nice classroom – and the lab, they love it. Before, we could lecture, but now when we are lecturing, we can say, ‘Let’s do this. Let’s try it.’ It has already made a difference.”
The on-campus mortuary is a “really short walk” from the main part of the building where the students take classes, Rose said.
The display room was designed by Matthews Aurora, with corner cuts, register books and all the items that students will typically offer to families when they enter the profession.
To be clear, students do not sell any merchandise or ever charge families for anything, she said.
“That was a deal we made with all the local mortuaries – that we would not compete with them,” she explained.
She added, “We are not licensed by the state because we are on a college campus, so we are not held to the same standards as a mortuary would be for compliance.”
The families that the college serves are welcome to bring their own items to memorialize a loved one, such as an urn. The college also offers a rental casket for services, which families can use at no charge.
Currently, there are about 105 students in the college’s funeral service program. They ultimately earn an Associate of Science degree.
“I’m sure our new facilities will boost our enrollment quite a bit,” Rose said, noting that the college has historically accepted about 60 students per semester.
“But we anticipate now that we have a larger classroom, we can probably admit more students,” she said. In the next year or so, the college plans to add a hybrid/online learning component to the program.
Planning for the funeral home facilities began about six years ago, with bonds paying for the construction, Rose said. Initially, the college had considered buying a funeral home facility that had gone out of business, but that plan lost momentum.
“They broke ground on the building about four years ago, and it was finished this semester and various programs started moving in,” she said.
The intent was to open the mortuary facilities earlier, but everything got pushed back the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, she said.
The American River College funeral service program is accredited by the American Board of Funeral Service Education and is one of only two institutions in California to offer a funeral service program.
The college boasts a 100% graduation rate, with nearly all mortuary science students entering the funeral profession immediately after completing the program, which can be done in one or two years, Rose said.
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