Funeral Services Education at Northeast Texas Community College is one of the college's largest and fastest-growing programs. Instruction is almost completely online, with students being placed in hands-on internships in their own communities across the country. The experience culminates with a clinical week on the NTCC campus prior to graduation, where students get to meet their classmates and instructors face-to-face and practice the skills they have learned.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of funeral service workers is projected to grow 5% from 2022 to 2032, faster than the average for all occupations. This growth is largely driven by an aging population and the steady need for compassionate professionals to guide families through end-of-life services.
Below is a testimonial from Rebecca Marshall, a recent graduate from NTCC Funeral Services:
When I first started in NTCC’s Funeral Service program, I had no prior funeral experience, aside from when I had attended funeral services as a guest. I have always been drawn to the funeral service industry and so when I found NTCC and that they offered a degree in funeral service, I knew that was where I wanted to start the path to my career. After researching the program and knowing that this was it, I decided to apply. From the moment I applied the abundance of communication drew me in. Any question I had for Mrs. Scott throughout the enrollment process was answered in such a timely manner that it kept me from having to be concerned about any deadlines that were approaching within the enrollment process.
Mrs. Scott was sure to check with me within any class scheduling to make sure that it fit my needs and my lifestyle. Once my class schedule was finalized and the semester was approaching, I had the program director contact me, along with all the new students to inform us of orientation. I think Mrs. Garder has put together an awesome team of instructors for the NTCC Funeral Service program. Throughout the program we had multiple TEAMS meetings for all students enrolled in the program just to check on everyone, have some team building, have guest speakers, and just make sure everyone is doing well within the program. NTCC instructors also held team meetings for specific classes. NTCC instructors had discussion boards as well.
The amount of communication in the program and between students and instructors was one of the top pros that kept me choosing NTCC!
Any time I was struggling and wasn’t comfortable speaking about it in a team’s meeting or discussion board, I could reach out to that specific instructor and sometimes they were available immediately and sometimes I had to schedule a meeting, but never did I have to wonder if an instructor was going to communicate with me on my issue or concern. All of the discussions and teams and projects did eventually help me overcome the nervousness I had about
speaking in front of people!
Aside from the location of NTCC to my home, and communication being top reasons I chose this school, the program itself was very inclusive and had a lot of hands on learning. Being a very visual and hands-on learner, NTCC has the perfect instructors for that type of learning!
Throughout each semester there were group projects, which not only got you in research mode, but also got us into interactive mode. I made multiple friends, that I still speak to even to this day because of the discussions, group projects, and coursework the instructors assigned for the
funeral service program.
I loved the restorative arts class and how we got to build an armature from base up! We got to choose a face we wanted to recreate, we had to do weekly updates with photos and add them into a discussion with the other students in the class. It was so much fun seeing everyone’s progress. Mr. Schmidt would go through and leave constructive comments that would help us during the next week’s assignments and the next set of steps. All the instructors not only had
excellent communication skills, but they also were very constructive when it came to any changes that could take place or when returning grades.
The internship class was intense for me, given that I had no prior experience in the funeral service industry. Mrs. Shurtz was amazing at helping students locate internship sites if we needed help, she communicated quickly and helped with keeping all hours and case logs in order so that we always knew where we were within that course. Mrs. Shurtz was very detailed oriented when it came to grading our case reports, making the next one submitted easier to complete and understand. Within the internship program we also had an instructor led embalming that we got to do as a small group. That was a great experience where I learned a lot due to it being hand on, instructor led prep.
Finally, clinical week! Clinical week was a blast. The instructors had a week of events planned out where we were broken up into groups and there were individual projects or “stations” that had to do with situations within the funeral industry. Having a mock arrangement conference, a mock removal with “family” present, suture practice, reconstruction of a skull lab, and many others helped give me a small glance at what my future in the funeral service industry would look like.
