One topic most people want to avoid is death. However, a program at Park University is a collaborative effort to bring light to the widely misunderstood topic of dying, death, bereavement and end-of-life issues.
Park University’s Center to Advance the Study of Loss works to educate students, network with professionals and reach out to the community about these issues.
Dr. Laurel Hilliker, executive director of Park’s CASL program, was originally hired as an assistant professor of Sociology in 2012 and assumed the role of director for Park’s CASL program in January 2013.
She has teamed up with Perry Farmer, president of Crossroads Hospice, who had been working with Park nursing students at Crossroads to aid the dying in creating life journals for families.
After casting vision to Farmer for a center to study and advance loss, grief and end-of-life issues at Park, Hilliker proposed a five-year plan and gained support from Farmer for the first two years to help establish this center.
She continues to work with Farmer to provide services to Park students who are interested in Thanatology, the study of death and grief. CASL’s mission is to bridge academic study and practical, applied knowledge in the field of Thanatology.
“I think it’s important because it happens to all of us and it’s the price we pay,” Hilliker said. “We grieve because we love and invest ourselves in another human being. We have to help people in this era to find good healthy coping in grieving and working through that loss.”
Hilliker said she wants the center to reach out to students from various fields, educating them on the importance and benefit of obtaining a firmer grasp on end-of-life issues.
“It can encompass a lot of different students going into various different fields: nursing, medical, social work, sociology, psychology and anyone going into clinical instruction for counseling,” she said.
“Students in criminal justice, EMT and even police officers who need to have special training in end-of-life issues would also benefit; they certainly will encounter this in their careers. We hope to make this a multi-disciplinary effort.”
Sarah Hurth, a work-study student at the center, has taken classes offered through Park’s CASL program.
With her primary discipline in business, she explained how taking these classes have benefited her studies.
“Studying HR, you really want to understand the grief process, because everyone is going to take it differently,” she said. “There are no stages for grief and that was something that was monumental to learn, because everyone thinks you go through these stages and that you’re done and it’s over with and you never deal with it again.
“Through dealing with my own personal losses within the class and then relating that into my work situations, I realized that you will encounter those moments at work or with coworkers who are going through the grieving process. It really opened my eyes that as a manager, you really need to understand that a person is never fully over it and something so insignificant could trigger a memory and it’s important to be able to deal with it and be compassionate and understanding with that process.”
Currently, CASL offers a certificate in Thanatology, which embraces a variety of multidisciplinary courses, such as hospice and palliative studies.
The center also offers a minor in Thanatology, which include courses such as: Ethical and Legal Perspectives on End of Life, Human Growth and Development, Global Health Care Perspectives, and Death, Dying and Bereavement.
“We live in a society where we really need to strengthen the bachelor’s degree and for many who don’t want to go on for masters, they can get specialized by taking the certificate of Thanatology,” Hilliker said.
“It is relevant to a lot of fields of study and in order to really strengthen that field, we needed to pull together a curriculum that would be designed so that they are not certified in Thanatology but have a better understanding.”
The center also serves the community and professionals in the field with numerous workshops and supports research in disciplines related to dying, death and bereavement.
CASL has several upcoming events in the community, reaching out to the general public on the issues of dying, death and bereavement.
In February, CASL will be giving a two-part series on grief at the Kansas City Public Library.
Part one – “Surviving Loss in a 21st Century Landscape” – examines at the common misconceptions relating to grieving a significant loss and discusses a current model of coping with bereavement.
Part Two – “Challenges When Someone You Love Dies” – continues to discover the trials related to grieving and explores how the challenges of grief are mitigated and dealt with individually.
CASL will also offer a free community writing group at the Platte County YMCA in April, creating a “safe haven” to explore losses by learning how to write out stories that are too painful to discuss.
In Fall 2014, CASL will host a Terminal Illness/Death Notification workshop for Professionals. This workshop will train employees for the difficult task of delivering a message of loss to others.
“We really want to stay in line with Park’s promise ‘to serve those who serve,’ and that is why we are providing workshops,” Hilliker said.
Park’s CASL program is looking to expand in the near future with the goal of reaching more students, professionals and those in the community.
“Some of our long-term goals include a physical location here on the Parkville campus, building a building to house our team as well as to offer a summer institute or a small conference for professionals and providing a space for those professionals to network,” she said. “What is really great about that is that we will invite Park students who have an interest in this field so that they can understand the challenges that these professionals have in their careers, and can then be able to discern if this is really the avenue they want to go down.”
Hilliker said she hopes that, as the center grows, so will the awareness and education of end-of-life issues, equipping those in various fields in the workplace.
“I think we need to provide more products and services for (the baby boom) generation,” she said, “with 79 million people aging and experiencing loss and death of, not only parents but spouses and sometimes even children. We need a good strong group of students in various fields to meet that need. And I think we are going to see a real growth of hiring students that are specialized to deal with these issues.”
For more information, you can visit either www.park.edu/casl or www.crossroadhospice.com.