In a brightly lit lab room, students form faces out of wax while '80s rock plays in the background.
Wearing long white coats, they laugh as they work the light yellow substance to form lips, cheekbones and ears. Students add their own flair to the faces - some have bony chins while others have sharp noses.
The only similarities between the faces are the closed eyes, because the purpose of this lab is to learn to reconstruct the face of a dead person.
The SIUC School of Mortuary Science and Funeral Services teaches students the answer to one of life's oldest questions: Where do you go when you die?
SIUC is the only public university in the state that offers a bachelor's degree in mortuary science. The program includes such courses as biology, mortuary law, restorative color and cosmetics, marketing and embalming. The purpose of the school is to teach how to deal with the physical side of death and how to run a funeral home.
Thomas Shaw, interim director of the school, said most of what the students learn deals more with the living.
"It's a living profession," Shaw said. "Out of the tasks that a funeral director does you're looking at about 85 percent you're working with the living, about 15 percent is working with human remains."
Working with living people is the reason some of the students enrolled in the program.
Jamie Beck, a sophomore from Rantoul, said helping families was one of the main reasons she enrolled.
"I'm just interested in helping people," Beck said. "In the time of grief someone needs someone to come to, and you just provide your service for that person the best you can."
The process of working with bodies is another aspect that attracts people to the funeral profession.
Natalie Kieffer, a junior from Mount Carmel, said she became interested after working with cadavers.
"I attended a junior college before I came here and we had cadaver dissecting classes and I became interested in it there," Kieffer said. "Then I started volunteering at our local funeral home and decided I really liked it and that it was something I wanted to pursue."
Kieffer said she planned on working at the home in Mount Carmel over the summer.
Kyesha Harvey, a junior from Champaign, said she read a book about embalming when she was younger and became interested.
"We had a family friend that was going to Worsham back in '97 and he let me read some of his books and that's what got me interested," Harvey said. Worsham College of Mortuary Science is a private institution in Wheeling that offers an associate's degree.
Harvey said the embalming techniques are what initially caught her attention.
Embalming is the process of disinfecting, preserving and restoring the body, Kieffer said.
"When a person dies they look . . . not like a normal human being," she said. "They're very pale, some people are emaciated, and the embalming process helps bring them back to what they would normally look like."
Shaw said embalming slows down the body's decomposition in order to have a viewing.
"We're trying to create what we call a favorable memory picture," he said. "A favorable memory picture cannot be built on unembalmed tissue because it begins to degrade and decompose."
For the embalming process, Shaw said formaldehyde is injected into a major artery while waste fluid is extracted from a vein.
"What happens is that formaldehyde interacts with the tissue and it coagulates the tissue," Shaw said. "Basically what happens is the formaldehyde interacts with the nitrogen in the tissue and there's a cross-linking action which pulls the tissue together."
Shaw said the solidified tissue is unsuitable for bacteria to live. He also said the embalming chemicals would kill any bacteria that comes in contact with.
Another part of presenting a body for a funeral is wax restoration. Students practice making various body parts from wax to replace any the body has lost.
"Right now we're in the process of rebuilding faces out of wax," Beck said during a lab. "So you if you have a person who comes in without an ear you know how to model and attach an ear."
Tiffany Holmes, a junior from Red Bud, said students start practicing wax replacements using a textbook.
"We do have a book that kind of guides you and shows you how to do it," Holmes said. "But as you do it you find your own way of doing it."
Holmes said in a funeral home many times the family will provide photos to help recreate the missing parts.
"It's important to communicate with the family to know what they want the person to look like," she said. "The restorative work is important for the family because that's the last time they get to see their loved one, and so the more work you put into it the better the reward is on the family."
Another part of the program is the required internship for seniors.
"Nothing can beat the actual experience of working," Kieffer said. "I learned everything there. Coming here I knew I already had my foot in the door."
Greg Meredith, owner of Meredith Funeral Home in Carbondale, has had students work at his home in the past.
"What they're here to do basically is observe how we do it so they can compare what they've learned with what we do and formulate their own way of doing things," Meredith said. "It is basically a training program so they can see how the theory of the textbook applies to the actual practice."
Meredith said students in his home work in several aspects including record keeping and preparing obituaries.
"The school has basically a checklist of things they should be exposed to," he said.
Beck said the bad reputation associated with funeral homes and mortuary science isn't true. She said when she worked at a funeral home it was clean and fun.
"It's not as gruesome as everybody thinks," Beck said. "I thought it would be dark and gloomy like everyone thinks but the music was blaring, the lights were real bright and everything was real sterile."
Beck said there are no differences between how the work is done at a hospital and at a funeral home
"A surgical doctor sees everything that a funeral director does," she said. "So that's how I like to compare it, we're a doctor for the dead."
dwenger@siu.edu 536-3311 ext. 273
