Dec 06, 2024  
2024-2025 Edgewood College Catalog 
    
2024-2025 Edgewood College Catalog

Thanatology, Diversity, Equity, and Social Justice in Thanatology Graduate Certificate


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This certificate is geared for anyone in healthcare, grief support, organ/tissue procurement, funeral service, counseling, clergy/chaplains, volunteers (within, for example, hospice, hospital, funeral home, faith community, senior center, or family grief center) who wants to build on skill set in diversity, equity, social justice, and spirituality.

Learning Objectives:

  • Discern, reflect upon, and evaluate student’s own relationship with death and grief, both as an individual and a member of society
  • Identify, describe, and analyze how the experience of grief can be influenced by socio-economic context, class, race, age, gender and other cultural variables
  • Analyze the ways “critically reflective” approaches to delivery of care (such as “critical social work”) can enhance social justice at end of life and for the grieving.
  • Examine and analyze the theoretical and evidence base for the importance of spirituality in healthcare

Program Requirements


All certificates are 12 credits, and all require THN600: Introduction to Thanatology or its equivalent (after consultation with the program director, this course might be waived). THN600 need be taken only once and can be applied to subsequent certificates, or students may choose a fourth course in its stead.

Flexibility is important. Students can petition with the program director to adjust the electives that are part of each certificate, in case they have a specific educational need within the program and certificate. For example, for Suicidology and Postvention, they may not work with children and teens. Instead, they may prefer to take both THN707: Suicide and Children, Teens, and Young Adults and THN708: Traumatology OR THN710: Complicated Grief, instead of THN707: Suicide in the Lives of Children and Teens.

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