Nov 04, 2024  
2024-2025 Edgewood College Catalog 
    
2024-2025 Edgewood College Catalog

Thanatology, Faith Communities, End of Life, and Grief Support Graduate Certificate


The leaders within faith communities often find themselves unprepared for supporting families at the end of life. This certificate offers faith community leaders the information they need to better understand the challenges families face when a family member is dying; and how to best support families in grief.

Learning Objectives:

  • Discern, reflect upon, and evaluate student’s own relationship with death and grief, both as an individual and a member of society
  • Examine best practices in end-of-life care and grief support
  • Examine and evaluate the role of the family as the unit of care, and the ways family dynamics impact children and adolescents with respect to dying, death, and grief.
  • Explore the ethical and moral challenges and dilemmas faced during the dying process and at the end of life
  • Examine the notion of “total pain” as coined by Dame Cicely Saunders, and how spiritual care can inform compassionate care for the dying and the grieving.

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.