What started out as a joke quickly became reality for Patrick Fischer, a junior funeral services major. He is one of the few students enrolled in the program.

“It started out as a joke between me and my mom,” Fischer said. “Her cousin is a funeral director, and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. She made the joke, ‘Why don’t you be a funeral service director?’”

Point Park works in partnership with the Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Sciences (PIMS) as one of the only schools in the country to offer a funeral services major.

According to Matthew Pascal, Associate Professor of Mathematics and faculty advisor for funeral service majors, students often choose Point Park’s program for the same reasons any student would choose one college over another.

“There aren’t many other universities that have partnerships with PIMS,” Pascal said. “The choice to go to PIMS usually precedes the choice to come to Point Park. We’re the only one also in Pittsburgh, so that’s another reason.”

At Point Park, students majoring in funeral services can specialize their degree in one of two concentrations: biology or business. Students, like Fischer, choose one over another because of personal interest and workload.

“I went with the business concentration because I didn’t want to take the extra biology courses and the anatomy courses,” Fischer said.

Students are unable to completely finish the degree on Point Park ‘s campus and have the choice to either start the degree at Point Park and finish at PIMS or begin at PIMS and  finish with the B.S. capstone degree at Point Park. PIMS does not offer a bachelor’s degree, instead offering just an associate’s degrees. In some states, funeral directors are only required to have an associate’s degree to practice.

Michael Burns, administrative coordinator at PIMS, said they instruct around 110 students every year, preparing them to become funeral directors, though some do choose other career paths. Classes at PIMS, from accounting to business law, are specialized and geared toward the funeral business.

“We’re a mortuary science school, so we are very specialized in that respect,” Burns said. “We are taking a lot of courses you take on campus, and we are specializing them.”

As a mortuary school, PIMS offers more of a wide variety of courses on the subject of funeral services. Students will take courses such as embalming and restorative art before receiving their degree.

Burns, who is an alumni of Point Park’s program, is a fan of how the university trains its students.

“Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science (PIMS) is one of the finest mortuary programs,” Burns said. “It’s a very comprehensive program for funeral directors, and when you can add schools like Point Park onto the tail end of it and get a bachelor’s degree out of it, it makes it ev even better.”