Another Chicago Ideas Week is drawing to a close, the annual fall celebration convening the brightest thought leaders worldwide to inspire and stimulate Chicagoans to act on new initiatives and ventures. Whether residents or institutions of higher education will act on one such proposal hinges on one key attribute: comfort with the concept of “death,” or the curiosity to learn more about it.

Dr. Norma Bowe, a tenured professor at Kean University’s College of Education, challenged educators and students to explore the possibility of a class like her own in Union, New Jersey; “Death in Perspective” is an experiential learning opportunity with a three year waiting list to enroll.

“It’s a framework to experience death as a reality instead of as a concept,” Bowe told a crowded Thorne Auditorium on the downtown campus of Northwestern University. The former nurse shuns a typical curriculum of many “Death and Dying” university classes that focus on philosophical, religious and historical aspects of the dying process and its meaning. Instead, 30 students each semester take weekly field trips.

Bowe tours undergraduates through hospitals, a Ronald McDonald House for families with children receiving treatment for serious illness, nursing homes, hospices, maximum security penitentiaries, funeral homes, crematories, cemeteries and the office of a medical examiner. There, students witness the process of an autopsy. Each week, students write a reflection on the places they tour.

The first assignment, however, is to write a letter to someone they love who has died; they then read their letters aloud to classmates. “There’s something very powerful about looking into a person’s eyes and sharing their grief together,” Bowe said.

She recounted the personal impact of her class on students; one student, who was suicidal, was befriended by another young woman who overcame suicidal tendencies. She sat next to the suicidal student each week, sharing how she came out of profound depression. Another student, after witnessing a woman hold her father’s hand and say goodbye to him as he died in hospice, decided to call her own father. “She hadn’t spoken with her father in four years,” Bowe said. “The light is always juxtaposed to the darkness.”

“It’s a framework to experience death as a reality instead of as a concept”

Class feedback keeps other students eager to enroll, Bowe said, sharing their comments: “Death doesn’t need to be scary, it’s a natural part of life,” “Bucket lists are important, do one,” and “Say things now rather than later to those you love.”

“Death in Perspective” has been featured in the Los Angeles Times and inspired the reporter, Erika Hayasaki to write a book: The Death Class, A True Story About Life.

Bowe said her aim is broader than to foster an understanding of death, but to encourage authenticity, openness, sharing, honesty, fearlessness and acceptance.

“Life is a precious gift,” she said. “Treat it as such.”