FAYETTEVILLE, AR – Five candidates were selected to receive the Fall 2025 Harvey Leavitt, III National Board Examination (NBE) scholarship. The scholarship allows recipients to sit for the NBE with the examination fee waived (a $570 value).

The Harvey Leavitt, III scholarship program is open to first-time exam candidates eligible to sit for the NBE within one year of application. To enter, exam candidates are asked to submit a brief essay. The 2025 topic asks why honesty is essential requirements and how it impacts your future as a funeral service professional.

We are pleased to announce the following selections for the Fall 2025 Harvey Leavitt, III NBE Scholarship and share their responses:

Breanna Posey – NW Mississippi CC

Honesty is essential in funeral service because families depend on our true knowledge and integrity, not just the diploma on the wall. Taking shortcuts or pretending to understand something I don’t would just leave me unprepared the very moment a family needs expert care for their loved one. The National Board Exam and state licensing tests require honesty because they determine whether I am genuinely ready to carry the responsibility of caring for the deceased and guiding grieving families. A profession like funeral service demands that we be lifelong learners.  This industry continues to evolve, so I know that in order to succeed, I’ll need to continue developing my knowledge and abilities throughout my entire career. Keeping up with new techniques, technologies, and legislation will allow me to serve families with the professionalism and respect they deserve. Ultimately, honesty is what lays the foundation for lifelong integrity in this line of work.

Building on this foundation of honest learning, my commitment to truthfulness must extend into every aspect of professional practice. The funeral service industry has been criticized in the past for demanding sales methods and unnecessary upselling during families’ most difficult times.  By remaining transparent in all of my interactions, I can help restore and preserve the public’s trust in our profession.  When I recommend goods and services based purely on what actually meets the family’s needs and wants, rather than trying to sell whatever creates the maximum profit, I exhibit the moral standards that set respected funeral directors apart from others who profit off of grief. Throughout my studies, I’ve developed a commitment to honesty that will serve as the foundation for the rest of my career in funeral service. There are no second chances in this line of work, we have only one opportunity to do right by a grieving family. By holding myself to the highest standards of truth and transparency, I can make sure that every family I serve is cared for with dignity, compassion, and respect.

Laurence Malinger – Mercer County CC

I have served as a congregational rabbi for more than thirty-three years. Both in my current rabbinic role and in preparing for a secondary career as a funeral director, it has become clear to me that honesty is essential in fulfilling the educational, examination, and licensure requirements of the profession. These steps are designed to ensure that I am fully prepared and qualified to serve families during one of the most difficult times in their lives. Were I to compromise my integrity at any point in this process, I would not only diminish my own professional readiness, but I would also betray the sacred trust that grieving families place in me.

My Jewish values emphasize emet (truth), which teaches that honesty is the foundation of ethical life. In the wisdom of Jewish tradition, we are taught to “love truth and pursue peace.” As I enter the field of funeral service, living by emet requires a steadfast commitment to truthfulness in my studies, examinations, and professional practice, ensuring that my license is a reflection of genuine knowledge and competence.

In addition, the Jewish value of kavod ha’met (honoring the deceased) underscores the utmost respect owed to those who have passed away. Honesty in preparing for licensure is directly connected to this mitzvah: only by fulfilling the requirements with integrity can I ensure that I possess the skills necessary to honor and care for the deceased properly.
Finally, my life experiences as a rabbi have reinforced for me that cutting corners not only disrespects the profession, but also weakens the sacred trust between myself, the community, and God. By approaching the licensure process with honesty, I affirm my commitment to serving with dignity, compassion, and respect. In this way, honesty is not simply a matter of meeting state standards, but a means of embodying the Jewish values that will guide me in my future role as a funeral service professional.

Denise Criswell – Commonwealth Institute

Honesty is not just about telling the truth, it tells more about the character and integrity of a person.  It’s about how a person lives their daily lives. Honesty is about being genuine with yourself and others at all times.  Honesty is about the choices we make in situations, the actions we take in those situations, as well as the values we uphold when no one else is around or looking.  Honesty is definitely one of the most important qualities a funeral service professional can possess.  Families are placing their trust in the professionals during one of the most difficult times in their lives. They’re broken hearted, distraught and they are depending on us to guide them in making very sensitive and important decisions.  Our job is to provide these families with these service with dignity as well as transparency.  It’s imperative to be honest about all services offered as well as the cost involved so the family can make a decision with confidence that this is the right for them. These families are trusting us as caring professionals to honor their love one with dignity, which requires the responsibility of integrity in every step of the way, from preparation to following the ethical practices, to the FTC Laws and regulations.

Honesty requires facing reality, although it may be uncomfortable at times, it builds trust and respect over time, which actually strengthens relationships with trust.  When you are honest with yourself, it allows you grow because you’re able to recognize your strengths and your weaknesses.  Honesty in my mind is a is the foundation for ever lasting success. It is essential for a fair society, it doesn’t matter what the setting you’re in or atmosphere,  be it school, work, business or just around the community, being truthful ensures the fairness and trust needed to build accountability for oneself as well as respect from others.

Leah Benskey –  Wayne State University

Academic dishonesty is ingrained in our education system, and as AI becomes more advanced, we will see the outcome in our graduates. Tests focus on short-term memorization, and teachers have no foolproof way to find AI assignments. Not to mention the fully online classes, allowing students to easily cheat on everything. Although teachers try their best and encourage honesty, students will always find an excuse to cheat. Whether they ran out of time or they didn’t understand the assignment, in their mind, it was the only way.

I feel very strongly about this subject and could go on for pages, so I will try to be concise. Honesty is the only way to graduate with the necessary knowledge in any field. As I fulfill educational, examination, and other licensure requirements, I will be learning through hands-on experience, tests, and mentoring. If I decide to be dishonest at any point during my educational journey, I will be missing pertinent information about my field. This would affect me greatly as a funeral service professional in many ways. I would lack skills as an embalmer and disappoint or even traumatize families. As a service provider, I could forget important paperwork or fill things out wrong (if I avoided paperwork during my internships). I would quickly scare away families with the wrong attitude and words (if I decided to cheat through classes that teach how to talk/empathise with families). I could continue with plenty of examples, but my point is made; being honest during my time as a student and intern will not only show integrity but also greatly improve the necessary skills to be a great funeral service professional!

Calvin Amato – Pittsburgh Institute of Mortuary Science

Honesty is not simply one virtue among many in funeral service. It is the ground upon which every step of this vocation must be taken. Without honesty, education becomes memorization without meaning, examinations become hollow performances, and licensure becomes a certificate without substance. To pursue this profession dishonestly is not only to rob myself of growth but to rob the families I will one day serve of the care they deserve. Families deserve truth. They deserve a professional whose word can be trusted when the world feels most fragile, and whose actions are rooted in integrity when everything else has been broken by loss.

My earliest understanding of this came not in a classroom, but in a small community where my father taught me what it means to show up for others. He took me to funerals as a boy. Sometimes we went to grieve family. Sometimes we went for his closest friends. And sometimes we went for people he had met only once, but whom he remembered and honored with his presence. As a child, I saw something extraordinary in those moments. I saw how honesty was not only spoken but lived in the sincerity of an embrace, in the truth of shared memory, in the simple acknowledgment that every life mattered enough to be remembered. My father never pretended to feel more than he did, yet he never failed to show respect. From him I learned that honesty is not just about telling the truth. It is about living truthfully, about being genuine in both word and deed, about carrying oneself with integrity when others are watching and even more so when they are not.

Now, as I prepare to meet the requirements of licensure, those lessons feel more urgent than ever. Passing an exam through dishonesty may grant a license, but it would leave me unprepared to face a grieving mother’s questions, or a family’s need for clarity when making difficult choices. Honesty ensures that my knowledge is not counterfeit but earned, that my guidance is not a guess but a promise, and that my service is not an act of performance but of truth. In funeral service, where every decision can leave an imprint on a family’s memory for decades to come, anything less than honesty is unthinkable.

But honesty is not only about meeting requirements or passing tests. It is the quality that will define my future. It will guide me to admit when I do not know and to seek wisdom from those who do. It will compel me to speak truthfully even when the truth is hard to hear, because families deserve clarity rather than comfort built on illusion. It will shape how I lead colleagues, how I honor the dead, and how I stand in moments when silence might be easier but candor is needed. Honesty is the quiet force that transforms this work from a profession into a calling.

My vision for my career is not merely to be licensed, but to be trusted. Trusted by families who will invite me into their grief. Trusted by colleagues who will look to me for leadership. Trusted by the community that will see in me not a businessman, but a servant. And trust is born of honesty, not once, not occasionally, but always. To be honest in education, in examinations, and in licensure is to prepare for a lifetime of honest service. It is to build a foundation so strong that no circumstance, no sorrow, no pressure can shake it.

For me, honesty is not simply essential to becoming licensed. It is essential to becoming worthy of this work. It is the promise that when families place their loved one in my care, they place them in hands that will never deceive, never diminish, and never forget the weight of the trust given. That is the kind of funeral professional I intend to be, one whose service is not only skilled but truthful and dignified.