Absolutely - this is a world-renowned medical research school and since they always have interns you can expect this question has been asked many, many times. They feel the need to explain it in their orientation because they know some of the students are going to be shocked by the procedure.
My daughter did say it's done so fast and the mice are so accustomed to being handled there doesn't appear to be any fear on the mouse's part and there doesn't appear to be any suffering, let alone needless suffering.
Funny anecdote - the first time she was in the lab when they were doing this she hadn't had breakfast that day and had a light dinner the night before and she fainted from low blood sugar. Took her a couple of days to convince them no, she was fine, she just let her blood sugar get too low.
