Sasha Smith

Sasha Smith is a graduate student in the M.Ed/MPPA program at UMass Amherst, where she studies access and equity for ‘non-traditional’ college students. Her interests include increasing access to quality liberal arts education for incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, first-generation, and aspiring community college transfer students. She was first introduced to college-in-prison work as a TA for the Inside-Out Program at Amherst College, where she received a BA in English. She is also a very proud recipient of an AA in Liberal Arts from Greenfield Community College, and a GED before that. Currently employed as a graduate assistant for Student Success Outreach at UMass, Sasha works to build community and community support for transfer and first-generation students on campus. Beginning in the fall of 2022, she will also serve as an education intern for the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, where she hopes to collaborate with local academic communities and education practitioners to build college pathways for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated students in Western MA. She was humbled and honored to join the BPI Summer Residency 2022 cohort, and looks forward to putting everything she’s learned into practice.