Supporting Educational Opportunities in Prison Nationwide
Drawing on 25 years of experience, BPI’s technical assistance has helped other colleges and universities stay true to their own identities, realize students’ full potential, and more deeply fulfill their institutional missions. The Consortium has offered strategic support and critical guidance to colleges and universities as they develop and sustain ambitious college programs. As partnerships evolve, BPI has assisted with relations with corrections officials, provided initial seed funding, or helped design pilot models.
The country’s leading colleges and universities can — and, now increasingly do — find outstanding students in unconventional settings, including inside correctional facilities. They and their social networks, both public and private, have a critical role to play in transforming the meaning and consequences of prison and higher education in an age of mass incarceration. This promise can only be fulfilled by an approach that puts academics first and treats the prison as only one site among many where we can and must push the frontiers of inclusive excellence.
Leveraging 25 years of experience, BPI offers consultations for other educators and practitioners. Our distinct approach is responsive to a wide and diverse variety of needs coming from institutions of higher education across the higher ed spectrum, at every phase of programmatic development and evolution from very big picture approaches to the work to highly specialized minutia of nuts and bolts.
Annual cohorts of the BPI Summer Residency are typically drawn from those who are receiving technical assistance from BPI.
From Technical Assistance to Program Building
The Augustana Prison Education Program (APEP) is operated by Augustana College, a selective, private liberal arts college in Rock Island, IL, APEP offers a BA degree at East Moline Correctional Center. With ongoing technical assistance from BPI’s National Engagement team, and as members of the 2021 cohort of the BPI Summer Residency, APEP launched in August 2021 with 10 students and a full academic year of coursework. APEP leadership came back to the BPI Summer Residency in 2023. The Augustana Prison Education Program (APEP) joined the BPI Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison in 2022.
APEP students complete nearly identical degree requirements as those earned by students on the Augustana. APEP is a Second Chance Pell site and is funded by the Austin E. Knowlton Foundation, local community foundations, and private donors.