For Kaneka Kidd, college has very much been a family affair.
She started classes through Marian University’s program at the Indiana Women’s Prison at the same time her youngest daughter started college.
Kidd also called her grandkids often to tell them about the classes she was taking, to hopefully encourage them to attend college one day. It was important to her that her family knew she was learning while inside.
“Being incarcerated for so long, you have to have something to go home to,” Kidd, 46, said. “I wanted to be an encouragement to them, also.”
Kidd was one of six women to graduate May 16 with her associate of arts degree from Marian University. Through its Women’s College Partnership, Marian offers classes and degrees to women at the prison, including those who committed violent crimes.
Marian’s been offering classes at the women’s prison since 2019 in collaboration with the Bard Prison Initiative, a national organization that supports liberal arts programs for incarcerated students. Students take classes in a variety of subjects, including civics, art, literature and science.
If Courtney Kincaid had to pick a favorite class from her two-and-a-half years of Marian education, it would be the “inside-out” class this spring, where students from Marian’s main campus came to the prison to take the class alongside the incarcerated students.
In that class, there was no divide. Everyone learned together, and that meant the world to Kincaid.
“It pushed me to continue to empower other people that this degree is a statement for us to be able to be students,” Kincaid, 35, said. “Because in this program, that’s what we are. We’re students. We’re not seen for where we wake up every day.”
Kincaid has always wanted to go to college, but she said life got in the way. Though she studied at Huntington University in northern Indiana and Purdue Fort Wayne, the May 16 ceremony was her first-ever graduation. She was chosen by her classmates to be the commencement speaker.
After working toward that goal for so long, walking across the stage was surreal.
“I almost couldn’t believe it,” Kincaid said. “It was like an out-of-body experience, because I accomplished something I always wanted to do, and I didn’t think that I would have the opportunity in a location like this.”
Kincaid’s celebrating her degree, but her educational journey isn’t over. She’s already studying to earn her bachelor’s degree from Marian, and eventually hopes to get a master’s degree and become a social worker.
Kidd has similar ambitions. She knows firsthand how hard it is for women experiencing domestic violence to escape abusive relationships, and hopes to use her lived experience to help people like her through social work.
“I want to help someone, because I wasn’t able to get the help,” she said.
Marian University joined BPI’s Consortium for the Liberal Arts in 2019 with the creation of the Women’s College Partnership (WCP) at Indiana Women’s Prison (IWP).
