National Engagement
Creating educational opportunities in prison nationwide
Expanding the model
For a decade, through the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison, BPI collaborated with other colleges and universities as they launched fully autonomous college-in-prison programs of their own across the country. Together these leading institutions are challenging expectations of inclusive excellence while redefining the boundaries of success for people in and returning home from prison. Moving into a new phase of programmatic support of college-in-prison, BPI now offers a summer residency program for practitioners and new leaders in the field.
Global Community of Practice
In 2022, with the support of the Open Society University Network (OSUN), and in partnership with Incarceration Nations Network (INN), BPI expanded its programmatic support internationally by providing capacity-building grants for programs outside of the United States. This one-time infusion in resources helps new projects launch and boosts the ability of existing programs to expand educational access and deepen investments in technology, books, and materials, programmatic infrastructure, research, and personnel.
Distinct from BPI’s technical assistance and program building work in the United States, where BPI’s experience has served as a model for emerging practitioners for over a decade, in the global landscape our work is informed by the foundational understanding that local educators are the experts. Capacity-building grants boost local practioners’ ability to design, implement, and grow a diverse range of educational endeavors in carceral spaces based on their specific needs and contexts.
In expanding access to badly needed resources, BPI has started to build a global community of practice — rooted in sharing knowledge and experiences and coming together in community. Upon its launch, 21 international programs across 14 nations and six continents made up the initial global community of practice. This community will come together with convenings in person, and through virtual webinars, communications, and a lecture series led by the inaugural Global Research Fellow over the course of the 2022–2023 academic year.
The Summer Residency
The BPI Summer Residency is designed to provide practitioners with hands-on training based at BPI and to facilitate a community of practice among participating college-in-prison leaders. The inaugural Summer Residency took place on Bard’s Annandale campus over five weeks in the summer of 2019. The 2020 residency took place in modified form through videoconference.
The Summer Residency program is expected to grow to include more early-stage educators and practitioners who are interested in technical assistance and learning about the BPI model.
BPI Summer Residency, Bard College, July 2019
Workshops in 2020 included themes such as:
Academics and the writing curriculum
Admissions
Data, documents, and tracking
Computer systems and technology in prison
Working with Departments of Corrections
Reentry and alumni affairs
Secondary trauma and practitioner well-being
The FAFSA and Second Chance Pell
Development and fundraising
Faculty recruitment and orientation
Training student and peer tutors
New student orientation
Sessions with faculty on syllabus revision for COVID contingencies
The Consortium
In 2009, BPI established the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison to facilitate the further establishment of college-in-prison nationwide, calling for those programs to be of the highest quality, ambition, and rigor. BPI has pursued unlikely partners, new philanthropic supporters, and critical public-sector allies to create programs that last and flourish over time.
The Consortium offered strategic support, technical assistance, and critical guidance to colleges and universities as they develop and sustain ambitious college programs. As partnerships evolve, BPI assisted with relations with corrections officials, provided initial seed funding, or helped design pilot models.
Drawing on nearly two decades of experience, BPI’s assistance has helped other colleges and universities stay true to their own identities, realize students’ full potential, and more deeply fulfill their institutional missions.
Zoe Brown presenting on FEEPS at Consortium convening in South Bend, 2018.
“The University of Notre Dame is both thrilled and grateful to be a part of the Bard Prison Initiative. There are few engagements…that speak more deeply to the soul of this University.”
—Louis Nanni, VP for University Relations
Academics first
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. Yet the Consortium is built on the premise that 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. Partners in the Consortium develop high-quality college-in-prison programs that have the same rigor and high standards expected of main campuses.
Principles
- Create college-in-prison through the leadership and independence of colleges and universities;
- Integrate students into the intellectual, creative, and political life of the main campus;
- Make rigorous liberal arts education and degrees the foundation of all institutional partnerships;
- Maximize the intensity of study, making full-time college engagement the dominant feature of incarceration from the moment of matriculation to release;
- Require identical academic standards, expectations, and student evaluations as on the main campus;
- Do not remake curricula based on questionable assumptions about the deficits, ambitions, or potential of people in prison;
- Challenge traditional notions that recidivism rates are the primary markers of success for college-in-prison.
Our partners
The programs that make up the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison represent fifteen colleges and universities and stretch across ten states. All partners make a fundamental commitment to liberal arts learning that aims to transform individual lives by putting academics first.
In 2009, after years of collaboration, BPI provided a multi-year seed grant to help establish the Center for Prison Education at Wesleyan University. Since then, CPE has enrolled 129 students in two prisons, and has partnered with Middlesex Community College so that students may earn an Associate’s degree. This partnership was selected to participate in the Second Chance Pell program.
The CPE currently offers 9 credited courses per semester as well as summer coursework and non-credited workshops and an on-going guest lecture series. In 2017, the first six CPE graduates were awarded their degrees from Middlesex, with 20 more graduates anticipated for summer, 2018.
In 2010, BPI provided a multi-year seed grant to facilitate the major expansion of the Grinnell Liberal Arts in Prison Program. To date, LAPP has enrolled 120 students at Newton Correctional Facility and allows students to earn a 30-credit First Year of College Award and up to 60 Grinnell credits. LAPP supports its college program with robust efforts from conventional undergraduates and boasts statewide influence in the field.
http://www.grinnell.edu/academics/centers/liberal-arts-prison
For years, educators and advocates aspired to create a stable college-in-prison program in the Baltimore region. In 2011, after being approached by local faculty and advocates, BPI partnered with Goucher College to create the Goucher Prison Education Partnership (GPEP). Now a national leader in the field, GPEP currently enrolls about 100 incarcerated Goucher students across two prison facilities in Maryland. In 2016, Goucher received approval to confer a Goucher College bachelor’s degree at GPEP’s two prison sites. Goucher is the only college in Maryland that allows students to complete a bachelor’s degree while incarcerated, is a Second Chance Pell recipient, and had the honor of hosting the Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Attorney General Loretta Lynch for the announcement of the Second Chance Pell Initiative in 2015.
http://www.goucher.edu/learn/goucher-prison-education-partnership/
The Moreau College Initiative (MCI) was launched in 2012 as a partnership between BPI, the University of Notre Dame, and Holy Cross College at Notre Dame. Its campus inside Indiana’s Westville Correctional Facility is halfway between South Bend, Indiana and Chicago, Illinois. MCI benefits from a close and long-standing partnership with Indiana Department of Corrections. Admissions are run at both Westville and a maximum security prison north of Indianapolis, where those admitted then transfer to Westville. Over fifty students study full-time in a curriculum that includes theology, literature, political science, business, science and mathematics.
Both Associate and Bachelor of Art degrees are offered through Holy Cross College, while a majority of faculty and extensive in-kind support come from Notre Dame. Funding is a mix of public and private, recidivism is characteristically low, and post-release graduates have gone on to employment and further higher education across Indiana. To date, 134 students have been enrolled in MCI and Holy Cross has celebrated three Commencement ceremonies at Westville. The first cohort of Bachelor’s degree recipients will graduate in May, 2018.
Freedom Education Project of Puget Sound (FEPPS) joined the Consortium in 2014 and received several years of seed funding from BPI. FEPPS provides a rigorous college program to incarcerated women in Washington and creates pathways to higher education after women are released from prison. In 2016, FEPPS partnered with Tacoma Community College for Second Chance Pell status. To date, FEPPS has enrolled 325 students and the first associate’s degree students graduated in 2016. Another 19 students completed their associate’s degrees in 2017, and as many as 30 more graduates are expected in 2018. All 12 alumni who have been released from prison are enrolled in two and four-year colleges and universities. One alumna was just accepted at Columbia University, and another graduated from the University of Washington in June 2017.
Faculty at Washington University in St. Louis approached BPI for advice on teaching in prison and together we designed and launched the Washington University Prison Education Project (PEP). PEP joined the Consortium in 2014, received several years of seed funding from BPI, and began teaching for-credit, college-level classes at the Missouri Eastern Correctional Center. In 2015, the Office of the Provost at Washington University committed to substantial, multi-year internal funding for PEP. In addition to offering courses for incarcerated students, PEP also offers courses for correctional staff. The first commencement to confer the Washington University Associate in Arts degree is scheduled for January 2019, and graduates will have the opportunity to continue working towards Bachelor’s degrees from Washington University. Students released prior to graduation have begun to complete degrees at University College on Washington University’s main campus.
In 2014, a panel of educators convened at Bennington to explore the mutually beneficial relationships between liberal arts colleges and students in and coming out of prison. This convening led to the creation of the Prison Education Initiative (PEI) at Bennington College in 2015. PEI currently enrolls students at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York. Students who earn at least 32 Bennington College credits through PEI may apply to BPI as transfer students to complete Bard College degrees. Another Second Chance Pell recipient, PEI offers college prep in addition to a wide range of liberal arts coursework.
http://www.bennington.edu/center-advancement-of-public-action/prison-education-initiative
The University of Vermont joined the Consortium and launched the UVM Liberal Arts in Prison Program (LAPP) in 2017, becoming the first public university to formally join the Consortium. As a flagship public university, Vermont becomes a strategically important experiment in how to design and implement this work without and until the return of structural public funding. The first cohort will begin credit-bearing courses in spring, 2018, and with the exception of location will mirror all other aspects and standards of traditional college courses.
The Yale Prison Education Initiative at Dwight Hall (YPEI) joined the Consortium in 2017 and seeks to expand upon existing Yale programming in correctional facilities by offering Yale courses to incarcerated students in Connecticut. Credits will be issued by Yale College, tuition is waived, and coursework will prepare students to progress toward future degrees. YPEI will run admissions for its first cohort in the spring of 2018. YPEI has also been central to forging a long-term partnership between the Bard Prison Initiative and the Policy Lab at Yale, with the aim of redefining success in the field of college and prison and generating innovative social science research that can inform future practices across the country.
Emerson College launched the Emerson Prison Initiative (EPI) and joined the Consortium in 2017 with an initial cohort of twenty students at Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Concord who began coursework in the fall of 2017. With assistance from BPI, EPI is expanding course offerings at MCI Concord and preparing to admit subsequent cohorts. Emerson brings its unique arts and communications focus to this program, while also creating a strong foundation from which students can decide their own future courses of study, whether at Emerson, other college-in-prison programs, or colleges and universities post-release.
Founded in 1972, the Villanova Graterford Program at SCI Phoenix is one of the oldest continuously running college-in-prison degree programs in the country. Villanova University currently offers Associate and Bachelor’s degrees in General Liberal Arts at SCI Phoenix and is a Second Chance Pell recipient. More than 270 students have been served over Villanova’s storied history, with 72 students currently enrolled. Since 1972, 80 students have graduated from the Program with one or more degrees. Students are offered 8 credited courses per semester along with a monthly lecture series.
The Boston College Prison Education Program (BCPEP) joined the Consortium in 2019. With the support of BPI and friends of the University, BCPEP runs a college-in-prison program within MCI-Shirley. The first cohort was admitted in summer 2019 and began accruing credits toward Bachelor of Arts degrees in the fall 2019 semester. The program became a Second Chance Pell site in 2020. BCPEP students begin their studies in Core Curriculum courses which, as on campus, establish a common foundation and provide a breadth of knowledge in the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. Courses are taught by Boston College faculty and the transferable credits are granted through the University. Boston College strives to provide an education that goes beyond the classroom and the campus for all of its students. To that end, BCPEP reflects the University’s distinctive mission by embodying a commitment to the Jesuit tradition of educating the whole person and preparing students for meaningful lives in service of the common good.
Marian University joined the Consortium in 2019 with the creation of the Women’s College Partnership at IWP. A joint venture with BPI, the Partnership enrolls students at the Indiana Women’s Prison (IWP) on the west side of Indianapolis. The inaugural cohort matriculated in January 2019 and have earned Marian University associate in arts and bachelor’s degrees. Founded by the Sisters of St. Francis, Marian is a Catholic university dedicated to teaching and learning in the Franciscan and liberal arts tradition. It is located less than seven miles from the prison.
The Augustana Prison Education Program (APEP) was founded in 2020 by Augustana College, a selective, private liberal arts college in Rock Island, Illinois, and offers a BA degree at East Moline Correctional Center (EMCC). 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. The program is designed to add 16-20 students per cohort each year. APEP students complete nearly identical degree requirements as those earned by students on the Augustana campus. Students enroll in semesters; four-week intensive January term courses; and summer school sessions to complete the minimum 124 credit hours required of a BA degree. Augustana College joined the Consortium in 2022.
BPI in Action
In April 2018, BPI led a Convening of the Consortium, hosted by our partners at the University of Notre Dame and Holy Cross College. The 3-day event brought over 130 leaders in the field across the country, representing 30 institutions of higher education. Along with BPI staff and leadership, seven BPI alumni brought unique perspectives that enriched the conversation and supported the ongoing national conversation about connecting ambitious college education to meaningful careers for students and alumni coming home from incarceration.
Launched in 2012, the Moreau College Initiative is a partnership between BPI, the University of Notre Dame, and Holy Cross College. It operates within Westville Correctional Facility – halfway between South Bend and Chicago, IL. Admission is also run at other men’s facilities in the state, from which admittees transfer to Westville. Students study full-time in a liberal arts curriculum that includes theology, literature, history, business, biology, and mathematics.
Both associate and bachelor’s degrees are offered through Holy Cross College, while most faculty and extensive in-kind support come from Notre Dame. Funding is public and private, recidivism is low, and graduates go on to employment and further higher education across Indiana. In May 2019, the Moreau College Initiative held its 5th graduation, conferring both AA and BA degrees.
In 2017, two books were published by BPI leadership: Daniel Karpowitz released College-in-Prison: Reading in an Age of Mass Incarceration and Ellen Lagemann published Liberating Minds: The Case for College in Prison.
Widely acclaimed, they were reviewed together in The New York Review of Books.
In the news
Inside Higher Ed
Unlocking the Potential of Prison Education
People in prison have often been relegated to “better than nothing” education, writes Tanya Erzen, and the inequities could become more prevalent during the pandemic.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Boston College Establishes Prison Education Program
[Students] at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute (MCI) in Shirley, Massachusetts can now apply to take Boston College (BC) accredited liberal-arts courses.
The St. Louis Dispatch
Washington University graduates its first class of students in prison
The graduation ceremony was like any other — tearful family members, caps and gowns, “Pomp and Circumstance” — only with added security.