Accomplishments
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Developed and maintained a strong partnership with the Wyoming Department of Corrections
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Established a regular rotation of UW faculty, staff, and supervised students to teach at multiple correctional facilities through in person and remote instruction
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Offered a range of courses to hundreds of incarcerated students (see the Latest Work page for details)
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Assisted with the upgrade of dated correctional facility classroom technology
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Collaborated with the Correctional Education Association on a national research project and report publication, Higher Education in Prison: A Pilot Study of Approaches and Modes of Delivery in Eight Prison Administrations (2019; available soon)
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Published a collection of incarcerated women’s writing in Wagadu: Journal of Transnational Gender & Women’s Studies (2017) based on work completed with 10 UW students, Susan Dewey, and Bonnie Zare at the women’s prison in summer 2016
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Organized and hosted the 2019 Symposium on Transformative Education in Prison and Beyond in Laramie, Wyoming; and helped organize the 2016 National Conference on Higher Education in Prison held in Nashville, Tennessee
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Nominated for and received multiple awards, including: University of Wyoming's Marvin Millgate Award for Community Engagement (awarded, 2018), National Criminal Justice Association's Outstanding Program Award (nominated, 2018), American Correctional Association's Innovation Award (nominated, 2018), Correctional Education Association's Austin MacCormick Award for best practices in correctional education that can be implemented nationwide (awarded, 2017), University of Wyoming's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Award for community collaboration (awarded, 2017)
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In 2022, WPfP was accepted into the US Department of Education’s Experimental Sites program and the Second Chance Pell Initiative. Under this experiment, WPfPwas chosen as one of 200 programs across the country to phase in Pell Grant funding for incarcerated individuals with felony convictions. These individuals had been barred from such funding since the 1990s. Upon acceptance, WPfP and UW began offering a Bachelor in General Studies degree to incarcerated students at the Wyoming Women’s Center in Lusk, Wyoming. Working in close partnership with the Wyoming Department of Corrections, UW faculty began teaching courses at WWC in a curriculum designed for students to achieve their degrees in 4 calendar years. In 2023, WPfP also began a degree program at Wyoming Medium Correctional Institute in Torrington, Wyoming. [photo here?]
"We’re not lepers. Some of these girls have no education, and they can’t get access to education because of why they’re here. If they could get educated, have housing, and be able to go out there and be productive in society, things would be different. They wouldn’t come back."
"[We’d like to be able] to go to a school, so even it is some kinda even maybe on the job training, or something where we’re not having to kill ourselves working two jobs… I know that’s what I’d always gone back to is cleaning jobs and waitressing because I know I could get a job because I’ve done it for so long. But then I could never make ends meet. And so then it gets tempting to sell drugs or to just give up and say “why bother?” and be running in circles.
