Our impact

Hundreds of imprisoned women have benefited from the opportunity to achieve life-changing success through The College Program's wide array of services. Currently 63 students are enrolled in 136 courses, and 10 students completed certificates in Spring 2023.

Three associate's degrees and six certificates are available through distance-learning.

The College Program focuses on the links between educational opportunities and imprisoned women's attempts to reenter society successfully. Volunteers make the 80-mile roundtrip visit to the prison each week to counsel new applicants, facilitate study groups, proctor exams and provide liaison services between students and their instructors.

The program embraces a vision of the complex personhood of imprisoned women, including their potential as human beings who are capable and, given structural encouragement, desirous of changing their and their children's life chances within society.

The College Program challenges stereotypical images of imprisoned women as lacking academic and intellectual interest or ability. Inherent in the advocacy of educational opportunities is a rejection of portraits of incarcerated as having unchangeable identities and destinies.

The program's anticipated impacts are simultaneously straightforward and incalculable. We expect imprisoned women to complete college courses, to work toward two- and four-year degrees, and to prepare for their return to society and their families.

These tangible, "practical" results are of great importance in this program, but the possibilities for other, far-reaching outcomes — however unknowable — are also crucial. The transformative powers of being treated with dignity and respect, as one whose potential is honored and nurtured, are of enormous consequence. So, too, are the curative and life-restoring possibilities of education in its truest sense.

Pandemic challenges

On March 20, 2020, volunteers traveled to the prison to administer examinations, but the prison had begun its long lockdown due to the COVID pandemic. During the following two-and-a-half years, we supported enrolled students long-distance and met with education staff in the prison parking lot to receive student assignments and to deliver new course materials.

Many students were quarantined; some were released or transferred to halfway houses. Course completions became extremely difficult or impossible for many students. Despite these impediments, many students persevered to successfully complete their studies.

This student's letter illustrates some of the difficulties students faced and their determination, as well as their ongoing appreciation of The College Program.