On May 5, 2009, Katherine Eyster ’10 submitted a Wespeak advocating for the approval of a pilot program in which Wesleyan faculty and students would teach two college level courses a semester to a specially selected group of 19 inmates at the nearby maximum security Cheshire Correctional Institution, allowing them to earn college credit while serving out their sentences.
“While it is incredibly unfortunate that this program cannot include more students, it is a pilot program,” Eyster wrote, “and I believe all parties involved hope that its success will lead to expansion further on.”
The next day, University faculty met and voted to approve the Center for Prison Education (CPE) pilot program for a two-year period. Today the faculty will vote on whether or not to re-approve the program for another five years.
Eyster, who currently works as a writing tutor with the for-credit students at the Cheshire facility, expects the faculty to vote in favor of the CPE, which will allow the program to double the number of inmates enrolled at the Cheshire facility, and expand to York Prison, a women’s facility in Niantic, Conn. next year.
“I am very optimistic about its approval,” she said. “The initial pilot program passed by an overwhelmingmargin two years ago and it has met each objective since.”
Professor Mike McAlear, who taught MB&B 119: Biology and Chemistry in the Modern World in the first year of the program, was equally hopeful.
“It will be re-approved,” McAlear said. “It’s a sense and a hope that I have, but I am an optimist. There are obviously legitimate concerns about how to structure the program, its sustainability, how to handle graduation… these are all ongoing questions. But my sense right now is that it’s a great win-win-win-win-win situation. A win for the students, a win for the faculty, a win for the University, a win for the prison, and a win for society.”
Many professors have said that the program has been very rewarding, and expressed these views in a comprehensive report about the pilot program.
“The students were extremely engaged with the texts and the ideas,” wrote Professor Lori Gruen, who taught Introduction to Political Philosophy at Chesire, in an e-mail to The Argus. “It was gratifying to observe the improvement in their thinking, speaking, and writing over the course of the semester. It was a remarkably important pedagogical experience for me that has re-invigorated my teaching and reminded me just how transformative philosophy can be.”
McAlear, who taught two sections of MB&B 119 on campus concurrent with his course at Cheshire, was surprised by his students’ performance in the class, even relative to students on campus.
“I gave them all the same material, the same tests, and I graded them blind,” McAlear said. “But I found that [CPE students] were on the whole more engaged, they asked five times more questions than Wesleyan students, and they were present to a degree that Wesleyan students have never been in my classes. Of the best grades, there was an A+ in my [CPE] class, and some of them [CPE students] were among my best students. When students are engaged like that you know you’re making an impact. They inspired me to try to teach better because when you’re in that context, you really want to bring your A game.”
McAlear admitted, however, that he did experience some difficulties as a CPE professor.
“It was challenging because they had no access to the Internet, there’s no decent library there, and I had no office hours,” he said. “And their backgrounds were very different from Wesleyan students—some had never learned what an atom was. One student asked me if a molecule was alive. I had never gotten a question like that before. When you walk into a Wesleyan class there is an assumed level of knowledge. I ended up spending more time [at Chesire] because there was more that needed to be explained. It was the hardest course to teach, but it was really the most rewarding.”
The re-approval process began with a comprehensive assessment of the CPE’s first two years. Faculty members who taught at the prison filled out evaluations, enrolled inmates wrote an assessment of each course they were enrolled in, and volunteers filled out experience surveys. Based on this information, as well as the grades that students received and in-class observations, the CPE’s advisory committee, which consists of English Professor Sean McCann, Biology Professor Anne Burke, and History Professor Magda Teter, wrote an assessment of the pilot program.
“Generally speaking the assessment was glowing,” said Lexi Sturdy ’10, the CPE fellow. “It says that the program had succeeded in all the ways it set out to. Obviously there were a few hiccups. It’s hard to run the program; the men don’t have regular access to the Internet and computers.”
The assessment was sent to the Education Policy Committee (EPC), which oversees all academic activities at the University. They approved the program and will present it at the faculty meeting where the CPE’s re-approval will be put to a vote.
Despite earlier fears that the University faculty would not get a chance to vote at their meeting today, the issue has been moved up on the agenda to ensure a decision, according to Sturdy.
President Michael Roth, who played an important role in approving of the pilot program, said that he is excited for this year’s reassessment of the CPE.
“I look forward to reading the report and seeing what’s working well, what the issues are,” Roth said. “What I’ve learned so far is that my initial questions probably aren’t the right questions, and I want to see what people think—what the prisoners think, what the interns think, and what the teachers think about whether we should do it in the future.”