Potential in motion

Zelda Roland didn’t set out to build a career in prison education. At Yale, Roland ’08, ’16 Ph.D. studied art history, film, and media studies. In 2014, while completing her dissertation and considering what was next, she volunteered to help a friend who was running Wesleyan’s Center for Prison Education (CPE).

“I had taught classes on campus for years as a teaching assistant and then teaching my own classes,” Roland said. “But the guys I met in prison were among the best, brightest, and most omnivorous students I’ve ever worked with.”

Inspired by those interactions and encouraged by incarcerated students at Cheshire Correctional Institution, she reached out to individuals across Yale to see if there was any hope for starting a new program. She discovered that students and faculty across campus were already working in prisons in various ways:  volunteering as GED tutors in a prison for young adults or teaching incarcerated individuals through CPE or the Bard College Prison Initiative in New York. A growing number of students, faculty, and alumni were supportive of the idea of a program that could bring access to a Yale education for students in prison.

“They knew there was a huge need for more liberal arts programming in our state’s prisons and that if we could develop something that drew on Yale’s strengths, it would be a tremendous asset to so many students with so much potential. They also knew that a Yale program could have a ripple effect nationally, making an outsized impact, and inspiring new programs elsewhere.”

Building the program

While completing graduate school, Roland convened a group of like-minded individuals to discuss launching a credit-bearing prison education program at Yale. The task of building a new program was daunting, but in 2016, the initiative found support — and a home — at Dwight Hall.

“I had just experienced another setback and was feeling dejected, thinking maybe this program was never going to happen at Yale,” Roland said. “Then I met with Peter Crumlish, the executive director of Dwight Hall. He said, ‘You’ve come this far; it’s important to keep going.’ I handed in my dissertation, turned down a teaching position at Columbia, and in September 2016, we officially created the Yale Prison Education Initiative at Dwight Hall (YPEI), funded initially with a small seed grant from the Bard Prison Initiative and its Consortium for Liberal Arts in Prison.”

Now in its 10th year, YPEI provides for-credit Yale College courses to incarcerated students in three Connecticut prisons. Lisa Lowe, the Samuel Knight Professor of American Studies at Yale, teaches Literature and Historical Imagination at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, in Suffield, Connecticut.

“I thought it was a great opportunity to give back to the community beyond Yale. I didn’t know what to expect,” she said. “These students are curious, exhibit a true desire to learn, and have the most probing, interesting questions. There’s a depth to their responses to the literature and historical material that is so unusual that I’ve learned a great deal from teaching them.”

Growth and impact

In 2021, with a $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation, YPEI established a landmark partnership with the University of New Haven to expand to offer two- and four-year degree pathways. Now YPEI’s staff of five is guided by an academic advisory committee, with courses taught by paid faculty and supported by dozens of student volunteers, academic strategies mentors, writing partners, and research coordinators.

The program held its first graduation in 2023, awarding seven associate degrees in general studies. Alpha Jalloh was valedictorian. “Before I applied, I’d heard talk around the prison that this educational program was different,” said Jalloh. “It was seen as a safe space, and inmates enrolled in it expressed that it made them feel whole. When you are in prison, it feels like your life is on pause. I wanted to be doing something, and YPEI changed everything for me.”

By 2022, YPEI had expanded to the women’s prison at the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, becoming the only degree program available to any incarcerated women in a federal prison in the country. The first graduation ceremony for women — and the program’s fourth graduation to date — is set to take place this spring.

How it works

Today, the program runs year-round across three semesters — fall, spring, and summer — and offers about 45 courses per year, such as Reading and Writing the Modern Essay, Bioethics, Chemistry of Food, History of the Middle East, Intro to Graphic Design, and Pandemics and Public Health.

“Through the partnership with the University of New Haven, we provide a full-time liberal arts college program,” Roland said. “Students can take up to five classes per semester, and we offer about 15 classes across the three prisons. Currently, we have about 75 students enrolled.”

At each facility, the program facilitates a competitive admissions process for cohorts of 12-15 spots, for which anywhere from 100-600 individuals apply, depending on the facility (MacDougall-Walker, the largest prison in the Northeast, comprises about 1500 individuals, where 600 asked to be considered for admission to the first 12-person seminar in 2018). Applicants must have a high school diploma or GED and are invited to attend an information session before submitting a paper application. “The written application consists of short answers and a longer written essay, and it’s timed and in person,” Roland said.

All classes are held on-site in designated education spaces. The classrooms have whiteboards, seminar tables, and sometimes computers, depending on the facility — but no internet access, anywhere. Course packets and readings are printed, and assignments are handwritten.

“We maintain everything from the original Yale or UNH course, including the syllabus, pages of reading, outcomes, expectations, and assignments,” she added. “It’s a lot more than the syllabi, though. It’s about investing in the people we believe will be future leaders and citizens in their communities and beyond; investing — with credentials, networks, and knowledge — in their paths, their potential, their ability to transform our world for the better.”

Transformative impact

Collaboration has been paramount to YPEI’s success. To date, the initiative with UNH has facilitated almost 1,800 course enrollments for over 150 incarcerated students. More than 30 have graduated with Associate of Arts or Bachelor of Arts degrees with courses taught by over 180 faculty, staff, and graduate students from both universities.

“I’ve seen how this program has positively affected students and their families,” Roland said. “It impacts communities in prison. It makes a transformative impact for individuals leaving prison and restarting their lives that reverberates within their families and communities. It actually makes a generational impact. And of course, it makes an impact here, on our own campuses. It reminds us what it’s all about.”