Article by Julie Waechter, special to Adams State University
Adams State University’s Prison Education Program (PEP) is participating in a unique research project designed to advance educational justice for people and communities impacted by incarceration. Adams State is one of more than 22 PEPs across the country that will collaborate with Utah University, which is establishing the Prison Education Action Research Lab, or PEARL, with an $8 million award from Ascendium Education Group. It will be the first national center dedicated to prison education research and leadership.
PEARL is directed by Dr. Erin L. Castro, associate professor of educational leadership and policy at University of Utah. In 2016, she co-founded the University of Utah Prison Education Project and in 2017 launched the Research Collaborative on Higher Education in Prison. She is a founding editor for the Journal of Higher Education in Prison.
Adams State will be involved in PEARL’s anchor project, the Prison Education Research Initiative (PERI), a first-of-its-kind, multi-institutional study that will address urgent policy- and practice-relevant research questions. PERI will collect systematic and longitudinal data on PEP programs, their students, and their outcomes.
Lauren Hansen, director of Adams State’s PEP, said, “We are excited to be involved with the PERI, working to improve opportunities and outcomes for incarcerated students. We are deeply committed to fostering educational opportunities and take pride in being one of the few quality correspondence programs available to incarcerated individuals in the country. PEP, historically a correspondence program, was granted Second Chance Pell funding and started teaching face-to-face courses in five Colorado prisons in 2023.”
Since 2017, Adams State PEP has awarded hundreds of college degrees at the associates, bachelor’s, and master’s levels, she said.
Research shows providing learning opportunities to incarcerated populations carries broad societal impacts beyond prison walls, according to Dr. Castro. “For practitioners, we know that access to quality postsecondary education during incarceration strengthens families and improves public safety,” she said. “We know the children of incarcerated learners have increased aspirations for education attainment, and now we hope to tackle these kinds of questions empirically.”
She said her team of educators and educational scholars brings a unique approach to addressing these challenges and providing leadership to the field. “What we currently know about postsecondary education in prison comes largely from the field of criminology. Housing the Lab in the College of Education demonstrates a distinct disciplinary and pedagogical approach to the work, situating incarcerated people as college students.”
