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As a part of a new library science course at Cornell, campus students help incarcerated students with academic research.
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In This Newsletter
- Tutoring in prison
- New library science partnership
- Cornell's ILR School hosts job fair in prison
- A grateful CPEP alum returns home
- CPEP Director Rob Scott joins the state funding conversation
- PBS mini-series College Behind Bars
- An inspiring gift to Cornell's Prison Education Program
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Tutoring in Prison
 "She is truly a gifted tutor," says CPEP Academic Director Tess Wheelwright of volunteer tutor Emma Li '20, "fielding all kinds of wild math questions and assuaging math anxiety."
The Los Angeles native, who has been tutoring in prison for three semesters, plans to attend law school after graduation, to pursue an interest in public policy that has been heightened by her work with CPEP.
"The entire criminal justice system is policy-based," she points out.
"Education isn’t just for people who are young and impressionable," Li says, "but also for people who want to improve their lives. I think CPEP is doing noble work, teaching critical thinking skills that are helping people become better citizens when they're released."
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 Cornell Librarian Helps Launch Prison Research Class
The new Prison Partners Library Research course (WRIT 1100), designed and taught by Cornell Librarian Heather Furnas, aims to mitigate some of the barriers that incarcerated students face when seeking access to academic materials. The class will train Cornell undergraduate students as research experts as they provide resources to students writing their capstone projects for the Certificate in Liberal Arts offered through the Cornell Prison Education Program.
Read the Cornell Chronicle article on this remarkable work.
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Cornell-ILR Job Fair Inside Prison: Twelve employers, along with a formerly incarcerated union carpentry representative, met with 78 incarcerated men at the Queensboro Prison in New York City, representing the first time job interviews and offers have been issued inside an NY prison . Read the full story here.
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CPEP in NYC: Pulitzer-winning author James Forman Jr. (left) shakes hands with CPEP alumnus Mario Mency at a September event hosted by CPEP in NYC.
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Alumni Profile: "I wasn't really living. I was just existing."
Mario Francis Mency, 50, was incarcerated at Wyoming Correctional Facility at age 45 after injuring someone in a restaurant fight. Although it was his first trouble with the law, "My life was not on the right track," he admits.
Prison shocked him—it was violent and humiliating and boring. One day, a fellow incarcerated man suggested that he look into the college program offered there.
"I enrolled and flourished," Mency remembers. "It was the best thing that ever happened to me... it opened doors that empowered me, let me recognize my worth. The more I learned how to study, the more I wanted to learn."
Read more of Mario's story here.
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New York Prison Education Leaders Gather
CPEP Executive Director Rob Scott participated in a roundtable discussion hosted by John Jay College about state funding for higher education in prison in New York state this month. "Around the table there were leaders from all branches of state government, the correctional system, and the major colleges doing this work. The institutions that oversee college in prison have never been aligned like this. You can sense a generational shift towards providing education as a means to rehabilitation and decreasing mass incarceration."
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PBS Miniseries: College Behind Bars
A riveting 4-part miniseries on PBS (beginning November 25) promises to give viewers an unprecedented window into prison education. College Behind Bars, produced by Ken Burns, features Bard Prison Initiative classes inside several NY State prisons. The miniseries is directed by Peabody Award-winner Lynn Novick.
Watch the trailer. |
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Donor Profile: A Longtime Champion of CPEP
 Alison Van Dyke, a senior lecturer at Cornell and member of the CPEP Advisory Board, generously helped create the CPEP Fund, an endowment that provides "general support for the Cornell Prison Education Program to educate both incarcerated students and campus undergraduates through real-life engagement with the criminal justice system."
She chose during her lifetime to keep her giving private, but also hoped it would inspire others to help make CPEP sustainable. We share that wish of Alison's now, as we honor her vision and generosity.
Alison made weekly trips to Auburn prison over the past decade to work with the theatre group there. "When I met Alison in 2014, I was awed by her quiet grace," shares CPEP student Adam Roberts. He adds, "Alison added depth to any conversation that she touched and she could dispense sound advice. She was seemingly unflappable, full of wit, lacking in guile, gifted with tact.”
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