Dear <<First Name>>,
 There was no anticipating the drastic challenges that 2020 would bring – certainly not for CPEP, where the new year saw us still celebrating a feature story in the Cornell Chronicle, the launch of a new associate degree program at Elmira, and a new cohort of students in Cornell's Certificate in Liberal Arts. We began the year by announcing 37 in-prison courses and expanded in-prison research opportunities. We planned an exciting public event in NYC and a symposium in Ithaca, NY...
Then, the pandemic hit.
New York was ground zero for the first wave of COVID-19, and everything was  postponed, paused, or cancelled in March. Our focus shifted first to pandemic mitigation: We advocated for the provision of hand sanitizer and directly provided masks to the entire prison population.
CPEP made do ... and innovated.
As the first wave of infections died down in New York, we shifted to innovating new forms of connection with our students: building video conferencing  classrooms in each facility, emailing with incarcerated students via prison-provided tablets, and pre-recording lectures for screenings in our in-prison computer labs. These were victories won in a year of a public health pandemic and social turmoil.
We sorely miss our 200+ CPEP students. Their academic ambition is weathering the storm, with every remote-taught fall 2020 course fully enrolled – yet another testament to human spirit and tenacity.
Your support would be deeply appreciated now.
Our mission is the same as ever: to provide the best possible opportunities for incarcerated people to achieve their full academic potential (see our Year in Review, below).
We need your support as much as we do in any other year, and then some. If you can, please do include the Cornell Prison Education Program in your holiday giving this year. Thank you!
Sincerely,
 
Robert Scott, Exec. Director
Cornell Prison Education Program
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September 2020
