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Fathers Building Futures helps previously incarcerated fathers reintegrate with their children by providing them on-the-job training and moral support.
Grad students help prisoner-dads reconnect By Sayyed Shah Graduate students at the Department of Communication and Journalism are collaborating with Fathers Building Futures, an Albuquerque business, to help felons integrate into their families after incarcerations. Tema Milstein, associate professor at the Department of Communication and Journalism, said the students from a PhD professional seminar class are collaborating with PB&J, a nonprofit organization working for the rights of children, and specifically with Fathers Building Futures. “This unit of the class in which we are collaborating is focused on using research and teaching to help bring about positive change,” Milstein said. “We really wanted to engage our graduate students,
who are going to be future professors, in understanding how they can bring about positive change in their work.” Fathers Building Futures is an initiative of PB&J Family Services that provides hands-on service and skill-oriented training to previously incarcerated people in auto detailing, mobile power washing and customized woodworking, according to the PB&J website. “Fathers Building Futures aims to connect formerly incarcerated fathers with their professional and civic promises while providing affordable, meaningful and useful services to the community,” a PB&J press release states. “In the process, child recidivism is cut by close to 50 percent, and children benefit from a father who is not role modeling behind bars.” Fathers Building Futures is
working to protect the futures of children as well as their parents, said Dean Ma’ayan, director of PB&J Family Services’ Development & Strategic Initiatives. “In the majority of cases fathers are returning to jails not because they committed a new crime, but because they failed to secure housing or employment — which translates to their Probation Officer as a violation of their parole plan,” Ma’ayan said. “Creating a business to employ them as they leave prison was our solution to the tremendous problems these fathers face: not being able to get hired despite their talent and desire to work.” She said that many Fathers Building Futures graduates have found employment in other organizations. This workforce development project of PB&J Family Services has
been funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Family Assistance, through its Responsible Fatherhood communitybased pilot project grant. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, children of prisoners are 10 times more likely to partake in criminal behavior than children with nonincarcerated parents. Milstein thought this project was a particularly good collaboration for her graduate students, she said. “It is a nice way to engage the University with people who have served time,” she said. “I think what we are practicing is a kind of research service learning. This is the second year we have been doing this.” The C&J students’ role in the project is to help fathers who have
served time tell their stories. “After we interview them, we go over with the stories with them and we give them their stories so that they could have something to hand on to their children — like what they went through and how they are trying to improve their lives,” Milstein said. C&J students are also helping Fathers Building Futures and the organization Young Women United prepare some of these fathers for testimony in the current state legislative session, in support of a bill that will help the previously incarcerated fathers be considered for jobs. “This year we are also helping them with a bill, which is at the State Legislature right now (Senate Bill 120),” Milstein said. “The bill
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Retiring chair championed feminist perspectives By Marielle Dent
Karen Foss, chair of the Department of Communication and Journalism, will be retiring in August after having held various positions at UNM since 1993. Foss originally came to UNM from Humboldt University in northern California and worked as a faculty member until she became director of Women’s Studies in 1995. After two years she became chair of the C&J department and remained in that position until 2000, when she returned to being a faculty member. Two years ago Foss became department chair once again. “There has always been a nice community in C&J. I have enjoyed my colleagues, my graduate stu-
dents and the opportunity to do administration,” Foss said. “It’s a different way to contribute than just being a professor or researcher.” Foss did not originally plan to work in the communication field. As an undergraduate student at the University of Oregon, she majored in Spanish and French with the intention of becoming a language teacher at a high school. “I went to student teach and realized I didn’t want to go back to high school. I hated high school,” Foss said. “This was the winter quarter of my senior year in college and I looked through the catalogue for a new major. I came across communications and thought ‘maybe I like the process of communication — I just want to do it in English.’” She decided to get a Master’s
degree in Communication and then got a Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in the same field. Foss has done a great deal of research on communication with a focus on feminism, she said. “A lot of my research has dealt with feminist perspectives on communication, primarily because they didn’t exist when I came into the field,” Foss said. “It just kind of annoyed me that we were always studying great, white dead men, and they were certainly not the only people in existence.” She has researched the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a group of Argentine mothers whose children were murdered under the country’s military dictatorship, who march
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Kanan Mammadli / Daily Lobo / @KenanMammadly
Karen Foss, chair of the Department of Communication and Journalism, will be retiring in August after holding various positions at UNM since 1993.