Lifting Prisoners Into a
Brighter Future
UCI launches the UC system’s first B.A. program for incarcerated individuals By Jim Washburn
Keramet Reiter’s interest in prison education began when she was an undergrad at Harvard University, participating in and eventually managing a program to help convicts earn a GED diploma. She then taught in a private college’s A.A. degree program inside San Quentin State Prison from 2007 to 2012, while attaining a law degree and a doctorate in jurisprudence & social policy at UC Berkeley. So after joining the UCI faculty in 2012, Reiter naturally fell into informal discussions with colleagues who shared her interest. “We began talking about the need for a B.A. program in prisons,” she says, “and because many of us who study prisons think about maybe doing something, we started putting the building blocks in place to make it happen.” Those blocks took concrete form in December, when UCI Chancellor Howard Gillman signed a memorandum of understanding with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for UCI to create the University of California system’s first in-prison Bachelor of Arts program: Leveraging Inspiring Futures Through Educational Degrees. Classes are expected to commence in fall 2022 at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County. Reiter, an associate professor of criminology, law &
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UCI Magazine
society as well as law, had three UCI co-instigators in shaping the program who now join her on the initiative’s core team: Valerie Jenness, acting vice provost for academic planning, Distinguished Professor of criminology, law & society and former dean of social ecology; Carroll Seron, professor emerita of criminology, law & society; and Pavan Kadandale, associate professor of teaching in molecular biology & biochemistry. There’s a 59-member advisory committee drawn from schools across campus. Reiter knew they had something when the group presented the idea to Gillman. “I vividly remember his excitement when we first met with him to talk about this,” she says. “It was really key to have Chancellor Gillman on board so officials in the prison system would know that it wasn’t just a group of faculty calling but that it would be the institution they were partnering with.” The chancellor’s commitment was evident during an online press conference in December announcing the memorandum about Leveraging Inspiring Futures Through Educational Degrees, at which he said, “Providing a UC education to students in state prison will help us make good on our promise to provide a high-quality education to Californians, regardless of their circumstances. LIFTED will transform lives for
