Inside-Out course learn

By Sandy Coleman

From the Wheaton campus, the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, Mass., is only a 17.2-mile drive south on Interstate 495. But the short van ride each week during the fall semester transported students a world away.

There, eight Wheaton students took the shared sociology and psychology course “Inside Out: Making Sense of Data” alongside 10 people incarcerated at the prison. The class was part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program that is designed to facilitate dialogue across differences, including social barriers. The Inside-Out program, which is based at Temple University in Philadelphia, was founded in 1977 as a way to bring together “outside” campus-based students with “inside” incarcerated students for a semester-long course held in a prison, jail or other correctional settings, according to the website. It has since grown into an international network of trained faculty, students, alumni, think tanks, higher education and correctional administrators and other stakeholders who are committed to social justice issues.

After intensive training from the