History

As covered in a Bucknell Magazine article from 2019, there is a long history to Bucknell University’s involvement with regional carceral institutions, at the local, state and federal level. In order to ensure that this history is accessible to all, in 2020, Professor Coralynn Davis authored a document that tells the story of that involvement, which can be accessed here. The document, compiled from both oral history and the university archives, details faculty and staff members’ repeated efforts to establish a permanent program in Prison Education at the university. Whether in the 1960s, the 1980s, the 1990s, or the 2000s, Bucknell professors and staff members have taught classes at local carceral institutions, have arranged class visits or taken groups of Bucknell students inside the prison wire.

In 2005, four Bucknell faculty became the first to be trained through the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, developed by Dr. Lori Pompa at Temple University in Philadelphia. This program, now running internationally, proposes a radically inclusive model of teaching through which equal numbers of incarcerated (“Inside”) and college degree-seeking (“Outside”) students take a semester-long class together, taught inside the carceral institution. To be included in the program, instructors must complete a rigorous 60-hour training, secure permission from the carceral institution administration in question, interview Outside students to ensure their genuine interest in the experience and work with prison authorities in the selection process of the Inside students.

The first Inside-Out course in our area was taught at SCI Muncy by Professors Coralynn Davis and Carol White in 2005. Prof. Davis then taught this course singly 10 times in the following decade. In the early 2010s, Prof. Kim Daubman (Psychology) began teaching a Positive Psychology Inside-Out course at SCI Muncy until her retirement in 2023. In 2018, Prof. Carl Milofsky (Sociology) began teaching a modified Inside-Out course at SCI Coal Township. During the Covid pandemic, all teaching through this program had to be suspended, as institutions of education and incarceration faced lockdowns.

In anticipation of pandemic restrictions being lifted, four new faculty underwent the Inside-Out training in 2022 (Tom Solomon, Physics; Vanessa Massaro, Geography; Katie Hayes, Creative Writing; and Elena Machado, Literary Studies). Towards the end of the pandemic, slightly easier access to visits to SCI Coal Township allowed Professor Tom Solomon to plan his class there, which then took place in Spring 2023. You can read more about that here.

In the summer of 2023, two more faculty were trained by the Inside Out program (Katie Faull, German Studies and Comparative and Digital Humanities; and Jennifer Thomson, History) in preparation for the upcoming academic years. Thanks to the financial support of the Provost’s Office, faculty can apply to undergo the Inside-Out training; and incarcerated students now receive Bucknell course credit at no cost to them.

The benefits of this program are many and exist on both sides of the prison walls. For the “Outside” students, this is a firsthand entry into a correctional system in the US in which they are not merely the “observers” (as happens with a single class visit) but rather are meeting incarcerated men and women on more equal terms. In accordance with the Inside-Out teaching philosophy, Inside and Outside students sit together in a circle in the classroom, work together on class projects, and interact with each other as fellow human beings. Confidentiality is maintained through the use of only first names, which for the Inside students may also be the only time they are known by their first names in a prison context. This, plus the experience of learning in a group setting with college students who often come from very different social and economic backgrounds, is frequently described by the Inside students as a humanizing and liberating experience, which can contrast starkly with the every day within the carceral institution.

In Spring 2023, Hadley Winter ’26 drew on the broad and long history to represent the many connections between Bucknell and the carceral system on this poster slide that was displayed in the Bertrand Library in April 2023 as part of the first Community Engaged Learning poster exhibit.

Prison Education Working Group

In order to develop and support this work, in the Spring semester of 2023, and supported by the Humanities Center Mellon Working Group grant program, a group of Bucknell faculty and students gathered on a monthly basis to discuss active Prison Education initiatives at Bucknell University. Over lunch provided through the Start-Up grant, the group discussed issues central to the Inside/Out teaching program at Bucknell, shared useful advice about teaching courses inside the local prisons, planned future courses and worked on disseminating more information to the campus about building bridges between incarcerated populations and Bucknell. We also arranged two visits to the local SCIs (Coal Township and Muncy). Members of this group spanned academic departments across the divisions of the College of Arts and Sciences, from Mathematics, Computer Science, Creative Writing, Physics, Geography, Biology and German Studies. In addition, thanks to the generosity of the Douglas Candland Fund for Civic Engagement, two students were hired as Prison Education Outreach Assistants.

Prison Outreach Community-Engaged Projects

Shamokin Community Gardens Partners with Bucknell University and SCI Coal Township in Flower Distribution Project

In a related collaborative volunteer project, members of the Shamokin Community Garden group have partnered with Bucknell University in a creative community outreach program that links the flower gardens inside SCI Coal Township with residents of local care homes. Since the spring of 2022, a group of students, staff and faculty at Bucknell University have worked with the Superintendent of SCI Coal Township to plan, plant and tend a flower garden within the facility. What began as a small idea has now blossomed into a community-engaged project, where the beautiful flowers grown inside SCI Coal Township are donated to local care homes in the Shamokin region. In this garden, both annual and perennial flowers, mostly native to this region, are planted and tended by the inmates, then cut and transported by employees of the institution to the Mother Cabrini Church in Shamokin. There, members of the Shamokin Community Garden group, headed by Susan Ward and Jeanie Crowl, work with other volunteers to arrange the flowers in vases, ready to be delivered to local care homes and hospitals. Messages of care and support are attached to the vases on small wooden labels, designed by the students and the incarcerated men.

The impetus for this project came from both the already existing gardens inside SCI Coal Township and programs at other state prisons, where horticultural therapy is recognized as a rehabilitative program. The incarcerated gardeners have invested hours of research into the care and planting of these flowers, and have gained new skills and interests that will influence their lives upon release. Initiated in the summer of 2022 by Bucknell student Reece Pauling ‘24 and Dr. Katie Faull, Director of Academic Civic Engagement, this year the project has gone into full swing thanks to the hard work of Hannah Holmes ‘23, an environmental science and biology double major. Hannah has worked closely with the superintendent of the facility, Tom McGinley, to ensure that the Botanical Garden Project allows inmates to give back to the local community positively through the donation of flower bouquets to local nursing homes and rehabilitation centers produced from the prison garden.  Materials and time for the project are donated by community members and student volunteers who help arrange flowers and vase them before they are distributed to the area care homes.

See local media coverage here!

Interested in Prison Education?

If you are interested in learning more about Prison Education at Bucknell University, please reach out to Katie Faull, Faculty Director of Academic Civic Engagement (faull@bucknell.edu).