“It Gives Me Back My Identity”

Pamela Cappas-Toro, operations director for the forthcoming national center on prison education research and leadership and adjunct associate professor of world languages and cultures, elaborates on the structure of the new comprehensive humanities degree. “It’s a BA in University Studies with a concentration in the humanities, so we wanted to make sure students could have an experience across different departments in the college. They take courses in history, philosophy, writing studies, linguistics—the full range of the humanities,” she explains. “It’s not only the degree they are getting, it’s also a certificate in Professional and Technical Writing with courses across different disciplines.”

There are, to be sure, operational challenges to running such a project in the inherently restrictive setting of a prison. The bachelor’s degree program is rolling out slowly, offering first one, then two, and eventually three classes per semester in order to test out all the technology and give students a chance to get familiar with tools like Canvas. The environmental and security constraints mean that UPEP does not simply replicate the campus inside the prison classroom. Reflecting on her 15 years’ experience teaching in prisons in several states, Cappas-Toro says, “There’s a lot of possibility in what can happen inside, and a lot of creativity for instructors. You don’t have the same resources, you don’t have the same learners. You have a lot of adult learners with more lived experience, and that necessarily informs your teaching.”

Mike Middleton, associate dean of academic affairs at the College of Humanities, offers praise for the collaborative efforts to bring this degree program to fruition. “It is exciting to see this program continue to develop,” says Middleton. “UPEP does extraordinary work to make the program accessible and, over the last year, faculty from every department in the humanities have collaborated to help design and support a curriculum that combines the critical, self-reflective thinking that is the trademark of the humanities with practical, skills-oriented courses to help further expand futures available to UPEP students.”

Cappas-Toro also reflects on how her experiences teaching in prison classrooms have changed her pedagogical philosophy on campus, offering an example of the ways that standard syllabi can often be very punitive to students, such as automatic grade reductions for missing more than two classes in a semester. In the prison setting, says Cappas-Toro, “If there’s a lockdown and I can’t get inside to teach, I don’t want to penalize students for that. If students are late in the prison, it’s usually because something happened outside their control. If they have to decide between a visit with a family member and your class, they’re going to choose their family member. The punitive training that we get when we’re in grad school—we start to unlearn that and apply that to our regular campus work.”

Leandra Hernandez, assistant professor of communication, taught a summer session of Intercultural Communication through UPEP, and agrees about the impact that stretches outside of the classroom. “Teaching with UPEP at the Utah Correctional Facility was such a meaningful experience. Given that the course ran for only six weeks, we became acquainted and close very quickly,” Hernandez says. “I also appreciate how well UPEP works to keep faculty members connected with students after the course ends through end-of-term dinners at the correctional facility, which ensures continuity and meaningful faculty-student mentorship relationships.”