Mount Tamalpais College

Academics

Academic Program Resumes at San Quentin with Eight-Week Correspondence Courses

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After nearly a year of suspended programming, we are thrilled to resume Associate of Arts degree courses to help sustain students’ academic development during this extended period of disruption.

For an eight-week spring term, we are offering 13 one-unit credit correspondence courses that address one of the following learning outcomes: quantitative competency, written communication, critical thinking, or civic and community engagement. A full list of course offerings is available below.

We are also mailing math and writing practice curricula to college preparatory students, and offering a few other non-credit extracurricular opportunities to all students. There are 13 returning faculty facilitating the credit courses and 14 supporting college preparatory work; each course will have a maximum of 30 students.

Though we hope to be back in the classroom in person soon, we are excited to continue providing high-quality education to students at San Quentin in the interim.

The following one-credit correspondence courses will be offered this term:

Landmark U.S. Court Cases

This course is an in-depth study of three landmark court cases, each chosen because it illustrates something central to the U.S. legal system: McFall v. Shimp, a 1978 case wherein the court had to decide whether to force one person to donate bone marrow against their will in order to save the life of another person, Brown v. Board of Ed, a 1953 U.S. Supreme Court case wherein the court decided that racially segregated public schools were unconstitutional, and Riggs v. Palmer, an 1889 case about whether a grandson who murdered his grandfather could inherit his money. 

Popular Music & Social Criticism in Modern America

This course explores popular music as social commentary in modern America. Students will look at the role of music in protest and response in recent decades beginning with the civil rights and peace movements of the mid-twentieth century, through the response of Chicano rock, funk, and hip-hop to the issues of the day, and continuing into the twenty-first century and recent developments related to politics and social issues. 

Strategies for Activism in U.S. History

What strategies have activists employed throughout the history of the United States to fight for social justice and civic change? This course considers the U.S.’s history of activism from Reconstruction to 2020 with a focus on the approaches adopted by civil rights leaders to not only communicate but also garner support for their causes within a range of movements.

Presidential Inaugural Addresses

On January 20, President Joe Biden delivered his inaugural address at an especially charged moment in the nation’s history. This course asks students to read, reflect on, and write about the civic signals Biden sought to send to his fellow citizens, and how they compare with the signals sent by six previous presidents in their noteworthy inaugural addresses.

Statistics of Vaccinations and Herd Immunity

This course explores how viruses such as COVID-19 spread, how vaccinations help us slow the spread to achieve herd immunity, and how statistics help us understand it all.

Future Vision: Science Fiction Utopias

Drawing upon science fiction and other speculative writings, students will explore and critically examine problems and possibilities of how social systems might be constructed, and imagine parameters towards a future society. Readings include work by authors such as Octavia Butler, Ursula Le Guin, Jose Saramego, Ray Bradbury, Jorge Luis Borges, Pamela Sargent, Mary Doria Russell.

Fire, Forests, and Forest Fires

This is an exploratory survey of the literature of forest wildfires, firefighting experiences, fire management, and policy, past, present, and future. Readings tell the stories of smoke jumpers, heroic and tragic, Indigenous legends and native land practices, as well as a discussion of California forest and fire ecology.

Climate Change

This course introduces the basic science of climate change. Students will discuss how carbon dioxide affects the climate and humanity’s role in the production of carbon dioxide.

The Legacies of “Redlining” and “White Flight”

Redlining is the illegal practice of refusing to provide financial services to consumers based on the area where they live. This course will introduce students to a mix of historiographical writings, some fiction and poetry, and recent studies to offer a brief overview over redlining then and now, including maps illustrating the practice. These maps hold the key to understanding why American cities today look the way they do—from the distribution of poverty and environmental pollutants to gentrification, COVID-deaths, and police killings. 

Thinking about Thinking: Introspective Psychology

Introspective Psychology is a method of studying conscious experience by examining our own thoughts, images, and feelings. Through assignments and readings, students will practice this method and learn about its place in the history of psychological science. 

Principles of Rhetoric

In this course, students will study the fundamental principles of rhetoric, analyzing how authors and speakers convey a message to an intended audience. Using these techniques, students will write a persuasive essay on a topic of their choice.

Poetry in Times of Crisis

Students will explore various poets who in different historical moments address moments of political and cultural crisis, from war and revolution to civil rights and environmental struggles, combining both literary analysis as well as their own creative writing.

The Personal Essay

In this course, students will read, contemplate, and reread one personal essay a week. The capstone project will be to write a personal essay of their own.

Fall Program Update

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Dear friends,

I hope you are all safe and as well as can be in these strange and hard times. We are still unable to run our college inside the prison, and we miss our students and regular activities tremendously. However, in the meantime we are working on a number of projects to serve our current and former students and to build our college for the future. Updates on our students and some of our projects are below.

Student News

As you’re likely aware, San Quentin was the site of a COVID-19 outbreak that infected approximately two-thirds of the prison. Twenty-six incarcerated people and one officer died in that outbreak. Two of our students were in that number.

In better news, almost 100 of our students have been released from San Quentin since March.

We’re hopeful that there won’t be a second wave of COVID-19 at the prison, but we nevertheless anticipate not being able to resume programs in the prison for some time.

Academic and Educational Programming

In the absence of normal programming, our goal is to continue to offer opportunities for students to learn, think, and engage and to build our college for the future when we can return to campus. This fall, we will be offering the option to students in three Spring 2020 courses to complete these courses remotely: US History, Ethics, and Comparative Religion. The criteria we used to determine courses that students might complete remotely were that students must be able to obtain the remaining course skills, learning, and content without feedback from instructors, by reading and writing alone, and without scaffolding, repeated lessons, or regular assessments, so it was only the three more advanced courses, in which students need less feedback and in-person attention, that qualified. Huge thanks to Ian Sethre, Bill Smoot, Benjamin Perez, and Oliver Organista for your willingness to take on this further teaching!

We are also putting together a reader to send to all students and former students inside the prison, with contributions from many of our faculty. This will be going out in early October, and includes a wide range of fiction, non-fiction, brain teasers, and other intellectually challenging and engaging texts, as well as discussion prompts for further analysis. Our goal is to provide all students with material to help them continue their intellectual growth and discovery, even in the absence of regular coursework. Thank you to everyone who contributed! We will also be sending an activity packet to students who were enrolled in the 99s in the spring.

To continue such opportunities as the pandemic extends into 2021, we’re currently exploring the feasibility of non-credit distance learning modules for Spring 2021. Like the non-credit workshops we’ve conducted in person the past, in topics such as financial accounting, public policy, and environmental justice, these units would introduce students to a discrete topic and allow them the chance to maintain their studies. While it is clear that such projects in no way replace face-to-face learning, we hope to continue to offer students projects to engage their minds and intellects.

We are mindful that our students only make up a portion of those incarcerated at the prison, and that the past six months have run the gamut of extreme stress to illness to trauma for all inside, so we’re happy to have been able to provide some resources available to all those incarcerated at San Quentin as well as to San Quentin staff. Thanks to support from colleagues at iTVS, we’ve been able to supply dozens of documentaries for everyone incarcerated at San Quentin to view on SQTV, the closed-circuit television inside the prison. We sent two sets of packets to all at San Quentin, in April and again in July, with reading material, soap, beef jerky, packets of fish, envelopes and stamps, and other essential goods. We also provided hot food and on-site showers to San Quentin staff. (For more on these efforts, see “Our COVID-19 Response Initiative for the Incarcerated Community in California”.)

An especially exciting development is the work we’ve been doing to expand student access to technology. We’re doing intensive research into options for bringing laptops into the prison for students to use for research, learning, and writing. It’s unclear yet whether there we will be able to use this initiative to develop short-term remote learning opportunities, or if we will have to wait until we can run our physical program again to make laptops available to students, but we are exploring all options, with the help of a consultant, Ethan Annis, with whom we’ve developed a comprehensive plan for our college’s technological advances. As faculty and students well know, this will mark an enormous advance, from the days of our “technology” consisting of whiteboards, DVD players, and overhead projectors, and will allow students access to a panoply of learning opportunities and advances, not to mention befitting our status as an independent college.

Finally, with the partnership and guidance of David Cowan, our Director of Operations, who is also the co-founder of the re-entry organization, Bonafide, we’re working to build out our Alumni Affairs division, to better communicate with and serve our former students. This work involves networking with and offering opportunities and resources for paroled former students, including workshops in computer literacy, workforce development, and financial literacy. Our Director of Student Affairs, David Durand, is leading this work, and we look forward to expanding it back inside the prison to students preparing for parole.

Accreditation

We are moving forward with preparatory work for our independent accreditation application, which is required to move us from Candidacy to Independent Accreditation. This work consists largely of building our capacity to assess student learning and institutional effectiveness. Huge thanks go to Theresa Roeder and Josie Innamorato, who have been leading some key math program review pieces, including a review and analysis of students’ math autobiographies, and generating a report from external reviewers on our math program, which will guide our path to improving it in the future. Last, we have contracted with and started implementing our new student information system, the software that will help us track and report on student data. Because we aren’t currently able to run classes, some data collection on current student learning is impossible, but we’re doing our best to prepare for learning assessment and for reporting on student achievement when we return to the prison, all of which will support the final goal of independent accreditation.

In a time of immense loss and change, when we miss our students and regular program tremendously, we are all working hard to maintain our contact with and support of students and to build towards an improved college. Without wanting to proclaim any positive aspect of a pandemic or wildfires, or any of the other challenges our nation and world currently face, our work gives me hope and determination to continue to move forward.

My very best wishes,
Amy

Program Status and Our Path to Accreditation

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Dear friends,

I’m writing several months into the pandemic, which has closed our staff and faculty off from our students, and which has begun to spread among prison populations throughout the US, at rates often far higher than in the general public. It seems at this point that it could be many months before our regular courses are up and running again.

From the start of the pandemic, we’ve been confronted with questions and decisions that feel like ethical thought experiments, but that are all too real: initially—should we keep plowing through the semester, at the risk of bringing the virus into the prison, or to pull our faculty and staff out, severely diminishing the quality of life inside the prison, interrupting students’ academic pathways, and compounding their vulnerability and isolation at the worst possible time? How do we balance risk to life against quality of life? And then, when the answer to that set of questions started to seem more and more obvious, the question that has dogged much of the world of prison higher education swiftly emerged: should we try to devise a way to continue offering credit classes at a distance, even though we know that the quality that we see as the cornerstone of our work would be severely compromised? Or more generally, once we determined that it would not be feasible to continue to offer legitimate credit-bearing coursework inside the prison, where should we focus our energy and resources? What is a college when it can’t run classes?

It seems to me that part of the pandemic experience for almost everyone has included such a barrage of practical and existential questions, at every level, exhaustingly, every day. Should I pull my children out of school? Visit my parents? Teach outdated math to my 6th grader? Am I doing everything I can to flatten the curve? Is technology saving us or poisoning us? What activities put me and others too severely at risk, and what can we or must we continue to do, to preserve our sanity? How has it all come to this? Who am I to complain, when I can sit so comfortably, in full health, on this couch, and go for a run safely?

I’m powerfully aware that my education and access to conversation and consultation with thoughtful and experienced colleagues make it possible for me to think these questions through from multiple angles and to make difficult and sometimes painful decisions with confidence. To wade through this time of crisis and unrest in America and globally, we all need access to trustworthy information; we must be able to think critically and ethically; we need to understand public health principles and basic math; we have to have a grasp of history and politics; we need to have the tools to consider claims about identity and difference carefully; and we have to have opportunities to consider others’ opinions. These and so many other areas of thought and intellectual life are vital for everyday survival, for ethical decision making, now more than ever.

So when we ask what a college is when it can’t run classes, the current calamity is teaching me that our most fundamental responsibility as a college is to help ensure that all people have access to information, learning, and productive dialogue, so that they can take care of themselves, their families, and their communities. Those who are most vulnerable are precisely those who don’t have access to these things. Our students are people who are equally owed these pursuits as rights and whose voices are equally and urgently needed in civic exchanges. Course credits and degrees are critical, but education is more than the semester grind. If we aren’t able to run classes, we can still agitate for and facilitate these crucial skills and dialogues.

So our work continues. As Jody’s letter recounts, our first thought has been for the wellbeing of the community that our campus is embedded within—that is, the entire community of San Quentin. Without physical and emotional safety, learning and thinking are difficult and sometimes impossible. And in voluminous responses to our care packages, we have heard again and again that people at San Quentin are hungry for information and intellectual stimulation. Thanks to the support of iTVS we are now planning a documentary film series to be aired on the prison television channel during the summer. We’re also working with San Quentin to make a large quantity of books that we have stored inside the prison available to the entire population. No amount of academic materials can duplicate the classroom experience, but intervening in the barren intellectual landscape of the prison however possible is especially crucial right now.

Although communication with our students is somewhat delayed by the now-overwhelmed prison mail system, it is still possible, and vital, to hear from them. Specifically related to the current crisis, we are asking how the lives of incarcerated people during this pandemic can be witnessed, so that their social invisibility doesn’t mean their history goes unrecorded. To this end, we have begun an oral history project, which we will be working with students on throughout 2020. Students will learn oral history techniques, then interview others in the prison about their experiences, and develop written narratives to document life inside San Quentin during the pandemic. Through this project, we hope to learn about and disseminate to the broader public a set of experiences and accounts that would otherwise go unseen.

We are also taking this time to continue to building out key features of our program for when we are able to get back inside the prison, exploring ways we may alter and supplement the curriculum during interruptions like the pandemic, lockdowns, and quarantines without compromising quality, rigor, and student support. We’re working with faculty and with our Chief of Institutional Effectiveness and Accreditation, Melanie Booth, to review college preparatory and credit course curricula, as well as to develop regular cycles of learning assessment. Melanie has also been leading the work of constructing the infrastructure and processes required for us to achieve Initial Accreditation status with ACCJC. We remain on track with our accreditation timeline.

During this break from the usual demands of the semester, we’re also turning attention back to our long-standing efforts to bring laptops into this prison. This would greatly improve our students’ access to research materials and other crucial learning tools, as well as prepare us better to continue providing students access to education in the future when we cannot enter the prison. In partnership with leadership at San Quentin and in CDCR, we hope to be able to provide a vastly improved technological education to our students by the time we return to the prison.

Finally, we have been reaching out to alumni and developing plans about future alumni relations. Our team has been working to locate and contact every former student who has been released from prison, to learn about their well-being and needs. In consultation with David Cowan, our Director of Operations and Co-Director of the re-entry organization Bonafide, our Director of Student Affairs, David Durand, has been working to develop our alumni services program. Our aim is to eventually maintain regular contact with our former students, and to provide them with ongoing academic and professional guidance, information, and resources, as well as other critical support services and professional development and networking opportunities.

In the wake of recent horrific reminders of the brutality of racial inequality in America, in the midst of a public health crisis that is unequally ravaging already vulnerable populations, it is clear to me is that the path forward requires a new dedication not only to the safety of the vulnerable, but also to equipping all people with skills, information, tools, and resources, and outlets for their voices and life experiences to be expressed, heard, and learned from. We miss our students terribly, but it’s some relief that we can continue to serve them from afar for now.

Amy Jamgochian
Chief Academic Officer

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Using Education to Struggle for Justice: An Interview with Josh Page

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Published in the November 2019 newsletter, which you can read in its entirety here.

Since the College Program at San Quentin was founded in 1996, hundreds of people have worked as instructors, teaching assistants, tutors, and guest lecturers. Even years later, many of them describe having been impacted by the experience in profound ways, both personally and professionally, and many find their work at San Quentin has changed the trajectory of their lives and resulted in strong community bonds and professional networks among fellow instructors. Lately we’ve been working to compile testimonials from former faculty, in order to better understand how their experiences engaging with the students and the program at San Quentin have created ripple effects in their lives, and document how students at San Quentin are impacting the larger world.

What did you do at San Quentin, and what are you currently doing professionally?

In 1998 and 1999, I was a teaching assistant for Introduction to Sociology, Creative Writing, and English 99. Today I’m an associate professor of sociology and law at the University of Minnesota. I also have a not-so-secret life as a food writer, and I’m the co-founder and associate editor of Meal Magazine, a new print publication that aims to reimagine food writing and food writers.

How did the experience of teaching at SQ impact you?

It literally changed my career trajectory—and life. I went to graduate school to study racial inequality and politics (not the criminal-legal system). Early in my first semester, I received a random email requesting volunteer teaching assistants for the Prison University Project’s College Program at San Quentin and signed up. After a couple sessions, I began to wonder why so few college programs exist in U.S. prisons. That question became the basis of my master’s thesis, which focused on Congress’s ludicrous (but politically expedient) decision in 1994 to eliminate Pell Grants for prisoners.

I’ve continued to research the politics of criminal punishment and related issues. For my first book, The Toughest Beat: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers Union in California, I analyzed the rise of the CCPOA (the California Correctional Peace Officers Association) as a powerful interest group and traced its influence on penal policy, prison conditions, and carceral labor. My second book (co-authored with Phil Goodman and Michelle Phelps), Breaking the Pendulum: The Long Struggle Over Criminal Justice, offers a new perspective on how penal policy and practice change over time. I recently studied the bail bond industry while working as a bail agent in a large urban county. I am currently writing a book with my colleague Joe Soss that explains how and why government agencies and for-profit companies (including bail bonds) use the criminal justice system to extract billions of dollars every year from poor communities (primarily communities of color). The book, Preying on the Poor: Criminal Justice as Revenue Racket, should be out in 2021.

Did the experience impact how you actually approach your work? Do you see any differences between you and your colleagues who have not had similar experiences?

While participating in the program, I learned to always question one-dimensional visions of justice-involved people, including those who work in the system. Destructive public policy, bad scholarship, and ignorant comments often result from an unwillingness to see people (especially incarcerated people) as multi-dimensional people with varied experiences, desires, and goals.

Unlike some of my colleagues, I do not think recidivism rates and similar quantitative outcomes are very effective for assessing prison-based programs. They don’t consider how programs (like the Prison University Project) inspire hope, self-assurance, and commitment to helping others; improve prison climate; and help people develop the skills and confidence to become effective advocates within and beyond prison.

How do you believe that the community of San Quentin has impacted the larger world?

Over the years the College Program has facilitated strong relationships between publicly engaged scholars with a common vision of using education (teaching, research, and writing) to struggle for justice. Three of my closest colleagues also taught at San Quentin. All three are leaders in their fields and have changed how scholars, advocates, and policymakers think about critical criminal-legal issues.

The first is Amy Lerman (associate professor of public policy and political science at UC Berkeley). She has published path-breaking research on how prisons affect the attitudes, well-being, and behaviors of prisoners and prison officers. Amy and I collaborated on research on the organizational and political determinants of prison officer attitudes in California and Minnesota. Amy’s important, co-authored book, Arresting Citizenship: The Democratic Consequences of American Crime Control, shows how contact with the criminal justice system shapes political attitudes and civic engagement; this research has changed the conversation about the political consequences of mass incarceration and related penal developments.

Karin Martin (assistant professor of public policy at the University of Washington), is a renowned expert on legal financial obligations (e.g., court fines, fees, and restitution). Along with publishing first-rate articles in peer-reviewed journals, she has provided testimony on the scope and effects of criminal justice debt to the New York State Assembly and to the United States Commission on Civil Rights. Joe Soss and I rely on Karin’s research and consultation for Preying on the Poor. 

One of my dearest friends, Keramet Reiter (associate professor of criminology, law, and society at UC Irvine), is the author of 23/7: Pelican Bay and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement, an incredible study of the rise, transformation, and consequences of the Security Housing Unit (SHU). I assign 23/7 in my course, The Sociology of Punishment; the book successfully challenges students to reconsider their understandings of solitary confinement and popular images of prisoners. (Keramet has participated in the class remotely, and the students love her.) In my opinion, 23/7 is one of the best books written about prisons, because Keramet shows that the book’s subjects (SHU prisoners, state officials, advocates, et al.) are multi-dimensional people with complex backgrounds, a fact that gets lost behind denigrating, simplifying terms like “the worst of the worst.”

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

The Opportunity to Be a Living Example: On Becoming a Teaching Assistant

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Published in the November 2019 newsletter, which you can read in its entirety here.

In 2017 I graduated from the College Program with a GPA of 3.22. Thereafter, I found myself involved with the teaching assistant program because I desired to give back to a community that has given me, and others like me, so much. My pursuit of higher education has given me insight into the illiteracy and learning disabilities that once arrested my mental and educational development, which resulted in me succumbing to the psyche of the streets, crime, and gang subcultures of society.

During my 25 years of incarceration, I’ve witnessed thousands of juvenile men of color who entered the prison system, as I did at 16, and came from a subculture that gave them the same thing it gave me: the generational inheritance of being psychologically enslaved to a mindset of the sociopath and psychopath.

This antisocial behavior that clouds over the subcultures of our society ignites within me a passion to strive for positive change—not just for myself, but for all who are affected by a system that dishonors and devalues human life and its right to thrive healthy and happy.

Becoming a teaching assistant and tutor has allowed me the opportunity not only to assist new students in their education, but also to have a platform to create positive dialogue to challenge the mindset of men who hold dear to antisocial behavior. It is through higher education endeavors and my passion for positive change that I seek to obtain my BA and master’s in juvenile justice and counseling.

My experience and observations as a student and teaching assistant have given me the ability to recognize new students’ strong and weak points in their learning skills, and have given me the opportunity to be a living example for new students to see what higher education can achieve. It is important that incarcerated students witness men, like them, incarcerated, who have achieved their college degrees, and are now displaying their educational transformation in the form of a civil servant, with a genuine heart to give back to the community.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Inveterate—The Rock of Deferred Literacy

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I grew up in south Los Angeles, in a community that was primarily African American, with a small segment of Latinx and Asian Americans. Although, at that time I didn’t realize it, we were a com­munity of low social economic status. Attending the Los Angeles Unified School District was a struggle for me because I never under­stood the fundamentals and mechanics of education. However, I noticed that other students seemed to have figured out how to navigate and embrace education. Reading the essay, “Persistence: A Literacy Nar­rative,” I began to notice the similarities that I had with its author’s learning disabilities. Being that I had a strong speech impediment, I too had an inferiority complex as a result of other students’ reading and speaking skills. So I could identify with the author’s feelings of embarrassment, being ashamed, and outright frustration at the inability to learn. As I reread the essay, memories of my learning disorders began to invade the place in my mind where I had seemed to have suppressed them into the abyss region where embarrassing experiences seemed to rest in grief, waiting for the opportunity to resurrect, to invade my peace. Although I’ve overcome my (self-diagnosed) learning disabilities, the words that had invad­ed my mind inflamed memories of my adolescent, my teenage, and young adult years of being a functional illiterate.

I recall the day that I understood that having a strong speech impediment in elementary school was frowned upon by fifth grade students. My fifth grade teacher Ms. Black picked me to read and of course I said yes with a hint of nervousness. However, my an­xiousness to participate in class like the other students egged me on. When I finally spoke, my words sounded like a submachine gun on fully automatic. My strong speech impediment wouldn’t let me get one clear audible word out. The whole classroom erupted into child­ish laughter. The embarrassment from being laughed at forced me to stop reading. I told myself I’d rather be silent than to allow someone to ever laugh at me again. I became like the author in “Persistence: A Literary Narrative,” begging in my head, “Don’t call on me, don’t call on me!” My confidence as a child had been deflated like a hot air balloon that had been harpooned in midair.

Writing and doing math for me were like trying to climb Mount Everest with no snow shoes on or walking on hot burning lava from an overflowing volcano. Writing my first essay in junior high school was a tragedy from the beginning because I didn’t understand the structure, process, or sentence formulation, and was therefore ill-equipped. The educational mechanics couldn’t take in my young, confused mind. My mind would go into involuntarily convul­sions because I couldn’t put the words together to make a complete paragraph. My math was even worse; I failed math because of my poor attention span. Each time that I studied math, I’d have an anxiety attack because I didn’t understand simple math solving processes, so I’d surrender to the confusion.

At 14 years old I had given up on education because I felt that education was too hard for me to learn. I soon found myself invol­ved with like-minded youth, who like me, had no interest in education. I became involved in gangs and crime, and at 16 years old, a novice in the street life and crime, I found myself caught up in a crime that was beyond my criminal experience. I was arrested for kidnapping and robbery, tried as an adult, and sentenced to state prison. I was transferred to the California Institution for Men, in Chino, CA where I was given an educational exam to determine my educational level. I sat in the prison classroom on a cold October morning looking down at the text booklet and pencil. I was told to shade in the answers that I thought were correct. I opened the test booklet and studied the multiple questions. I began to have that familiar feeling of high anxiety and the heavy mind of confusion again. I answered the questions to the best of my ability. My guided reading level was a 4.6. At that time I didn’t understand what this meant, nor did I care. I now know that I was a functional illiterate.

In 1981, at the age of 19, I was sitting in the Security Housing Unit (SHU) at San Quentin State Prison being accused of conspiring to attack prison officials. The accusation was not true. My only involvement in that situation was guilt by association. I was identified by prison staff as a Crips gang member. During my stay in the SHU, I was housed amongst senior gang members, who were genuinely concerned with education and literacy. So much so that they organized a cell study program to uplift and educate these that were illiterate. The senior gang members would walk the tier administering tests to see who needed help. I was tested for math, spelling, and reading. I failed, shamefully. Being in a cell by myself allowed me to study at my own pace. My tutor came to my cell door everyday to help me with my problem areas in education, which were across the board. He soon discovered that I had a problem processing information that I was reading and what he was conveying to me. I was told that I’d have to learn how to focus on the infor­mation that I was receiving and reading. He then gave me a diction­ary, then told me to study the definitions of the words from A to Z.

Feelings of embarrassment and shamefulness filled my soul, so I embarked on a diligent study of the dictionary, learning words from every letter of the alphabet. My understanding and writing improved. I was given book assignments. The first book that I was given to read was The Soledad Brothers, a book about George Jackson, who was killed in San Quentin in 1971. I recall sitting on my bunk with the diction­ary to my right, a pencil and notepad on my left, and the book in my hands, determined to read about a Black revolutionary. Every word that I came upon that I didn’t understand, I stopped reading to write it down, then I’d grab the dictionary to search for its meaning. Every morning I’d have to give my tutor an explanation on what I had read. (Years later I’d learn this was called a summary.)

With time as an asset, a tutor to help me through my learning disabilities, books to read, simple math equations to solve, and letter writing to improve my spelling and penmanship, I began to have a breakthrough. The clouds were departing and the sun began to shine through the now diminishing learning disabilities that had kept me entombed in a world of illiteracy; I began my resurrection. It was during this tenure of my educational endeavors that I began to have a hunger for knowledge, information, and education that would morph my underdeveloped cognizance into a living, breathing, and vivacious organism of literacy. My intellect became alive. I began to absorb information with every book I read, and I improved my math skills. However, I was still handicapped because my learning skills were subpar. I got up the courage to send a request to the San Quentin education department for a GED preparation textbook. To my surprise, an instructor from the education department came to my cell to give me the GED textbook. I studied this book day in and day out. I was like a sponge absorbing information. Unfortunately, due to my first obligation to my prison family who had adopted me in the SHU, my educational endeavors were curtailed.

In 1993 I was back in prison for a parole violation. I decided to reignite my educational endeavors and take the challenge of obtaining my GED, even though I was self taught. My first day of class the instructor called me over to his desk and stated, “Blackwell, you belong in the ABE II class (elementary school), but I’m going to give you a chance.” This reference of the ABE II class was referring to my 4.6 guided reading level that was recorded by the CDCR in 1979. I didn’t take his comment personal, nor as a negative expression. It was just fuel to the flame that had ignited my hunger for education. I was determi­ned to prove that I could obtain my GED. In every class session, I completed my studies and more. I had my cellmate tutor me in my math struggle. Six months into the GED course, the instructor once again called me to his desk, and began to share with me that he was impressed with my determination to study towards getting my GED because when he first saw me he felt that I was going to be serious about my education. I passed the GED course with a score of 249 on my first try. I was proud of this achievement because I had never completed any educational pursuit.

The ingrained criminal belief system that I had adapted continued to be at the forefront of my objective, so once again I was incarcerated. However, I had been struck out, given 25 years to life under the three strikes law. In 2009, I enrolled in Coastline Community College at California Men’s Colony, East. My first course was health, and as I analyzed this course, I began to notice certain learning dis­abilities that affected mental stability. In particular, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), had knocked me to the floor because as I read its diagnosis as “behavioral syndrome of children that is marked by hyperactivity, impulsive behavior, and inattention,” I began to have that ominous feeling that had invaded the region of my mind where I had stored the long forgotten childhood, teenage, and young adult years of being the exemplar of ADHD. I can recall many instances in which I was fidgety, uneasy, and having no concentration when it came to education and studying. I couldn’t wait to get away from anything that had to do with critical or focused thinking, or problem solving. I felt trapped, and my mind would wander about aimlessly when I was in front of a book or had to study math. I’d rather be watching TV or playing games.

When I read the definition of ADHD, I was able to put a name to my self-assessed learning disability. It was during this health course that I obtained information on my processing disorder that was discovered I was in the San Quentin SHU in 1981. Studying this health course not only informed me about the many health related issues that relate to our human existence, it also informed me about vital information about my life and educational disorders.

After completing my first two college courses with Coastline Community College, I felt the need to continue to challenge myself with higher educational aspirations. I was informed about an on-site university at San Quentin, where incarcerated men could have the actual college experience while being housed in San Quentin. I couldn’t wait to apply. However, I held a valid reservation because I had been expelled from San Quentin in 1984 for being a menace. I was accepted by Patten University and was transferred there within a few months.

In 2012, I enrolled in Patten University, full of anticipation and apprehension about experiencing an actual college setting, while also dreading of confrontations with my past transgressions. However, that was not the case. I was arrested by a state of culture shock because the psychological atmosphere of Patten University’s student and administrative body was contrary to what I had been experiencing in other educational settings in prisons.

Prison can be very unhealthy for a human being’s mental health because the psychological atmosphere of prisons has been ravaged by the psychopath’s mentality that dominates that environment. Having such an idealism can arrest your mental development, which can be a threshold to your transitioning into what seems to be a breach of that ideology. The healthy and vibrant psychological atmosphere that the administrative body at Patten University has cultivated at San Quentin is based on humanitarianism and is reverberated by the administrative body’s humane and professional interactions with its student body. This healthy and welcoming psychological atmosphere made me feel uneasy because certain ideals of the prison’s psychosocial environment had conditioned me to be cautious with my interactions with correction officers and any administrative body that was connected with CDCR. However, my hunger for education and the need to reconnect with my humanity was exalted by the reciprocal interaction with Patten University’s community. There began an illumination of the dysfunctional belief system that I had adopted from the antisocial environ­ment of prisons.

Paten University’s community allowed me to see that I wasn’t there just for my higher education, but also for a reawakening and reconnection with my humanity and to hasten the development of my consciousness of how subcultures and its dysfunctional belief system can arrest one’s psychological growth and development.

My five years as a Patten University student was educationally adventurous because its curriculum challenged me to the point of throwing in the towel, like a boxer’s corner man does from witnessing his boxer being beaten to a pulp. However, my determination and hunger to succeed in my higher education motivated me to take the necessary steps to TKO (technical knock out) any difficulty to earn my AA degree. On June 9, 2017, I graduated with a GPA of 3.22. On that day I had many conflicting emotions, but mainly I was elated because I had never walked across the stage to graduate from any educational institu­tion. To be able to participate in my hard-earned graduation cere­mony really affected my emotional temperament; I experienced joy at having completed a goal that I longed to achieve and sadness because I wished I could have shared this moment with my family.

My educational aspirations continue to project me towards higher educational achievements, and my quest to educate my­self impels me to yearn for more knowledge. I now un­derstand the fundamentals and mechanics of education and how its dynamics are crucial to our understanding of knowledge and how it is vital to our intellect as human beings. Without it, we cannot effectually communicate. It was only through education that I was able to learn of and identify my learning disabilities. Overcoming my learning disabilities has opened a whole new horizon of knowledge and opportunities for me that has challenged my flawed beliefs and values that hindered my humanity. Education demanded that I chal­lenge the very moral fiber that I had built my foundation on, and as a result, I had to rethink and restructure my belief system that was built from a subculture that was flawed.

Don’t be afraid to challenge the very essence of who you think you are. It is only through education and information that you can become a better human being.

Please note that the Prison University Project (formerly an extension site of Patten University) became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Meet the 2019 Graduates

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Each June we celebrate the achievements of Prison University Project graduates and their successful completion of their Associate of Arts Degrees. This year we honor the hard work, dedication, and commitment of twelve men, who join the ranks of more than 160 fellow graduates over our 20 years in operation.

We interviewed each graduate about his experience in the College Program and what he hoped his legacy for the San Quentin community would be. We’re pleased to share excerpts from these interviews here, alongside beautiful portraits taken by R.J. Lozada.

Sumit Lal

Growing up, I was trapped between two worlds. On the one hand, my family always encouraged education and wanted me to go to college. On the other hand, the streets pulled me towards the kind of life that resulted in me coming to prison. When I was younger, I enjoyed learning but the peer pressure from those I believed to be my friends outside caused me to veer away from that path. The College Program brought me back to the kind of person I was always meant to be—the kind I always wanted to be, the kind my family wanted me to be and could be proud of. Today, I can hold intelligent conversations with people I truly respect. I have made the kind of connections that will last a lifetime and which showed me that I can be comfortable among educated people, that I belong with them and not with the negative influences that I allowed to take me away from the learning environment I always loved.

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The most challenging part about being a college student is leaving behind the people and situations that I had become comfortable with. I was into a negative lifestyle that brought negative behaviors and kept me around negative people. I literally had to shed the person I had become in order to move through the whole college environment. It was not an easy thing to do. I had to end conversations that were not helpful to my succeeding. I had to re-evaluate relationships that would endanger my educational pursuits. I had to become the “nerd” that I had always joked about. I had to evolve and everyone who was not on this path I found myself on had to get left behind. Although I tried to bring as many people with me as were willing to change in order to succeed, I had to do what was best for me.

Being a college student made me change—not only my associations, but other changes as well. I had to keep a schedule, show up on time to classes, and begin a process that changed my language and my outlook.

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I’m passionate about helping people reach their potential. That’s why I volunteer as a Teacher’s Assistant. I want to show people that they are more than they think they are. I realize that some have gone their whole lives being told a story about themselves that they came to believe and took on as an identity, regardless of whether or not it was true. My journey through the College Program forced me to look at myself and ask the question, “Am I more than this?” I want others out there to know that they are more than even they know. I want them to find their dreams and then give them the tools to realize them, even if all I can do is point them in the right direction.

Because I know what it’s like to be a young man in prison, I’ve tried to work with young people to show them another way. I’m the biggest recruiter for the College Program. I make sure that the young people coming into San Quentin know that they don’t have to do what everybody else does, they can choose another, more positive way that will have better results in their lives when they hit the streets.

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I attribute my success to all the instructors and tutors who did not accept me as the student I entered the class as, rather they treated me as the student they knew I could become. These instructors—including Dr. Fisher in Philosophy, Laura and Paco in English 204, Aris, Will and James in Communications—all knew I could do better than how I showed up. These instructors actually cared that I learn the material rather than just pass the class. For that I am grateful. Last but not least, the whole San Quentin community and the struggles from my past have helped me succeed today.

Tommy “Shakur” Ross

Aside from the academic attainment, the College Program has had a huge impact on my life, identity, and my relationships. Since my arrival to San Quentin in 2012, and my acceptance into the College Program, my life has changed substantially for the better. I’ve become an A student, a radio/video journalist, peer health educator, group facilitator, circle process keeper, event planner/organizer, and restorative justice practitioner; but more importantly, I now accept full responsibility and am accountable for the crimes I committed. I’m no longer lying to friends and family­ denying, justifying, or blaming others for what I have done. Now that I have insight into my traumatic childhood, subsequent criminality, and how my negative actions harmed others, I know that I will never live that way again. It’s not only because I understand the contributing factors that led to my criminal thinking and bad decisions; or the remorse and regret I feel for hurting others; moreover, I realize that I am a kindhearted, loving and giving, good person. Consequently, I’m no longer doing time, I’m serving it.

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In the fall of 2014, during the English 204 course, I wrote a research paper entitled, “Sexuality and Empowerment: A Feminist Perspective.” I am most proud of this work because it altered my worldview about women, igniting the initial spark that led to my identity as a feminist. During my research, I learned about the various waves, branches, and strands of feminism that have evolved throughout the course of history. For instance, first wave feminists challenged stereotypes and social constructions of women, which dictated that a woman’s place was in the home. These feminists rejected the notion of women as the second sex and therefore deficient. They confronted systems of sexism and patriarchy, thereby paving the way for second wave feminism. I learned that there were branches of second wave feminism which had opposing ideas about how to achieve sexual liberation and gender equality for women. To add to the contentious debate within the feminist movement regarding the relationship between feminism and sexuality, the third wave of feminism boldly asserted that feminism isn’t about what choice you make, but the freedom to make that choice. Thus, third wave feminists had conflicting views with older feminists, naming them as obstacles to the success of the women’s movement. Based on my research, I discovered that feminism is a spectrum, not a box for women to be locked in.

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If I could share one piece of advice with incoming students, it would be to develop time management and set priorities for studying and doing homework. However, in order to do this, take your education seriously. For every hour you spend in class learning, spend at least two hours outside of class internalizing what you learned. This can be done in your cell, study hall, or any other space that’s available to you for studying. Develop a daily study routine and stay consistent, allowing no one to sidetrack your main objective. Progress can be measured; if my advice is adhered to, you’ll find yourself coming to class well prepared, ready to engage and actively participate in class discussions, contributing your thoughts, comments and questions about the course materials; but most of all, finding success in your identity as a college student. Stay focused and keep your eyes on the prize!

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In my early semesters at Patten, I lacked the social skills required in a college/classroom setting. For me, this deficit was the most challenging part of being a college student. I believe it stems from my school experience during my child and adolescent years. I had issues with anger, behavioral problems and low self-esteem resulting from unprocessed trauma. Consequently, I found myself triggered by students and teachers inside the classroom. It seemed like oftentimes I’d raise my hand to speak, but the instructors would call on the more talkative students. It was frustrating to think that I was being ignored and/or forgotten. Naturally, this discouraged me from participating in classroom discussions, or asking for help. However, the more eager I became to learn, the more inquisitive I came to be. I began being more proactive by asserting myself, and raising my hand more often. I’d say things like, “I believe I was next,” or “Excuse me, I have something to say.” As a result, I began feeling more confident, and started sitting in the front of the class. I became motivated to be the best student I could be, and decided I will not deny myself the opportunity to learn as much as I could. The College Program taught me both social and coping skills, impacting not only my academic intelligence, but my emotional intelligence as well.

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Aside from the dedicated instructors and tutors, there are three people that I want to acknowledge, who have been instrumental in my success as a student: Fania E. Davis, Adrienne S. Roberts; and Joe Garcia. Fania is my cousin. She is a kind, insightful and loving person who has motivated me with her overall support, words of encouragement, and feedback on the writings that I’ve mailed to her over my years as a student. Adrienne is my girlfriend—my ride or die. She has been my inspiration for when I wrote papers on gender identity and feminism. I’d send her final drafts that were marked up and graded by my instructors, and she would add her comments and return the paper to me. Adrienne also challenged my perspective and worldview on the LGBTQ community, which has motivated me to be more inclusive, tolerant and accepting towards people who see themselves differently. Joe Garcia is a fellow incarcerated person, who I relied on daily during both the Elementary and Intermediate Algebra courses. Although he used shameful sarcasm as a method of tutoring, he was very effective because it challenged me to learn my lessons. What I really appreciate about Joe is that he dedicated his time to helping me, no matter how uncommon his common sense was.

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To my fellow graduates: On our journey towards graduating, I’m sure that I’ve shared the classroom with most of you, if not all of you. We’ve faced a number of challenges, whether it was lockdowns, fog-lines, badgering officers, annoying classmates, or delayed count/late cell releases, etc.; but one thing is for certain: We stayed the course and made it to our destination! We did it! We are Patten University graduates! Let this moment serve as a testament that we can accomplish the things that we put our minds to. Being a student at Patten provided my life with meaning and purpose. Each day that I read, studied, wrote an essay, or prepared for an oral presentation, I could feel myself learning, growing, and becoming a better human being. It’s analogous to a caterpillar in a cocoon, metamorphosing into a butterfly and taking flight! We have come! In the words of Teddy Pendergrass, “Ain’t no stopping us now—we’re on the move!” Congratulations fellow Patten University Alumni!

Kamsan Suon

In the beginning, I doubted myself and didn’t know if I had the intelligence to make it through the program—I had never written essays before. Now, I’m a writer and a poet. Writing has become a crucial part of my healing process. Writing helps me identify what went wrong in my life and my childhood, and it allows me to heal by expressing it. My passion for writing personal narrative and nonfiction stories keeps me grounded. I’m able to escape from reality and be anyone and anything. I can go anywhere, anytime. I love writing about my childhood experiences in Cambodia, the early years in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and Modesto, California. I would always get excited when the assignment is to tell a story of my past, whether through writing or verbal description. In the future I plan on writing at least one book. I have an imaginative mind and want to put it to good use.

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I am a refugee and a survivor of the Cambodian genocide in 1975 to 1979. My best piece of writing is a poem titled, “Uncharted Memories (Justice is Rape)”. The poem is about my experience in Cambodia where 1.7 million humans were murdered by the government, the Khmer Rouge. I wrote this poem many times and every time I revised it, I had tears in my eyes. For some reason I’m not ashamed of my tears any more. I know in order to heal I have to cry. Now I let my pain go instead of holding it in.

I performed the poem at Open Mic this past December. I wanted to share my pain with my peers. It was nerve-wracking because I had never been on a stage expressing my feelings. I’m glad I did it. The pain and resentment I held against the Khmer Rouge has been extinguished. I am free!

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In the beginning, as a college student, I was always worried that the professor would ask me to comment on the assignment and questions. I prayed I would not be asked. Although I am at liberty to not participate in class discussions, I felt I would be disrespecting my instructors and classmates with my rebellious behavior. That worried me so much. I was a very quiet person who believed that my opinion was not significant. Also, I feared I would be judged for my comments. I didn’t want to feel ashamed for my comments because they were often off-topic or weak arguments. But as my education continued, I came to understand that my opinions do matter. Students and professors value each other’s opinions. So I started to comment on the assignments and questions during class discussions; I broke out of my comfort zone and enjoyed being able to share my thoughts without fear of judgment.

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One piece of advice to new Prison University Project students is: Don’t quit. When you think that things are not going well and the only choice left is to quit, you realize this is the real reason why you wanted to accept this challenge. Don’t doubt yourself and always have a positive attitude. You will grow and be proud of your accomplishments. You will love the feeling when you get a good grade. The benefit is worth the pain. You will become a new person with new ideas on how to live your life. The Prison University Project is investing in you, so don’t give up on your education and goals.

Jerry Smith

I would like my actions as well those of others around me to show the world to not give up on people in prison. My father instilled in me the importance of being independent, but I took it to the extreme. I was stubborn and never allowed myself to accept help. Now I am very open-minded about accepting help, so all relationships nowadays—I know they are in my life for a reason.

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My favorite school assignment is hard to pick. I have learned something of value from every assignment. If I had to pick, it would be sociology with Ms. Jane Yamashiro. We were asked to write on gender bias amongst other issues. That exercise exposed a bias I wasn’t aware of, so I really was grateful for that. Plus, she has a very unique style of teaching that really helped me in other classes.

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The College Program made me aware of life beyond my immediate surroundings. Now my aim is to help young people in my community with problems and challenges they have in setting goals. I’m from Los Angeles, from an area that’s gang-infested. I keep in touch with a lot of young people in my family now—I feel super obligated—I want them to learn from my situation. They are the future. I write them and ask them directly to stay in school. I try to provide a vision for the youth in my community to shift their focus from negative thoughts, to make them aware that they have value, and to recognize their strengths.

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The most common misunderstandings people have about the prison system are the flaws in the criminal justice system pertaining to wrongfully convicted individuals. I wish people understood how an incarcerated person is robbed of their identity.

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To my fellow classmates, remember that taking that step forward—deciding to go to college—was courageous on our part. As a reward, we have taught our minds to think in a different way. It’s a major accomplishment to achieve this in this environment.

Juan Espinosa

I never thought that I would ever be able to get an A.A. degree, let alone even attend college. I never took my education seriously before because I thought I would never be able to accomplish anything in life. After receiving my A.A. degree I am planning on continuing my education. My next goal will be to get an M.B.A. degree, and if possible continue until I achieve my Ph.D. in molecular engineering.

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My favorite school assignment was writing my essay and my presentation for biology class. It was a bit challenging but I learned so much about fungi—specifically about why it is so difficult to eradicate. Apart from being resistant and destructive, I learned that it is difficult to get rid of because its cell structure is similar to our body’s cells, therefore any medication we use for nail fungus not only attacks the cell of the fungus but also other cells in our body.

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The advice I would give to incoming students would be that no matter how hard and difficult the classes or the assignments are—never give up. You will have plenty of help and support with teachers, tutors, teaching assistants, and all the personnel that are part of the Prison University Project. All you have to do is ask—never be afraid to ask.

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For me the most challenging part of being a college student has been the language barrier. English is my second language and I have had to double up in my efforts to understand some of the lecture concepts given by the professors. There were lots of times when I did not understand something in class. I would not ask the teacher to repeat it because I did not want to look dumb in front of the whole class. Then, when it was time to give my presentation I really had to push myself because my English is not that good and I wanted to make certain that my teachers and peers could understand me.

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To my fellow graduates—I congratulate all of you for your accomplishments. I would like to commend you for your hard work and dedication you have put forth in an effort to better yourselves in life. This is a tremendous first step in building a better life and future for all of us. I encourage you to commit yourselves in continuing your academic education far beyond what you have accomplished today. Do not be content with an A.A. degree; keep on pushing yourselves until you accomplish all other goals you have set. This is a huge step toward your life accomplishments. Never stop until you reach the pinnacle of success in life and know that you will impact the lives of others in a positive manner through the hard work and dedication you’ve demonstrated.

Matthew Nguyen

The College Program allowed me to better myself intellectually. It enabled me to have better relationships with my family by allowing me to communicate more effectively with them. The program helped me build up more self-esteem and changed my negative identity—one of a convicted felon—to a more dignified one as a college graduate.

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The piece of work I was most proud of was a research paper. It was the top of Mount Everest to me because I had never written any paper over 1,000 words before and this assignment suggested 4,500 to 5,000 words. This was not an easy assignment and I worked on it practically every day. Once I finally reached the top and finished the paper, I felt more confident and believed that I would be able to actually finish the College Program and get my degree.

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I would like to name Jody, Amy, Heather, Allison, Neil and Derrius as those especially influential to my experience as a student. They impacted me by showing genuine concern and care about my progress. They helped me when I asked and made me feel welcomed. Seeing the college’s staff working hard and putting serious effort to keep the program running, it inspired me to keep going. I knew that when there was a lockdown, the college’s staff would quickly get my butt into those chairs in class, and that made me feel very thankful and grateful for everything they had done.

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To my fellow graduates—In one of the worst circumstances to be in, we are able to accomplish this milestone in our lives. Now, imagine what else we can accomplish!

Nythell Collins

College has impacted my life by allowing me to become more informed on a wide range of topics and issues. I was very limited in what I knew previously. Now with the knowledge I’ve gained so far, I’ve come to learn that there’s still more that I don’t know. College has also impacted the way I see myself. I once thought I wasn’t smart enough to take college courses due to my past experience with school. I no longer hold that belief. It’s because of my effort, determination, and will—along with college instructors and staff members who encouraged, challenged, and supported me—that I now consider myself able to do anything academically when I put my mind to it.

I want to leave a legacy of empowerment. I hope that my life inspires men to seek education because knowledge is power, and with more power we can make meaningful changes in our lives and communities. Also, I would hope that my life shows members of outside communities that even though we’ve made bad choices that led us to prison, we are human, we can change, and we value education.

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What I would share with incoming students would be this: regardless of the difficulties you may face in furthering your education, don’t give up. There’s help available if you ask. Also, having a positive attitude is key to having a successful college experience. A positive attitude makes it a little easier to get through the difficulties that will arise during your time in college. It’s okay to not know and being frustrated is natural. Remember anything worth having should be hard to obtain. Growth is not easy, nor impossible to those who apply themselves. As Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final and failure is not fatal.” To do nothing at all is the tragedy.

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All my teachers and tutors were very influential in my college experience. However, the most influential teacher I have had was Jane H. Yamashiro, Ph.D., my sociology teacher. Jane made me feel like I belonged in college and that I could go as far as I wanted to. Her belief in my ability as a student really touched me because most of my life no one ever believed in me or saw me as smart. She did and I’ll always be grateful to her for her kindness.

Timothy Young

I never in a million years thought that I would be able to seek higher learning as well as attend college-level classes while incarcerated. This was both exciting and challenging because I never had the opportunity to do so prior to my incarceration. Now, as I prepare to graduate, I hope to leave a legacy for all new students demonstrating that hard work and perseverance is crucial in anything you set out to achieve in life. Maybe the work that I have done and continue to do will inspire others to do the same. I hope someone notices me and thinks, “If he can do it, I can do it.” I would then say to that person, “You can do more.”

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I would love to talk about the Prison University Project’s Open Mic Night. This program affords all alumni, current students, and staff an opportunity to share a talent—whether it’s a spoken word piece, a short story, poetry, comedy, a dance, music, and more. I think that this event is very important because it creates a positive and creative arena for conversation.

I learned how to play the guitar while studying in the College Program and on December 28, 2018, I presented an instrumental on acoustic guitar entitled, Music From My Soul. It was interesting playing my guitar in front of an audience of 300-plus people. It was amazing and definitely a learning experience. Before I picked up the guitar, I said, “I’m going to share something personal that emerged from my soul. It’s raw, it’s original and it’s me.” Some said I played like a pro. I am thankful for that opportunity and also grateful that those who did attend were able to share a personal experience with me. Thank you to the Prison University Project for additional programs like Open Mic Night.

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I believe that the study of Liberal Arts allowed me to rise above in a positive way, viewing things through a brand new lens. Prior to my studies, the way I saw myself, others, and the world was drastically impaired. The study of Liberal Arts opened a new door of conscious thought for me and changed how I perceive the world and my life. Studying topics such as social ethics, sociology, philosophy, U.S. history, literature, world religions, public health, algebra, and more—I realize that there was no place that I could not go. I could envision great new possibilities in life. Now I can actually be the man that God created me to be. The study of Liberal Arts changes lives.

Corey McNeil

I’d like to leave behind a “you-can-do-it” legacy, to be inspirational and show others what is possible. I dropped out of school around the 7th grade and got my GED in prison. After earning my degree, I no longer think of life as if I’m on the outside looking in. It’s put me on equal footing. It allows for better understanding and compassion in all of my interactions with people and in my personal relationships.

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One of the most interesting classes to me was sociology. Learning how sociologists use various theories to understand and explain society was impactful for me. It was also challenging in that it created a tension. For example, Emile Durkheim’s theory on asylums—where you imagine the world as a stage and everyone on the stage is performing scripts that are naturally there. I believe these “scripts” are being created all the time and people can define themselves and decide how they show up in life. We can bring awareness to our own scripts which allows us to continue to reinvent ourselves. This is what education has afforded me.

Now that I’ve graduated, I’d like to continue my education in some shape or form. I’m happy to say I was accepted to Project Rebound. If all goes well and I’m out in November, I’ll probably start the program in January or in the summer of 2020. I’d like to have some time to get my feet under me before getting started. I’m interested in majoring in public administration or counseling—something interactive, where I’m working on the ground with people in need.
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This college experience is something that I will never forget. It has taught me the value of going through a journey, with all its ups and downs. That is why I’m inspired by people who push themselves, show up, and are determined, resilient, and focused. I aspire to be that way.

James Evans

The best instructor I had was Jennifer Fisher. She is an ethics and philosophy professor. I liked her classes because she told her students at the beginning that the class was going to be very hard and said, “If you want you can leave now.” I took both philosophy and ethics with Dr. Fisher and I was only able to earn C’s but it was a powerful experience of learning that I will carry through my life. She was influential to me because she aroused in me a creative effort not just in my work but the way I push myself in life.

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The people who helped me succeed were all of the people associated with Patten University. The community brings out the best in a person. I have stepped into a new world where I want to learn so much with so little time to do it. But I have learned so much and from time to time, my confidence on subjects comes through and I feel great—I feel empowered.

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My favorite school assignment was Biology. We studied living organisms and removed body tissue. There’s so much to learn in Biology that you can’t learn it all in a class setting, but I tried and received an A for it. I loved it.

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The College Program changed my identity, and my relationship to life. It has left a tranquility in me.

Louis Calvin

I would like to leave an environment which was improved by my participation in the College Program. I would like to encourage others who are affected by dyslexia and ADD to pursue educational achievement by my example. It will be interesting to see if the academic fundamentals I learned at the Prison University Project hold up in a regular college setting.

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I surprised myself with creative writing assignments in ENG 101B and ENG 102. I was able to tie course assignments to my own experiences in California in what turned out to be a very pleasurable exercise.

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The greatest obstacle I’ve had to overcome is my lifelong struggle with dyslexia and ADD. Our instructors gave me just enough flexibility and consideration to allow me to flourish in a rigorous academic environment in which there are no modern technical adaptations available for those of us challenged by learning disabilities.

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One instructor, Dr. Paco Brito Nunez, was especially influential during critical points and not only in my liberal arts education, but in my struggle to adjust to long-term incarceration. His guidance and patience got me through tough times here in prison.

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To my fellow graduates—we should all be encouraged to continue with positive programming. In the same way that we have had assistance from generous volunteers here in school, it is incumbent on us to show the way to those who come after us. Our education gives us the tools to make things easier for everyone around us. Let us set about our tasks in the same spirit of generosity which our volunteer advisors demonstrate here in the College Program.

Luis Lopez

Being accepted to the College Program in 2011 was one of the most important events of my life. At that time I had not been in a classroom for 15 years. From the very beginning, I noticed and liked the college’s commitment to excellence. The staff created a well-structured atmosphere that helped me feel confident and self-assured and challenged me to excel. My fellow students—eager to learn like me—helped me to fully engage in every single class.

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English is my second language and this limitation, without a doubt, has been the most challenging part of being a college student. I pushed myself to the limits of my understanding and at some point (finally) I started thinking in English. It wasn’t until that point that I was able to form my own ideas and responses to what I was learning. This disadvantage required me to work hard and stay determined. It also makes me confident in knowing anybody can earn their degree—it just takes consistency and dedication.

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The most influential teacher in my experience as a student was definitely Dr. Fisher. Her unique method of teaching, grading, and explaining ethical theories is simply exceptional. Dr Fisher’s proficiency in ethics helped to shape my current understanding of how societal norms and expectations are determined.

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My beloved and wise mother Mercedes Molina is a formidable woman who believes that education is the most valuable thing a human being can pursue—that it allows one to live healthily, decently, comfortably, and to die honorably. She is so passionate about her belief that it feels magical. I believe every single word she says. I don’t like to think too much about what I’m going to do in my future life, but I can say this: whatever I decide to do, I’ll be able to ask logical questions, perceive solutions, weigh consequences, apply past insights to new contexts, and demonstrate self-evaluation in order to make wise decisions.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Student-Centered Learning at San Quentin

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Published in the April 2019 newsletter, which you can read in its entirety here.

I taught at UC Berkeley for over a decade before I joined the Prison University Project, and one distinct difference in our classrooms at San Quentin is that there is far less silence, far less need for the instructor to put on a song and dance to get students’ attention. This is fantastic, because the Prison University Project is committed to student-centered learning, which sees students as engaged participants in the learning environment, who bring their own knowledge, experience, and background to their learning, and whose learning requires active involvement. Our students at San Quentin are more engaged from the start, which can make student-centered learning feel easier to bring about.

But even though our students are so enthusiastically and fully involved, there are still profound barriers to their genuine engagement. In an authoritarian environment like the prison, free expression can be dangerous. And even if the classroom space may feel “safe” in some ways, the fact that our volunteer base is so much whiter and more economically privileged than our students presents another barrier: will this instructor really understand and respect me? Many of our students also have obstacles to learning in the form of learning differences and prior lack of access to quality education. Finally, a good portion of our students are so grateful for the opportunity to attend college in prison that they feel that to voice a contrary opinion or complaint would be rude or ungrateful.

So to truly center our students’ experiences and voices in the learning process, we are developing initiatives that address these hurdles. One exciting organizational development is that we have added a Learning Specialist position to the program team, who will closely support students with learning differences and other barriers to success. I’m thrilled that we were able to hire our own Allison Lopez, who is in a unique position to build this part of our program. By prioritizing the challenge of addressing barriers to learning, we seek to acknowledge the many different paths our students have taken to arrive at college and the desperate inequality in educational access that has contributed so deeply to the prison crisis.

We are also working to develop effective venues for students to voice their needs and opinions. One exciting project in this vein is that Spanish and College Prep writing instructor Nayeon Kim is working with a group of students to develop a student-led teacher training in diversity, equity, and inclusion in the classroom. Nayeon is meeting with this group of students regularly to learn about their experiences in Prison University Project classes, with the goal of building a bridge to understanding between students and faculty of different backgrounds. This project will create a sustainable feedback loop between students and instructors about best practices in our unique setting. The first training is scheduled for April, and we plan to build it into the regular trainings offered to instructors.

There is a huge amount of work left to do: we need better strategies for fostering more diversity in our volunteer pool; we need to develop more trainings for volunteers on student-centered learning; and we need to develop institutional support for the use of resources that are not yet allowed inside the prison to address learning differences. But I’m proud of the fierce commitment our staff and volunteers have to centering students in the learning process. Not only are we working to provide a rigorous, quality, and equitable education, but we are building a model of what this can look like even in the face of some of America’s most intractable economic and societal inequities.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Symposium on Criminal Justice Reform and Philanthropy—Students Reimagine Reform

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On January 26, the Prison University Project hosted a Symposium on Criminal Justice Reform and Philanthropy in partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. This event showcased proposals developed by students of the College Program at San Quentin State Prison through an intensive workshop during the fall semester. Guided by two facilitators and four research assistants, students first learned about theories of power and the foundations of philanthropy before crafting their own solutions to mass incarceration. The symposium allowed those most impacted by the criminal justice system to claim their rightful seat at the table of reform and contribute to the conversations surrounding their lives and futures. Summaries of some of the students’ proposals are featured below.

Randy Akins
Akins proposes the creation of a speakers bureau of formerly incarcerated people and their allies to inform the public about the impacts of mass incarceration and to help instigate conversation about alternatives to the current system that has caused such harm, especially in African-American communities. His proposal highlights the potential of facilitating ways for formerly incarcerated people to contribute to their communities and to the conversation around criminal justice reform. Due to their intimate familiarity with the system, the voices and efforts of formerly incarcerated people in working to improve the system and strengthen their communities are significant.

Wayne Boatwright and Clark Gerhartsreiter
Gerhartsreiter and Boatwright propose the creation of a startup research institute – The Institute for Decarceration Studies – that finds, structures, and scales solutions for criminal justice reform with the particular goal of reversing mass-incarceration. The Institute aims to do this through the discipline of academic inquiry, combined with strategic synthesis and analysis of the best research and data. Operating from within a state prison and staffed by incarcerated persons, the Institute would publish a quarterly academic research journal. It will also conduct off-site parallel operations through a scholar-in-residence program in collaboration with a major research university.

Steven Brooks
Brooks proposes that CDCR implement an incentivized, rehabilitative program intended to reduce or eliminate the possession, use and sale of addictive substances within its institutions. Brooks believes that this would also help facilitate incarcerated people’s focus on rehabilitation. Today, California’s prison system is full of drugs, drug users and drug dealers, and often incarcerated people are forced through default to “hustle” for survival. Even those who are serious about their rehabilitation process often lose their willpower to abstain from illegal trading after too many nights of going to bed hungry. To encourage prisoners who have little or no family support to choose participation in rehabilitation programs, CDCR could offer incentives for participation in substance use disorder treatment and drug counseling programs. They would not only benefit the participants by helping them recover from addictions, but make CDCR institutions less punitive and more rehabilitative in nature.

Conrad Cherry
Cherry proposes the funding of re-entry “advocates” who will use technology to help incarcerated people get housing and employment. Currently, people preparing for release, and especially those preparing for parole hearings, have a hard time connecting to available programs and services because of technological and logistical barriers. It is difficult for many people, especially those without family support, to prove to the parole board that they will be able to support themselves in the community because they cannot communicate with potential employers or transitional housing providers easily. Funding advocates to assist people in locating, communicating with, and applying for employment and housing would greatly improve people’s chances for success when they re-enter the community and improve their ability to demonstrate their ability to function successfully in the community to the parole board.

Roberto DeTrinidad
For the average U.S. citizen, our current judicial system is a vast web of protocols, technicalities and jargon. There is, effectively, a language barrier preventing clear understanding. DeTrinidad proposes a pilot project that seeks to alleviate the gaps in understanding that exist within today’s court rooms. DeTrinidad proposes creating a panel of psychologists, linguists, educators, justice system stakeholders (i.e., District Attorneys, Public Defenders, etc.) and average U.S. citizens of varying reading levels to review and simplify the language used in court and court documents. In addition, beginning with a single courtroom, this pilot project would test a system where judges and other courtroom actors would have to confirm a defendant’s understanding of each discussed item before proceeding, as well as create a space for open dialogue in the courtroom.

Ronell Draper
Community reform and prison reform should go hand in hand; there needs to be a conversation between the two. Instead of only focusing on self-help programs inside prisons, people working on prison reform should also work on community building in order to address past traumas and prevent future traumas. Draper’s proposal addresses the need for criminal justice reform to co-exist with community reform efforts – to humanize returning citizens while the community can have real interaction with the incarcerated by attending self-help groups alongside one another, becoming allies and champions for one another.

Teddy Fields
Fields seeks funding to support a ballot initiative to reform California’s Three Strikes Law. The People’s Fair Sentencing and Public Safety Act, originally proposed for the 2018 ballot, would change the language of the Three Strikes Law to ensure that individuals whose triggering offense is nonviolent no longer be exposed to a lengthy life sentence. It would also change the way that the law classifies certain crimes that are currently considered “serious” crimes or violent felonies despite not involving any actual violence. It would ensure that these individuals are able to secure release into society without racking up extra time for repeated non-violent convictions, and it would save the taxpayers millions of dollars. This Act seeks to rectify this illogical practice by amending the Penal Code to make a distinction between violence and nonviolence. Under Federal guidelines, this very distinction exists; 18 USC 3559 (3)(H)(i), (ii). The amendments will serve to protect nonviolent offenders from suffering miscarriages of justice.

Chung Kao
Kao proposes broad funding for the expansion of higher education programs across prisons in the United States, which would allow those who are incarcerated to obtain post secondary degrees. Based on the overwhelming success of the Prison University Project, Kao would like to see this model funded and replicated across the United States. If funded, Kao believes that this initiative will lead to a significant decrease in the overall rates of recidivism. It would also provide a space for incarcerated folks to gain the knowledge and skills they need to gain employment upon release. Finally, similar programs have been proven to have positive effects on self-identity, mental health, relationships as well as race relations.

James King
King proposes investment in a new media company that will provide an online platform for people who are directly impacted by the criminal justice system. In particular, this media platform would provide a system for educating and sharing information with people who are currently incarcerated and an outlet for incarcerated people to directly share their stories, thoughts, and observations about life on the inside. If funded, King would expand the Re:Vision blog (a current project of Re:store Justice) to provide an avenue for incarcerated people to learn about, shape, and independently lead the criminal justice reform conversation.

Chan Lam
Lam proposes the creation of a job-seeking platform designed specifically to help recently paroled people find employment. This platform seeks to explicitly outline the federal financial incentives for hiring people with felony convictions and features a streamlined filing application so employers can receive their refunds. There are no upfront costs for companies or people on parole to use the site and it features a rating system similar to GlassDoor. Lam’s mission is to connect more parolees with meaningful, long-term employment and financial independence. Funding for this platform would help him achieve this fundamental purpose and improve employment opportunities for people coming home from prison.

Isaiah Love
Love argues that prisons should be transformed into academies for higher education and for building new, pro-social habits. This culture would help incarcerated people change their lives and adopt new habits during their time in prison, which, in turn, would allow them to succeed in the community upon release. Orienting correctional institutions around cultural and behavioral transformation would mean providing opportunities for all incarcerated people to access high quality higher education, to develop and maintain new habits, and to create new identities.

Michael Mackey
Mackey’s proposal involves reforming how the justice system interacts with and treats people with mental illness. He believes that the current system does not address the needs of people with mental illness sufficiently. Access to assessment, treatment, and (when necessary) referral for mental illness (including substance use disorder) should be a part of the general health services available to all incarcerated people. People with mental illness in prison, he says, should have access to the same types of psychotropic medication and psychosocial support as people in the community outside of prison.

William Merlen
Merlen proposes a program to help address and heal feelings of social inadequacy that are common among incarcerated people and that cause real harm to their ability to heal, develop supportive social networks, and re-enter the community successfully.

Lonnie Morris
Far too often, the criminal justice reform agenda is created without sufficiently utilizing the specialized knowledge and lived experiences of currently incarcerated men and women. In order to remedy this problem, Morris proposes to conduct a series of workshops on criminal justice reform strategies and priorities (entitled “Resetting the Criminal Justice Reform Table”) for philanthropists, businesses, community based organizations (CBOs), judges, lawmakers, district and defense attorneys, law enforcement and other drivers and influencers in the criminal justice reform movement. These workshops would bring the perspective of currently incarcerated people “back to the table” and allow them to help shape more inclusive, meaningful, and sustainable criminal justice reform policies, strategies, and priorities.

Rahsaan Thomas
Thomas seeks to fund a new project of Prison Renaissance, which is an organization that Thomas co-founded that uses art to support the healing of incarcerated people and to connect them to the wider community. This project, called We Rehabilitate Us Program (WRUP), would create opportunities for incarcerated artists to collaborate with outside artists. Although rehabilitative programs like art therapy are proven to reduce recidivism, CDCR inconsistently maintains art programs. Unlike CDCR programs, which rely on state funding, outside funding and collaboration with volunteers would enable WRUP to pursue its goals free from bureaucratic constraints. Through WRUP, Thomas envisions a future of reduced disciplinary infractions in prison environments. He hopes WRUP will serve as the catalyst to create mentorships and collaborative relationships between incarcerated people and communities outside, financially empower artists by producing three journals a year that pay artists for their work, and reduce recidivism rates to zero for program participants.

Jesse Vasquez
Vasquez writes, “Relatively few people adversely impacted by public policy are involved in the decision-making process. The vast majority of inner city Americans, especially black and brown people, are at a disadvantage in the public arena because they lack knowledge of the governmental framework that regulates how bills and ballot measures become law. Few of them know whom to address their concerns to and the rest of them assume that no one will care enough to listen.” He proposes the funding of a “Civic Empowerment Program” designed to strengthen socio-political bonds by providing everyone with a platform of political expression. Through a program serving middle school, high school and college students, as well as others eager to learn, Vasquez envisions an education infrastructure bolstering the US democracy and engagement within it. This infrastructure will increase civic engagement and, therefore, hold the capacity to transform the current criminal justice system.

Charles Williams
Williams proposes funding for a holistic rehabilitation program for people ages 35 and older who have been incarcerated for 15 years or more. The main components of this program would include: mental health professionals guiding participants through confrontational therapy and coping skills, developing a mechanism of community responsibility that clusters participants into accountability groups, and an investment in each participant to support their successful transition into society. Williams further proposes that the Mental Health Department play an integral role in both developing the curriculum and providing adequate psychological evaluation of incarcerated persons prior to their release. If funded, Williams believes that this initiative will serve as a holistic approach for incarcerated people who are preparing for their release to successfully reintegrate into society with minimal barriers.

Van Wilson
Wilson proposes an alteration to CDCR policy in order to allow incarcerated people to own and use cell phones. He believes that providing access to cell phones would promote the independence, self-reliance, self-esteem, and community ties of incarcerated people. Opponents of this idea claim that incarcerated people would use cellphones behind walls to invite criminal activity. Wilson envisions a cellphones-behind-walls policy that works for everyone and improves public safety; calls would be monitored via authorized ID codes and the provider would be equipped with technology that prevents incarcerated people from accessing sensitive information. A working policy has the potential to eliminate unauthorized cell phone contraband and protect public safety, while improving self-esteem, self-actualization, and family and social ties for incarcerated people. The value of providing an outlet for self-expression and connection would be seen in the increased safety of CDCR institutions and smoother re-entry when people leave prison.

Phoeun You
You proposes the creation of a 13-week seminar on the causes and impacts of, coping mechanisms for, and strategies for healing from trauma led by incarcerated facilitators for prison staff and volunteers. This “Trauma Academy” would aim to build empathy, cultivate a deeper understanding of personal traumas, guide healing and uncover coping skills. Funding for the seminar would help pay for facilitation fees as well as marketing materials, a website and workshop training. You believes that once the pilot program achieves success at San Quentin, it can expand to prisons across the nation and include workshops for society at large. Processing, understanding, and healing from trauma is an important way to make communities safer. This seminar aims to both transform individuals’ lives and make prisons safer and healthier for staff and incarcerated people alike.

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.

Oral History at San Quentin Prison

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Last fall, Voice of Witness, an organization that advances human rights by amplifying the voices of people impacted by injustice, held three classes that introduced Prison University Project students to the oral history process. Read more about the series of workshops by clicking below, and check out students Steve Brooks and Joe Garcia’s stories published on the Voice of Witness Blog.

The Voice of Witness education team is always looking for opportunities to create deeper engagement and partnership with the communities represented in our book series, so we can ensure our educational resources are reaching the students who need them the most. That’s why with the launch of our newest book, Six By Ten: Stories from Solitary, we’ve been working with the Prison University Project (PUP) at San Quentin State Prison to share VOW’s ethics-driven oral history process with their students.

The PUP college program offers San Quentin inmates free courses in the humanities, social sciences, math, and science, as well as intensive college preparatory courses in math and English. Working with PUP Academic Program Director, Amy Jamgochian, I developed three classes that would introduce students to the oral history process and give them an opportunity to practice their interview skills, both as an interviewer and narrator, as well as their editing skills.

Following weeks of planning, logistics and pursuing security clearances, I kicked off the first class by pairing students up to a share a story with each other related to their first names. It was a great way to warm everyone up to storytelling – after sharing their stories with the group, many of them realized their stories had something in common!

We then read Hani Khan’s story from Patriot Acts, which helped students begin to think about the relationship between interviewer and narrator in the oral history process – in particular the types of questions (and listening) that inspire thoughtful, detailed stories.

I was inspired by how adept the students were at contextualizing oral history, posing powerful questions about the nature of history—namely who makes it and who writes it. They quickly made connections between oral history and traditions like West African Griots, and modern day emcees.

In order to prepare ourselves for interviews during our second class, our first meeting finished with an exploration of the question, “If you had a meaningful story to share with someone, what would you need to feel safe, to feel brave?” There were many lively responses, and the class felt very connected to issues related to respect, representation, and the importance of agency over one’s own story.

When I arrived for our second class, I discovered that we were going to be in a different classroom, and one right next store to a room where there was an open-mic performance going on. Not exactly ideal when you’ll be conducting oral history interviews! However, this seemed to bother me more than it did the students, and they came in ready to conduct their interviews. After a while, we were able to turn the performance next door into part of our interview experience, as we acknowledged the applause next door as an appreciation of our interview skills!

The interviews were not without their challenges, however. Due to prison requirements the students were not able to use recording devices for their interviews, and instead took copious notes while interviewing their partners. It was certainly an exercise in maintaining focus—both when listening to your narrator’s story, and in the ability to capture the meaningful moments of the story on paper in real time.

After the interviews were completed, partners shared their notes with each other and had a bit of time to incorporate this material into their existing story drafts. Watching this process unfold, it became clear to me that this approach to oral history – and the challenges incarcerated people face documenting their stories – should be incorporated into our curriculum for Six By Ten. Before the end of class, I reminded students that our third and final meeting was going to be devoted to editing their personal narratives.

Looking ahead, we will be using the VOW blog to provide an online platform for these students to publish their stories. In our last class, our first task was to make sure everyone was clear about the process of getting their oral histories onto the VOW website. After some editing work, the stories would be typed up, proofed by the students, and then sent to the Public Information Officer for publishing clearance.

As we began our editing session, it was interesting for students to compare the editing work they had done in their formal writing, and the choices made while editing their personal narratives. Many concepts and techniques carried over, such as clarity and quality of detail, but students were also able to use different editing techniques to highlight moments in their stories that included sensory detail, a clear storytelling arc, and an overall intuitive sense of what makes for a compelling story. At the end of our editing session, I asked if a few students would be willing to read their narratives to the class. Everyone volunteered and we finished our work together in a very supportive story sharing environment.

Before parting, I took a moment to reflect on how much we were able to touch on in just three classes: oral history techniques, editing, the concept of “people’s history,” several excerpts from the VOW book series (including Six By Ten), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, quotes from Chimamanda Adichie and James Baldwin, and guiding principles for ethical storytelling. I was also glad to be able to leave some VOW books for the PUP library, so other students in the program will have access to the stories and can make connections with the lives and experiences of our narrators.

I certainly hope this is only the beginning of our work with the students of the Prison University Project. We can’t wait to share these students’ stories with you in the coming months!

Please note that the Prison University Project became Mount Tamalpais College in September 2020.