Author: kdwyer6

Entrepreneurship Workshop Series Held at Coffee Creek

Posted on by kdwyer6
Our program has hoped to expand our offerings of business classes and workshops for years. Entrepreneurship is particularly valuable for people who are incarcerated, as self-employment is a way to avoid barriers in the job market and is a way to utilize people’s creativity and skills.
This weekend we concluded a three-part workshop on entrepreneurship with Professor Doug Wilson from the Lundquist School of Business. He integrated business fundamentals while sharing stories, answering questions, facilitating small group discussions, and doing a deeper dive into some of the particular industry areas that were of interest to our participants. Our final session had a record-breaking 33 participants, including both some regulars in our classes and people we had not met before. The workshop was held at Coffee Creek Minimum, meaning our participants were women either serving short sentences or nearing release after long sentences. They therefore brought high levels of motivation and thought to the topic, and some had detailed existing plans that we were able to discuss as a group. Another theme that emerged was the widespread desire to engage with the nonprofit sector—either directly or via a kind of for-profit/charitable collaboration to work with people experiencing poverty, in addiction recovery, and otherwise giving back to communities of people who are struggling. Discussing nonprofits from an entrepreneurial angle was particularly interesting and rewarding.
We are scheduled for workshops at CCCF the third Saturday of every month. In addition to entrepreneurship, we have offered a communication workshop and one on math and logic. We look forward to broadening the scope of topics over time, and also know that entrepreneurship will be a welcome topic at the other institutions.

Communication Workshop at OSCI

Posted on by kdwyer6
Not-for-credit workshops have been part of our program offerings for years, but they have been slow to restart since the pandemic. We are delighted, therefore, to have been invited by two OSCI groups – New Horizons and the Asian Club – to hold a two-part communication workshop. Last Friday we held part 1 and were thrilled to have 28 people join us, about half of whom were completely new to our program.
As we say in the workshops, communication is one of the most sought-after “soft skills” for employers, and one of the key abilities for interpersonal relationships in daily life. Using a series of activities, participants practiced public speaking, active listening, written persuasive communication for different audiences, and offering constructive critique. Public speaking is a profound source of anxiety for most people, so a supportive environment in which to practice is of enormous importance.
One takeaway from the workshop was the interpersonal connection between participants as they practiced these skills together. When debriefing the session, several people mentioned having spoken with people they had never had a real conversation with before, and feeling a sense of camaraderie in the room.
We look forward to Part 2 this coming Friday!

Guest Talk on the Nahuatl Language for the OSP Latino Club

Posted on by kdwyer6
On Wednesday, our program was pleased to attend the monthly meeting for the OSP Latino Club. Juan Carlos Gonzalez Zacarias, a UO alum and current member of staff presented his research on the Aztec culture and Nahuatl language to over 140 members of the club. Among other highlights, he spoke about the importance of language and identity, the challenges of preserving a language, and the various communities in Mexico that speak Nahuatl dialects to this day. In spite of the common belief that Spanish is the only language spoken in Mexico, there are in fact 68 official languages for the country, with Nahuatl as the second most widespread.
Juan Carlos received multiple questions and comments from the crowd, and an enthusiastic response from the club leaders as part of their growing efforts to create and support educational opportunities for their members.
At the conclusion of the event, the club president invited members to share if they spoke languages other than Spanish and English. We were treated to greetings in multiple languages and dialects, from Turkish to Hebrew, and then were surprised and delighted to discover two members of the club were native Nahuatl speakers! An additional pleasant surprise—a new club member is Deaf and speaks American Sign Language, and Juan Carlos surprised us all by engaging in a conversation in sign.
When our program is invited to events like this we are always glad to contribute to the educational life of people at OSP beyond what we can offer in for-credit college classes. Just like the UO campus offers a broad range of programs and speakers to our campus community.
Artwork by Juan Carlos for his upcoming book project

Remarks from Jamie Bufalino for Kevin’s GSS Graduation

Posted on by kdwyer6
Remarks by Jamie Bufalino, Department Head for General Social Sciences
6/22/2023
It is my great privilege to be here today to celebrate Kevin’s achievement of the bachelor’s degree in General Social Sciences from the University of Oregon.
The general social sciences program allows students to develop social scientific reasoning by analyzing various types of texts addressing a particular social issue or institution. One of the benefits of the program’s topical focus is that students take courses from many different departments and examine a single problem from a multitude of different perspectives. They apply numerous different methods, qualitative and quantitative, to considering some of the most pressing challenges facing U.S. society and the world today.
Along with many other UO students, Kevin has taken courses concentrated on issues related to crime, law and society.  Each student’s path to a GSS degree is unique, but Kevin’s path mirrors that of many students in that he has taken courses from across the social sciences and been taught by some of UOs most dedicated teacher-scholars. He has completed courses in sociology, political science, anthropology, geography, planning, public policy, and management family and human services, among others.
I’d like to invite us to reflect on the intellectual journey you have taken and to bear witness to your hard work as well as the effort of those who have nurtured and supported you, many of whom are here today. While each person’s intellectual journey is unique, there are common experiences shared by students pursuing a liberal arts degree. For instance, it allows us to take leave of our everyday reality and explore new worlds of ideas, uncover the complexity beneath previously unexamined truths, discover the inner workings of the systems the influence our society, and critically reflect on the interplay between our society’s highest ideals and its daily practices. It connects us with other people in profound ways by allows us develop insight into and empathy for people whose experience differs from our own. Some of those people are our instructors and our classmates, some the authors and subjects of the works we examine. And ideally, it allows us to turn our gaze inward on reflect more deeply on our own lives.
Embarking on this intellectual journey is an act of courage. It requires us to submit to an ongoing process of seeing beyond ourselves, and that process changes us forever. Kevin, your dedication to your studies over many, many years and your incredibly strong academic record bring us to this moment. This degree, then, is exemplary of your incredible commitment to expanding your understanding of the world around you. It also highlights your meaningful participation in the intellectual community of the prison education program, including your fellow students and your instructors who have benefited from your many insights.
In my years directing the GSS program I have found the prison education program to be a transformative experience for both inside and outside students. As we celebrate your accomplishment today, I want to thank you are the profound impact you have made on those who have made this journey with and also thank Katie and Shaul and everyone who makes it possible for students to come together to learn from one another.
Congratulations!!

Community Request: Feedback on PEP’s 3rd Art Show

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In 2022, Prison Education Program collected feedback from our community and beyond on Resonance: Art from Inside. We compiled the feedback into a booklet that we mailed to the artists who generously donated their talents to the show. Along with photos of their art displayed in a gallery for hundreds of students to see daily, the artists received photos of community members enjoying the closing reception and individual feedback on the art pieces they donated. Those that received these booklets expressed their gratitude for being able to see their work on UO’s campus, and for the written feedback provided on their art. The feedback was a connection to the outside world, it gave them confidence, it made them smile. 

Now, we are doing the same. Sense of Place: Art from Inside is currently on display in the EMU, and we are asking you, our community, to help us gather feedback to the artists who donated their work to the exhibit.

 

We are asking for your support by providing your feedback on as many of the show’s pieces as you’d like! Please share this request widely, we appreciate your support!

 

Click the link here to be connected to a Google Form. This Google form will ask for your name and email, and then it will allow you to view each piece in the exhibit. Take a moment to share your thoughts on as many or as few pieces that you can. Share words of encouragement, tell the artist how their piece made you feel, compliment their color choice — whatever feels right.

OR

 

Click on the title of each piece in this slideshow to be connected to a Qualtrics Survey where you can leave feedback.

 

If you are local to the University of Oregon campus, please join us this Thursday 3/9 at 6pm in the Adell McMillam Gallery on the 2nd floor of the EMU. Light refreshments will be provided. All are welcome.

poster displaying abstract art and information regarding art show. feb 6- march 9. sense of place: art from inside

Oregon State Legislature on Higher Education in Prisons

Posted on by kdwyer6

Last month, our very own Prison Education Program Director, Shaul Cohen, testified to the Oregon State
Legislature on higher education in prisons. Shaul was invited to the legislature’s House Committee on
Judiciary on behalf of University of Oregon’s Prison Education Program. Legislative committees are
focused groups of Oregon’s legislators who are appointed across political parties to bring bills to the
Senate and House floor.

 

The law-making process in Oregon is dependent on committees, where much of
the work to shape legislation and influence public policy actually occurs. Public hearings held by
committees offer lobbyists, press, members of the public and legislators not appointed to the given
committee an opportunity to submit written or verbal public testimony on certain issues. This legislative
session features several bills with the potential to impact prison education, and thus we are closely
tracking committee meetings and are grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with folks at the Capitol.

Shaul’s presentation to the Judiciary committee included background information on higher education in
prisons across Oregon and specifics of UO’s PEP, including the numbers of students and faculty engaging
in inside-out classes, art exhibits, LEAP packets, and future directions of the program. The
Representatives in attendance listened intently as Shaul outlined the central components of PEP as well as
the importance and benefits of prison education.

 

You may access the full video recording of the
committee meeting at this link:
https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/mediaplayer/?clientID=4879615486&eventID=2023011197.

 

If you are interested in tracking the progress of committee meetings or any anticipated bills this session, you
may find more information on the Oregon Legislative Information System site: Oregon Legislative
Information System (oregonlegislature.gov).

Sense of Place: Art from Inside

Posted on by kdwyer6
Sense of Place is a creative exhibition of the artwork created by over 20 artists who are incarcerated in prisons across the state of Oregon. In recognition of the incredible talent of these artists, the University of Oregon Prison Education Program and the EMU Center for Student Involvement Visual Arts Team have worked in conjunction to exhibit their work to the outside world. We are deeply grateful to these artists for donating their work for all of us to view, ponder, and enjoy. 

Each piece has a survey linked on the title. Please take a moment and give feedback to our artists inside. We will be creating a post-show brochure for our inside artists which will include photos of the exhibit and feedback from the community. After sending their art to us months ago, any thoughts you have to share with our artists will be truly meaningful. Please feel free to distribute this presentation with your community and share about the gallery in the EMU, we greatly appreciate as much feedback on the art as possible. 

Sense of Place will be on display at the EMU’s Adell McMillan Gallery February 6 – March 19 with a closing reception on March 9. All are welcome. 

 

Sense of Place Artist Statements & Survey Presentation

Apply to Upcoming Spring 2023 Inside Out Courses!

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SPRING 2023 / AUTOBIOGRAPHY AS POLITICAL AGENCY / HC431H / ANITA CHARI

This class explores the autobiography as a form of both personal and political expression.  We begin by complicating, questioning and demystifying the divide between the personal and political by linking personal stories and histories with narratives of broader social structures, such as capitalism, patriarchy, slavery, and colonialism. We will read autobiographies from diverse sources, including letters, quasi-fictionalized autobiographies, poetry, and autobiographies of political activists.  We will also engage with theories of social structure and agency in order to theorize the interface between personal experience and political agency.

In this course, we will view the autobiography as a vehicle for making personal experience something that is politically significant.  The autobiography, one could say, births political agency, hence our course title, “Autobiography as Political Agency.”  Therefore, we are reading autobiographies to think about how the autobiography as a form creates possibilities for both individual and collective agency.

Application: Spring-2023-Application-Inside-Out-CHC-431H-Autobiography-as-Political-Agency-1

SPRING 2023 / CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY / GEOG444 / SHAUL COHEN

Cultural Geography provides a lens for studying popular culture in all its guises, and can be a key tool for understanding the cleavages in society that are referred to as “culture wars”.  Culture, as a human construction, is always dynamic, and always contested.  In this course we will develop the approaches and determine the questions that help us to understand where culture comes from, where it’s going, and how it is determined, shaped, represented, and challenged, from place to place, people to people, time to time.  Culture is power, culture is politics; how can we understand it, and influence it, as it unfolds around us? As we work through the course we are going to explore layers relating to place, space, landscape, identity, and power.  What are these things/processes, how do they work?

In addition to course readings, we will draw upon the world “out there”; landscapes, buildings, magazines, literature, music, dance, film, television, discourse, and so on, to bring many cultural geographies into view.  Your primary task is to read and participate in discussions, to respond in writing to the prompts that I will give you, and to be looking for illustrations of our themes in the world around you.

Application: Spring-Application-Inside-Out-Spring-GEOG-444-Cultural-Geography

SPRING 2023 / ETHICS AND LITERATURE / HC421H / STEVEN SHANKMAN

We will read Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad, the recently (2019) translated “prequel” to Life and Fate, and Is it Righteous to Be?, a series of interviews with the 20th-century’s greatest philosopher of ethics, Emmanuel Levinas (1905-1995). Life and Fate, a panoramic novel modeled on Tolstoy’s War and Peace, was a work of literature that Levinas often referred to in his writings of the last fifteen years of his life. “The essential thing in this book is simply what the character Ikonnikov says – ‘There is neither God nor the Good, but there is goodness’ – which is also my thesis.” Grossman (1905-1964), like Levinas, is careful to distinguish ethics from politics and he, like Levinas, insists that, even in the wake of the horrors of Nazism and Stalinism, goodness is still possible.

 

We will discuss Grossman’s novel in the context of Vladimir Putin’s current and brutal invasion of Ukraine, and we will note the moral and tactical significance of the fact that, in Grossman’s Stalingrad, Russia (or, more precisely, the Soviet Union) is being invaded by Nazi Germany, in contrast to the current war, in which Russia is the invader.

 

Application: Spring-2023-Application-Inside-Out-CHC-421H-Ethics-and-Literature

Book Donations to OSP Special Housing

Posted on by kdwyer6

Since 2021, PEP has been working with Special Housing Units through LEAP packets (Learning, Engagement, and Activities Packets).  The packets include essays, short stories, poems, activities, and artwork. They also include writing prompts throughout the packet, inviting readers to respond to the parts that interest them. Our LEAP coordinator will give feedback to everyone who writes responses to the packet.

To learn more about LEAP, click here.

Through this project, we were asked by staff to contribute books directly to the small library in the Special Housing Unit. We are glad to send in things that will be intellectually interesting and spark conversation for folks there, and hope you will consider donating frequently requested books.

If you are interested in donating books, we have an Amazon wish list of books that have been requested or are of particular interest inside.

Feel free to share our wishlist widely!

Now accepting artwork for the 2023 PEP art show!

Posted on by kdwyer6

Continuing what is now an annual tradition, we are preparing for the 2023 art show at the University of Oregon’s EMU, featuring currently incarcerated artists. We will have art to share soon! For now, here is our invitation to artists to participate.

Call for art!

The University of Oregon’s Prison Education Program (PEP) is holding an annual exhibition of artwork by artists from OSP, OSCI and CCCF from February 6 – March 9, 2023 in the Erb Memorial Union (EMU) student union building on the UO campus. The EMU is a bustling building which thousands of people pass through each week.

The PEP seeks donations of artwork to display on campus. We hope to auction off the art pieces after the show ends and invest any proceeds from the sale of art into education programs at Oregon prisons. Artwork cannot be returned—this is a permanent donation to the PEP—and any proceeds will go to the PEP and not to artists. For anyone willing to contribute art pieces, we are enormously grateful and hope that your contribution will help raise awareness of the diverse talents of incarcerated people in Oregon. You will help us as we continue to work to provide educational opportunities inside.

Works may relate to the theme “A Sense of Place”—a common thread across this year’s Prison Education Program (PEP) courses—or follow any inspiration of your choosing.

You will receive written feedback as a participating artist about your works featured in the exhibition from UO faculty, students and community members. You will also receive a printed catalog documenting works in the show and gallery space after the exhibition closes. A closing reception will be held on the UO campus on Thursday, March 9, 2023.

Be on the lookout for new Art Show news in early 2023!

Second page of the flyer, with Feedback from the 2022 Art Show. "I absolutely loved the art, but what I especially enjoyed was the artists' comments and explanation about their pieces. It made the work so much more meaningful. This show reminded me of the humanity of everyone no matter where they are."

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