Thank you to our beautiful community for all the feedback on PEP’s art show in collaboration with UO Visual Arts!

We have compiled all the feedback received and sent personalized packets to all the artists. We are so grateful for their contributions and are glad we are able to share these photos and feedback with them!

Click here to view Resonance: Art from Inside

The UO Prison Education Program is celebrating the 15-year anniversary of the initial cohort of Inside-Out classes. Since 2007, the program has expanded to offer classes, not-for-credit opportunities, and works to advance educational access for people who are incarcerated statewide.

Join the Prison Education Program faculty, alumni, and friends for an informal, open-house reception at the Ford Alumni Center on Thursday, May 5, from 6:00–7:30 p.m.

The event will feature speakers from the program, spoken word performance, and a silent auction of artwork created by incarcerated or formerly incarcerated artists.

You can expect a light, casual event and we hope you’ll take advantage of this opportunity to meet new friends and learn about the latest developments in the program.

This term, the University of Oregon Prison Education Program has continued to work to provide our students with the opportunity to take classes amidst COVID-19 lockdowns. Throughout the winter term students have had the opportunity to take

• GEOG 410/510: Geography of the US/Mexico Borderlands – Taught by Scott Warren
• CHN 410/410: Contemporary Chinese Literature: Reading and Study of Mo Yan’s Novel Life and Death are Wearing Me Out – Taught by Stephen Durrant
• PSY 407/507: Psychological Perspectives on Self and Identity – Taught by Inga Schowengerdt
• PS 275: Legal Process – Taught by Alison Gash
• GEOG 410: Borderland Identities (Taught in Spanish) – Taught by Belén Noroña
• CLAS 301: Greek and Roman Epics – Taught by Mary Jaeger
• SOC 410/510: Race, Gender, and Poverty in the United States – Taught by Ellen Scott

While these courses were all conducted remotely in order to comply with Department of Corrections’ regulations, they have offered the opportunity to take classes in four prisons across the state of Oregon to 94 students.

Moving into spring term, we are planning the first in-person class in over two years, and we are hopeful that this trend will continue into the fall term of 2022.

With every book donation, we encourage institutions to reach out to us with specific requests for their respective libraries. We recently got a request from Coffee Creek Correctional Institution, the only women’s prison in Oregon, to help their newly formed LGBTQ group build a resource library.

If you are able, please take a look at the following wishlists and help us support women and youth through book donations.

UO Prison Education Program will be hosting its second art exhibit on campus. Resonance will feature art from over 20 artists who have experienced incarceration.

Resonance is a creative exhibition of the visual artwork created by over twenty artists who are incarcerated in prisons across the state of Oregon. In recognition of the remarkable talents of these artists, the University of Oregon Prison Education Program and the EMU Center for Student Involvement’s Visual Arts Team have worked in conjunction to exhibit their work to the outside world.

Resonance will be on display in the EMU Adell McMillan Gallery January 3rd-February 4th with a closing reception on February 3rd.

As the pandemic continues to evolve, the Prison Education Program continues to adapt. 

While we had high hopes last spring of entering fall term with an assortment of in-person classes, we have created a robust catalog of remote courses that we are proud to be offering this fall. These classes include:

– Prof. Scott Warren’s GEOG 410/510 “Mexican-US Borderlands” at OSCI

– Prof. Belén Noroña’s GEOG 410 “Identities in Borderlands” at OSP and OSCI

– Prof. Caroline Lundquist’s PHIL 102 “Ethics” at Coffee Creek and Deer Ridge

– Prof. Alison Gash’s PS 275 “Legal Process” at OSP and OSCI

– Prof. Katie Dwyer’s CAS 407/507 “Intercultural Communication and Conflict Resolution” at OSP

– Prof. Shaul Cohen, GEOG 410 “Landscapes in Lit and Life” at OSP

These courses will include over 80 students from four different institutions. They also include the first course to ever be offered at Deer Ridge Correctional Institute and a capstone course for a student who will graduate with his bachelor’s degree in December.

While we carry on pushing for the best for our students, we will continue to prioritize safety while offering the most interpersonal education that public health restrictions allow. We are holding onto an optimistic mindset that we may still be able to offer in-person classes in the terms to come throughout the 2021-2022 school year, but whether or not that materializes, we will continue to offer remote learning and other educational opportunities for our students.

We are happy to announce that this fall term will include the first-ever class at Deer Ridge Correctional Institute (DRCI). Along with being our first class at DRCI, this class also marks another important step for our program: a further expansion across the state into Eastern Oregon.

This Philosophy 102 class will center around the topic of ethics, and will be taught by Prof. Caroline Lundquist. Together, Prof. Lundquist and the students will be approaching ethics through the works of many of our world’s greatest philosophical minds such as Nietzsche, Aristotle, and Camus.

From the course announcement: 

The fundamental assumption behind this course is that reading, writing, thinking and talking about ethics can help us to become better people, live richer, more meaningful lives, and inspire us to work together to improve our world. Hence the chief purpose of this course is to foster an ongoing engagement with meaningful ethical questions. 

We will begin by examining a selection of potential “threats” to ethics, including relativism, egoism, false consciousness and moral luck, and then consider whether or to what extent moral theories can help mitigate those threats and guide our ethical thinking. Along the way, we will consider numerous questions that have historically posed, and continue to pose, serious challenges to ethical philosophers and philosophical laypeople alike. We end by applying our tentative beliefs and conclusions to a selection of contemporary moral issues. 

This class will include 25 students from Coffee Creek Correctional Facility as well as 5 students from DRCI.

Over Labor Day weekend, we packed and shipped over 220 books to four
facilities across Oregon, including our first shipment to Warner Creek Correctional Facility in Lakeview, Oregon.

Not only were we glad to get so many books sent out, but we are also
excited to have been able to fulfill specific requests for books ranging
in topics from science, math, poetry, business, and books in four
different languages.