Mission
The WVU Higher Education in Prison Initiative (HEPI) improves educational access for people imprisoned in the Appalachian region and generates experiential learning and research opportunities for WVU students and faculty.
HEPI coordinates an associate degree program and offers a range of educational programming for people in prison. We provide reentry support for currently and previously incarcerated students. We also organize campus and community events that explore solutions to the crisis of mass incarceration. Undergraduate and graduate students contribute to all aspects of our work as teaching assistants and student workers.
Values and Guiding Beliefs
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Education is a human right.
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Individual and community care is an act of resistance to dehumanizing legal and carceral systems.
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An everyday commitment to economic and racial justice is vital to challenging historic oppression.
History
HEPI emerged from a decades-long partnership between West Virginia University (WVU) and the Appalachian Prison Book Project (APBP). The central work of the initiative is to build an associate degree program at State Correctional Institution Greene (SCI Greene), a maximum-security prison in Waynesburg, PA. The initiative bridges the divide of prison walls and makes possible a more diverse, inclusive, and dynamic Mountaineer community.
HEPI raises money to cover all costs for tuition, books, and instruction. Funding from the Laughing Gull Foundation, the Sunshine Lady Foundation, the Pennsylvania Consortium for Higher Education in Prison, and the Appalachian Prison Book Project has provided critical support.
In Fall 2022, HEPI launched the associate degree program at SCI Greene in partnership with Waynesburg University. Upon completion of the sixty-credit curriculum, students will earn an Associate of Arts degree in Professional Studies from Waynesburg University.
HEPI is committed to reciprocal modes of learning, to broadening horizons and hopes, and to joy. Classes are taught by WVU faculty who experience a revitalized commitment to teaching and, without access to technology, develop interactive and collaborative classroom strategies. Similarly, WVU on-campus undergraduates and graduate students develop skills and passions, pursue new career and educational paths, and name this experience as the most impactful in their college lives.
Dr. Katy Ryan, WVU English Professor and HEPI Founding Director, taught the inaugural Inside-Out course in Fall 2022. “This American drama class was truly beautiful. Each week students collaborated on original performances in response to plays by August Wilson, Lorraine Hansberry, ntozoke shange, Clifford Odets, Tony Kushner, and Quiara Algería Hudes. They made props (roses from toilet paper, keyboards from cardboard), wrote poems and songs, and they built a community.”
After the course ended, students, faculty, and prison staff began meeting biweekly as a Think Tank to develop more programming at SCI Greene. This group, named the Inspiring Change Collective, created a book club that now rotates through the prison, increased access to mental health awareness strategies, and formed an inside advisory council for the degree program. The Collective also worked to strengthen vocational training, develop a peer mentoring program, and increase creative outlets for people inside.
"The whole process of us coming together for this collaborative project," said an inaugural cohort member, "is the tangible proof that by working together, side by side, we could achieve a lot in making a way for better living… Things are finally looking up for once.”