Hope-Western Prison Education Program

A Grateful Student Speaks

The Hope-Western Prison Education Program relies on the generosity and goodwill of hundreds of people. Most have never met the students they support. Prisons are often located far from public view, and visiting someone in prison is fraught with bureaucratic challenges. Incarcerated people are largely invisible to most of us.

Our students are fully aware that their education is the product of not only their own hard work, but the prayers and financial contributions of many people. And they are grateful. One student encouraged me to share the following tribute he titled “Donations, More Than Money.”

Greetings Donors,

It is my goal in composing this letter to enlighten you on what your donations provide for students in the Hope-Western Prison Education Program.

On may 9, 2023 around 12:45 PM during the HWPEP Donor Event, a prison official looked me sternly in the eye and motioned for me to come to him. Initially I thought to myself, “What did I do?” As I moved gingerly toward him, he asked me if I would take a group of HWPEP supporters on a tour of the school building. With a sigh of relief and a smile plastered across my face I replied “Absolutely.”

As the four of us — accompanied by one staff member — strolled through different spaces of the school building where HWPEP classes occur, questions, comments, and responses began to soar in the air like paper spitballs inside a grade school classroom. Impressed by the interaction and quality questions from donors, I thought to myself: “These people are really into this program.”

Now allow me to articulate what your donations exemplify. They are like organ donors who risk their lives to save another’s. Submitting to the incisions of scalpels in the hands of doctors, organ donors are opened up in order to have a piece of themselves removed and transferred to someone else. In like manner, you opened up yourselves, allowing compassion to be transferred, consideration removed from your minds, and charity given from your hearts for the noble purpose of transplanting the vital organ of education into the minds, hearts, and lives of men in the Hope-Western Prison Education Program.

It has been said that an aim for education is to awaken the best part of a person’s soul (Plato, Republic). Whenever you make a donation to HWPEP, the highest return on your investment is a soul that has been awakened to the best part of itself. Speaking from personal experience, this awakening not only impacts the soul of the student, but it ripples out, impacting the lives of prison staff, cellmates, family, and friends you may never meet. Students at HWPEP are inspired by your generosity, and determined to succeed not only as students, but as members of humanity equipped to make lasting change.

In one HWPEP course, students were exposed to the following thought: “The guarantee in life is that we are going to suffer. What is not guaranteed is how we will respond, whether we let this suffering embitter or ennoble us. This is our choice.” Your contributions to HWPEP expose students to such noteworthy thoughts that empower them to know they are not helpless nor inadequate when it comes to how they respond to various situations in their lives.

In closing, students at HWPEP are inspired by your generosity and determined to succeed not only as students, but as members of humanity equipped to make lasting change.

Small vs Big

The Hope-Western Prison Education Program has made terrific strides since launching the degree-granting phase of the program in August 2021. The program’s first two cohorts are succeeding marvelously as college students. Prospective students for the Third Cohort are now applying to begin their college education in July. We’re very well begun in reaching our goal of four cohorts comprising a total of 80 students.

Eighty students? That’s not very many, you may think. If the transformative power of the combined energies of Hope College and Western Theological Seminary are good for 80 students, why not for 160 students? Why not for 300? Or 1,000?

When it comes to good things, it seems that we’re all from Texas. Big is best. Big houses, big meals, big plans, big big big big. We scoff at small things, small thinking. Small is presumed to be insufficiently visionary and therefore pedestrian and common. Small things are a dime a dozen, we think. Meh.

But what if education — especially education in prison — is different? What if all education is formation, and formation is best accomplished through personal relationships? What if people who have been dehumanized for most of their lives need both the information provided by a college education and the formation provided by professors who — unlike most outsiders who come into the prison — keep coming back? Keep pouring into them. Keep showing them a better way for their lives. Keep pointing them toward something higher. Something better. If a college education in prison requires a face-to-face encounter with people who can model what human flourishing looks like, then smaller is better. In a counterintuitive way, small scales.

While the Hope-Western Prison Education Program understands itself, its students, and its context well enough to plan for targeted, limited growth, there are ways in which we advocate for scaling up and going bigger:

HWPEP students are agents of scale in spreading their personal transformations throughout the 1,200-person prison in which they reside. They are models for other incarcerated peers. And our focus on admitting people with long, indeterminate, or life sentences creates the possibility of scaling because these are the people who will remain in prison to do the modeling. The power of modeling scales.
Institutions who do their best work when they emphasize the formative power of education can help scale by partnering together to encourage and model what’s best in college-in-prison. That’s why HWPEP has been working with eight other Michigan colleges and universities who offer or plan to offer degrees in Michigan prisons to form the Michigan Consortium for Higher Education. MiCHEP can bring scale to the idea that educating incarcerated people makes sense for them, their families, their communities, the corrections community, and the state. The power of partnership scales.
Governments can help scale the good news of college-in-prison through commonsense public policy. The Federal government’s FAFSA Simplification Act, which restores access to Pell Grants for people in prison, will make it possible for thousands to access higher education. HWPEP is very pleased with our progress in moving toward the day when Pell Grants will cover the lion’s share of the cost of our students’ education, leaving our fundraising for closing the gap and providing the co-curricular opportunities that will move their educational experiences closer to what happens on the Holland campus. The power of public policy oriented toward the common good scales.

Is the Hope-Western Prison Education Program big or small? Perhaps it’s a small program built on a big idea. Perhaps it’s a small program that scales big. Really big.

Bruised Reeds, Smoldering Wicks

The Hope-Western Prison Education Program’s fall semester just concluded. Our 23 students are taking a well-deserved break from their studies, though the Cohort 1 fellows all promised to practice their Hebrew so they didn’t begin Hebrew II in January rusty from disuse.

Do you know what יוֹנָה means? Thanks to professors Travis West, Pam Bush, and Miranda Craig our Cohort 1 students know what it means, and much, much more.

The end of one semester signals a time of preparation for the next. We recently engaged in a three-day orientation for spring and summer professors. Among the topics covered included a new emphasis on trauma, how it is experienced by people in various circumstances, and how it is commonly manifested by incarcerated people. We want our professors to teach and our students to learn with a trauma-informed and resilience-focussed mindset.

“The experience of trauma among people involved with the criminal justice system is so prevalent that it is now considered a universal experience.”
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration

People who teach in prison are reminded daily that their students have been subjected to a host of traumatic experiences throughout their lives. But we can also see wonderful transformations in these men — transformations that demonstrate their ability to become more resilient people — even in the face of the steady drip of traumatizing experiences that characterize life in prison.

What does any of this have to do with the conclusion of the Advent season and the incarnation of the Lord? During Advent Isaiah reminds us that A bruised reed He will not break and a smoldering wick He will not extinguish; He will faithfully bring forth justice (IS 42:3). A bruised reed. A smoldering wick.

Who are the bruised reeds and smoldering wicks among us?

The poor. Poverty is a leading source of trauma.

The neglected. Neglect is a strong predictor of criminal behavior.

The refugee. Leaving behind everything you know is traumatizing.

The abused. Most incarcerated people have been abused.

It’s comfortable, reassuring, and hopeful to remember Christ as a child in a peaceful manger scene on a star-filled night with hosanna-ing angels. But as we do so, let us also remember that Jesus’ life and the lives of our students aren’t so dissimilar.

Jesus was born in a barn without the material goods we’re accustomed to. Our students are impoverished.

Jesus was an outcast, abandoned by his friends in his time of greatest need. Our students are cut off from the world.

Jesus was a refugee, forced to flee his country to save his life. Modern refugees are regularly and systematically incarcerated.

Jesus was beaten, spit upon, stripped, and then murdered. Our students bear the physical scars of terrible wounds.

Our students are bruised reeds and smoldering wicks. But they are learning to become resilient. They are slowly but surely being re-incarnated as New Creatures.

Please pray for them this Christmas.

Membership

I’ve sometimes wondered why the incarcerated students of the Hope-Western Prison Education Program are so remarkably committed to their college studies. Anyone who has ever spoken with them can’t help but come away from the conversation deeply impressed by their passion for learning. This overwhelming sense of enthusiasm is perhaps most acutely felt by their professors, who are commonly changed in fundamental, surprising ways by the experience.

Perhaps HWPEP students are simply older and more mature than traditional students. People in the forties and fifties have a greater trove of experiences that help them put their life circumstances into perspective than the average 18-22 year-old college student does. Perhaps older, incarcerated students see the value in their college education in ways that traditional college students will eventually recognize, but not just yet.

Or it could be that HWPEP students experience a newfound sense of self-efficacy as a result of their college-going. For many, their lives have been like arid deserts — places where truth, beauty, and goodness are not completely absent, but can be harder to find. Maybe learning that they are good at something that is true, good, and beautiful is why they blossom with such fecundity.

But increasingly I wonder if their enthusiasm — their joy — is based on something else — a sense of belonging. A sense of membership. Many HWPEP students have lived the better part of their lives without a well-formed vision of the future — educational or otherwise. College has been, at best, a hazy, dimly understood theory outside their experience or that of their families. To quote Kant, “Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.” The crooked timber of HWPEP students is straightening, and beautifully. Kant would be impressed.

In his wonderful Port William stories Wendell Berry describes those living and working and dying among the Kentucky hills hard by the Ohio River as a “membership.” He crafts their lives in ways that gives us the impression that the people of that membership belong to each other. And it is in that belonging that they find and embody love — of each other and themselves.

“We are members of each other…The difference ain’t in who is a member and who is not, but in who knows it and who don’t.”
Burley Coulter – The Wild Birds

As Reinhold Niebuhr reminds us “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.” And love is discovered by membership.

As we continue through the early years of the Hope-Western Prison Education Program we give thanks for the membership it offers for our students. And for the marvelous ways that membership is making all the difference in their lives — for now and for eternity.

Why did Johnny Cash perform in prisons?

During his August 2022 installation Mass as bishop of Winona-Rochester, MN, Bishop Robert Barron made reference to an interview with Johnny Cash, during which he was asked why he performed in prisons. Cash responded by citing two reasons. First, he said, in prisoners he found his most enthusiastic audiences. Second, he was a Christian.

Johnny Cash at Folsom State Prison ((Jim Marshall/Jim Marshall Photography LLC /Reel Art Press)

Why do professors at Hope College and Western Theological Seminary teach college courses to men at Muskegon Correctional Facility? In part, it’s because the students of the Hope-Western Prison Education Program are a VERY enthusiastic audience. While our regard for our students on our main campus in Holland is nearly boundless, our incarcerated HWPEP students in Muskegon are incredibly dedicated to their intellectual, social, and spiritual formation. While HWPEP is as rigorous as the B.A. degree program on the main campus, we have to be careful about how much work we assign our incarcerated students, for whatever we assign will be diligently and faithfully engaged. By each student. Every time.

Why do professors at Hope College and Western Theological Seminary teach college courses to men at Muskegon Correctional Facility? In part, it’s because we’re Christians. Teaching our students there requires that we visit them there. And visiting the imprisoned is Good News — for them and for us.

Why do we teach in prison? Just ask Johnny Cash.

Johnny Cash performs at San Quentin Prison

Stand and Deliver

Early next month I’ll begin teaching a new course to the combined first and second cohorts of Hope-Western Prison Education Program students at Muskegon Correctional Facility. The first cohort students are evolving into fine college students — their mean GPA is 3.77 — but for the second cohort students this will be their first college course. For many of them, this will be the first formal education they’ve experienced in years, or even decades. For them, this will be a big moment.

And while I’ve been recruiting, orienting, and encouraging other professors in their teaching in the prison for HWPEP, this will be my first experience teaching incarcerated students. What has been theoretical is now about to become concrete and tangible. This will be a big moment for me as well.

*Some of the reading for First-Year Seminar*

The course is First-Year Seminar: Integrating Faith, Leadership, and Service. Funded by a grant from NetVUE, First-Year Seminar will eventually be paired with a Senior Seminar taken in the students’ last year in college. These courses serve as “bookends” to help students understand college ways of learning and knowing, what it means to be called to a vocation, and how human beings understand truth through the lens of worldview. HWPEP students will wrestle with the following questions in their First-Year Seminar:

What is faith?
What is leadership?
What is service?
How can I succeed in college?
What is research, and how can I engage in it?
What is my vocation? To what am I called?

Students will read and write every day for two months. They will develop a service project proposal with other members of their class. They will engage in daily discussions in a seminar style. They — and I — will have to stand and deliver, together.

Pray for us.

Welcome Amy Piescer

Please join the students, faculty, and staff of the Hope-Western Prison Education Program in welcoming Amy Piescer, who began work last week as HWPEP’s first Operations Coordinator.

Raised in Japan, Amy recently graduated with a Bachelor’s in Social Work and a major in Psychology from Calvin University, where she interned with the Calvin Prison Initiative (CPI). This experience provided a broad picture of the work that goes into a higher education program in prison. She also assisted in facilitating the first inside-out class in the history of the program. Ten students from the Calvin Knollcrest campus went to the Richard A. Handlon Correctional Facility once a week to participate in a class with the CPI students. Amy helped plan CPI’s long-awaited graduation that took place on Monday, May 9th, 2022, when the cohorts of 2020, 2021, and 2022 were honored.

“When I first heard about the Hope-Western Prison Education Program, I was thrilled to see another pair of partnering institutions that believed in the power of education enough to transform the lives of individuals who are incarcerated,” Amy remarked during her interview.

As the Operations Coordinator for HWPEP, Amy will support student success by managing the admissions process and working with instructional staff for the program. She will maintain regular communication with the staff at Muskegon Correctional Facility and plan annual events such as commencement, tours, and events for family and friends. She will also manage the HWPEP office and work with both Hope College and Western Theological Seminary in marketing and external communications for the program.

Welcome Amy!

New Creations

On this Saturday morning before Easter I stare out of my window at the weak Eastern light that begins to illumine the world and give thanks for the impending joy of new creation which is — even now — rising and about to be revealed. The scriptures for the Easter Vigil which will conclude this day speak of new creation made possible by yesterday’s Great Sacrifice. For 40 days we have been unable to whisper “alleluia” but tonight it will fill our mouths leaving room for little else. New creation is coming, and soon.

And so it is for the students of the Hope-Western Prison Education Program. They too are becoming New Creations. Education is changing them. Once thought beyond redemption, through the power of the Holy Spirit their professors are infusing them with hope and a vision of the future where good things are possible. After a lifetime of serial silences they are becoming full-throated alleluias. New creations.

The Wisdom of 3000 Years

Libraries are repositories of all that is known and has been known for 3,000 years. They are places — physical structures — containing the written words of millenia. But they are also programs dedicated to connecting those words with eager learners. How do the eager learners of the Hope-Western Prison Education Program incarcerated in Muskegon Correctional Facility gain access to this trove? Here’s how:

Gather a wonderful team of Van Wylen and Cook library professionals — professionals dedicated to the proposition that libraries should “Offer a welcoming and inclusive environment that affirms the dignity of all persons as bearers of God’s image and where the full humanity of all may flourish.”
Creatively discern how to upload the Hope College and Western Theological Seminary libraries’ catalogs of more than 500,000 books and 50,000 journals onto two dedicated laptops.
Teach students how to conduct research by familiarizing them with information literacy concepts like accessing, evaluation, and use of information.
Develop a fulfillment system that allows HWPEP students to search for library materials, write their requests on a form delivered to Van Wylen Library by their professors, and deliver books to the prison for the students’ use in their courses.

Delivering the wisdom of 3,000 years to incarcerated students? No problem.

(Photo by Giammarco on Unsplash)

Remarkable Stories From B-104

re·mark·a·ble
/rəˈmärkəb(ə)l/
(adjective) worthy of attention; striking.

Room B-104 is located in Muskegon Correctional Facility’s school building. It is the home of the Hope-Western Prison Education Program.

Remarkable things happen there.

Technically this column should be retitled “Remarkable Stories from LTA 1 and 2.” Prison officials reassigned the Hope-Western Prison Education Program to new digs at Muskegon Correctional Facility. New rooms, same remarkable stories…

During the Summer II 2022 academic term the Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 students have been learning, studying, discussing, writing, and growing together for the past month as they engage their First Year Seminar course. Their engagement with authors such as Martin Luther King Jr, Samuel Wells, James Davidson Hunter, Parker Palmer, and the biblical authors of 1 Samuel and Jeremiah are helping form their imaginations for how faith, leadership, and service intersect. Having engaged this intersection, what do they have to say about their college education? Here are a few excerpts from a recent writing assignment:

There are times when I feel overwhelmed and stressed out, but I believe my experiences are an investment in my future!

This has been a life-changing event in my life. It has had its challenges but I am so grateful for this opportunity. It is my hope that all men who get this opportunity will give their all to this exciting journey.

My college education has meant to me that I am worthy. It has meant that I can be productive in an environment that by its very design is intended to produce failure. My college education has freed my mind in ways I could never have imagined.

Hope College and Western Theological Seminary have changed my perspective, expectations, and my life. The professors have exposed me to a lot of thought-provoking information that has broken the levy of locked potential within me. I am experiencing the best time of my life.

Remarkable.

On Wednesday, January 12 the Hope College men’s basketball team defeated arch-rival Calvin University, 78-65. The next morning we walked into B-104 at Muskegon Correctional Facility for the first day of English 113: Expository Writing. How were we greeted by 12 incarcerated men?

Hey! We won last night!

Just another day of Hope students supporting their college.

Remarkable.

On Wednesday, September 22, 2021 Hope-Western Prison Education professors and teaching assistants re-entered Muskegon Correctional Facility for the first time in nearly two years. Our team walked across the prison yard, entered the school building, made its way down the hallway, and crossed the threshold of Room B-104 to the enthusiastic – even joyful – exclamations of the HWPEP students. Handshakes and warm greetings were shared all around. It felt like a family reunion.

Our assignments kept us going through COVID. HWPEP is like a purifying fire.
HWPEP student

The two-hour session began with a worship service organized by WTS student Miranda Craig. Professor Pam Bush taught the students a short prayer of praise and thanksgiving in sung Hebrew. And then each student reflected on how his learning has been impacted by the pandemic, and how he was feeling about beginning the journey toward his Bachelor’s degree. Here is a sampling of what the students had to say:

The clear bookbag you gave us is like carrying the Olympic torch!
When I saw the news that the program was approved I thought “All is right is with the world. Let’s go!”
Six months ago I didn’t know where my life was or where it was going. Now I’m invigorated.
I can’t wait to call my mother to tell her I learned how to pray in Hebrew.
It feels good to be loved. I’m so happy you’re back.
We’re trailblazers. We’re all involved in serving our community in some way. We’re plowing the field. We’re all supporting each other and pulling each other along.
Our assignments kept us going through COVID. HWPEP is like a purifying fire.

Remarkable.

___________________________________________________________

During the summer of 2021 the COVID pandemic forced the Michigan Department of Corrections to close prisons to visitors, volunteers, and everyone else who did not absolutely have to come to the prison. This forced the HWPEP leadership to get creative with ways to keep its students intellectually engaged (to say nothing of spiritually encouraged). We settled on the idea of a book club. We sent each student two books with instructions for how to organize and run a book discussion.

We also asked the students to send us feedback on each book and the process they engaged in thinking together about the texts. We received many inspired and inspiring reports. Here’s an example:

“Many of us [in the HWPEP] are searching for our own kind of freedom. Some of us may never again step foot outside a prison setting. Yet, we have all still made the choice to act on our hopes and dreams, wherever this journey leads us. And for me, that’s a special kind of freedom – the ability and willingness to choose something other than the life I’ve known.”

Remarkable.

—————————————————————————————-

Asked for his impressions about tackling Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in only one week, a student responded “I didn’t understand it at all the first time I read it. The second time was equally difficult. I mean, it was like reading a foreign language. The third time I began to see some of the elements of Aristotle’s philosophy beginning to gel. Now that I’ve read it four times I can see how his ideas connect to Augustine, Aquinas, and Plato.”

All of his classmates nodded in agreement, as if they too had read Aristotle four times in one week.

Remarkable.