Please consider a gift to support our work. The Hope-Western Prison Education Program’s fundraising goal for 2022 is $200,000. Gifts made this year will be matched up to $100,000. All gifts help offset costs for professor and teaching assistant stipends, travel to and from Muskegon Correctional Facility, textbook and computer purchases, school supplies, and student and …
Author Archives: Richard Ray
Why Teach in Prison?
We surveyed the Hope and WTS faculty during the planning phase of the Hope-Western Prison Education Program. One hundred seventy-two faculty responded to the survey. Of the 147 that completed the survey, 61 (42%) of you responded affirmatively when asked if you would be interested in teaching in the program. Forty of you (27%) indicated …
Why Go To College In Prison?
The question may seem silly to those of us for whom a college education was always part of our natural path to full adulthood. But many incarcerated people come from backgrounds of poverty, violence, and trauma. The kind of future-oriented imaginations that most of our traditional students grow up with are foreign to people whose …
The Prisoner’s Mite
The parable of the widow’s mite (Luke 21:1-4) is familiar to many. An impoverished widow contributes two small coins as an offering to the temple coffers. These coins represent a huge sacrifice for her. We can imagine her praying “Take all that I have, Lord, for all I have is yours.” The Hope-Western Prison Education …
Why Visit The Prisoner?
(And what to bring when you do) On Good Friday we read in Isaiah: He was spurned and avoided by people,a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity,one of those from whom people hide their faces,spurned, and we held him in no esteem… Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away, and who would have thought any …
If You Were In Prison, What Would You Want To Read This Summer?
One of our goals during Covidtime is to send learning materials and assignments to our Hope-Western Prison Education Program students at Muskegon Correctional Facility. We hope to maintain a learning community and develop habits of continuing intellectual engagement. Keeping in touch with these students in this way is especially important while we aren’t allowed to …
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Art on the Inside
There is more creative spirit and talent among incarcerated people than you might think. Check out the special exhibition of artworks by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated artists at MoMA PS1 in New York. Concluding April 4, the exhibition can be viewed virtually through the Bloomberg Connects app. Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration is …
What’s Happening With The Prison Program?
It’s been a year since COVID forced us to end face-to-face instruction in Curtis Gruenler and Dennis Feaster’s Life Together: An Interdisciplinary Study of Community and Friendship course at Muskegon Correctional Facility. Since that time so much has happened, but quite a bit hasn’t happened as well. Many have asked us “What’s the latest with …
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Welcome
The Hope-Western Prison Education Program provides a Christian liberal arts education to incarcerated students at Muskegon Correctional Facility. HWPEP is a partnership between Hope College, Western Theological Seminary, and the Michigan Department of Corrections. The Hope-Western Prison Education Program Seeks To: Extend the Hope College and Western Theological Seminary missions to those living in incarcerated …