
The Prison Education Initiative (PEI) brings Bennington College faculty to Great Meadow Correctional Facility, a maximum-security men's prison in Comstock, New York. The mission of PEI is threefold: 1) to provide a quality liberal arts undergraduate education to incarcerated students; 2) to support lifelong learning in men and women serving life sentences; 3) to foster transformative conversations around prison reform in America.



History
In April 2015, a panel of educators convened at Bennington to exchange ideas and practical advice around the topic of what liberal arts colleges can contribute to higher education in prisons, and what that contribution can mean for both the incarcerated and for the participating colleges. This convening led to the creation of the Prison Education Initiative (PEI) at Bennington College, which launched in fall 2015 at Great Meadow Correctional Facility in Comstock, New York.
Since PEI’s inception, more than 100 students at Great Meadow have taken courses in subjects that include literature, philosophy, social research, history of thought, architecture, political theory, social psychology, math, computer programming, Latin, and U.S. history.
Since 2020, PEI is also spearheading two initiatives aimed at providing educational opportunities to underserved prison populations. We are building out a more robust scholarly infrastructure to support continuing education among those serving life sentences (a group that comprises 15% of the prison population in America). In addition, we are also building out a new program of individualized tutoring to help bridge the gap between a GED and the expectations of a liberal arts classroom.

Partners
PEI is a member of the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison at Bard College, and is made possible through collaboration with the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision and Great Meadow Correctional Facility. The program is funded by Bennington College, the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, the Harry J. Brown Jr. Foundation, the William and Mary Greve Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education (through the Second Chance Pell program), and other foundations and private donors.
People
News
January 31, 2022 – Bennington College prison program awarded $60,000
October 1, 2021 – Think Tank on Continuing Education in Prisons
May 20, 2021 – Bennington College Awarded $10,000 Grant From The Jacob and Valeria Langeloth Foundation
February 24, 2021 – Prison Education Initiative Awarded $40,000 from Mother Cabrini Health Foundation
March 23, 2020 – Prison Education Initiative Awarded $50,000 from Ford Foundation
January 22, 2020 – Prison Education Initiative to Award Associate of Art Degree
April 6, 2018 – Computer Science and Prison Reform
June 19, 2017 – The Future of Higher Education in Prison
August 28, 2016 – Great Meadow Program is a Model for Inmate Education
August 21, 2016 – Books Behind Bars: Great Meadow Inmates See School as Second Chance
July 11, 2016 – Bennington Selected to Participate in the Department of Education's Second Chance Pell Pilot Program
December 4, 2015 – Bennington Gears up for its Prison Education Initiative
Courses Offered
Spring 2022
ARC 2165P: A Survey of Architectural Concepts
Farhad Mirza
CS 2002P: Python Programming
Amy Moore
HIS 2145P: Nat Turner’s Rebellion
Walker Mimms
LIT 2003P: Reading Moby Dick
Rebecca Boucher
LIT 2004P: The Irish Novel (1890-1990)
Annabel Davis-Goff
LIT 2005P: Orwell
Brooke Allen
LIT 2006P: Homer
Lisa Martin
LIT 4695P: Independent Study: Reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed in 2022
Annabel Davis-Goff
MAT 4290P: Trigonometry
Timothy Kane
PAI 2001P: Drawing
Farhad Mirza
POL 2265P: Global Environmental Politics
John Hultgren
Fall 2021
BIO 2001P: Evolution
Betsy Sherman
CS 2001P: Introduction to Computer Science
Amy Moore
HIS 2018P: The Black Jacobins: The Haitian Revolution in History and Memory
Walker Mimms
LIT 2059P: The Year of Lear
Annabel Davis-Goff
LIT 2060P: Vanity Fair
Annabel Davis-Goff
LIT 2555P: Art of the Essay
Rebecca Boucher
MAT 4001P: Calculus
Timothy Kane
PAI 2001P: Drawing
Farhad Mirza
Spring 2021
LIT 2057P: The Regional Novel
Annabel Davis-Goff
LIT 2058P: Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables: The Novel of a Century
Isabel Roche
LIT 4695P: Independent Studies: David Hume and Montesquieu
Brooke Allen
MAT 2000P: Basic Algebra
Timothy Kane
SCT2107P: Social Inquiry in an Age of Upheaval
David Bond
Fall 2020
ARC 2165P: A Survey of Architectural Concepts
Farhad Mirza
HIS 2407P: African-American History: The Founding Era, 1760-1810
Walker Mimms
LIT 2555P: The Art of the Essay
Matthew Groner
LIT 4331P: History of Thought - Books that Still Shape Our World
Brooke Allen
LIT 4523P: War and Peace
Annabel Davis-Goff
MAT 4363P: Pre-Calculus
Kathryn Schonbeck
Spring 2020
APA 2128P: Nature in the Americas
David Bond
LIT 2050P: The Masculine Voice
Annabel Davis-Goff
LIT 4321P: Aspects of the Novel
Annabel Davis-Goff
MAT 2004P: Trigonometry
Timothy Kane
PAI 2001P: Drawing
Farhad Mirza
SCT 2106P: Sociological Imagination
Debbie Warnock
Fall 2019
CS 2001P: Introduction to Computer Science
Andrew Cencini
LIT 2056P: Twentieth-Century American Literature, Part 2
Annabel Davis-Goff
HIS 2015P: History of Thought: The Enlightenment
Brooke Allen
HIS 4108P: History of Thought: Romanticism
Brooke Allen
MAT 2000P: Basic Algebra
Kathryn Schonbeck
Spring 2019
FLE 2001P: The Elements of Latin Grammar
Stephen Shapiro
LIT 2055P: Literature: Conrad and Nabokov
Annabel Davis-Goff
MAT 2003P: Patterns of Geometry
Timothy Kane
Fall 2018
HIS 2106P: History of Thought: The Renaissance
Brooke Allen
LIT 2054P: Twentieth Century American Literature
Annabel Davis-Goff
MAT 2002P: PreCalculus/Calculus
Katy Schonbeck
Spring 2018
LIT 2053P: Beautiful Lies
Annabel Davis-Goff
SCT 2105P: Introduction to Social Research
David Bond
MAT2001P: Introduction to Statistics
Tim Kane
Fall 2017
LIT 4320P: The Victorian Novel
Annabel Davis-Goff
MAT 2000P: Basic Algebra
Katy Schonbeck
PHI 2000P: History of Thought: The Enlightenment
Brooke Allen
Spring 2017
LIT 2052P: Literary Allusion
Annabel Davis-Goff
POL 2113P: Popular Rule and its Discontents
Crina Archer
SCT 2104P: The Atlantic World
David Bond
Fall 2016
LIT 2051P: Literary Narrative: Facets of the Prism
Annabel Davis-Goff
PSY 4205P: SHHH: The Social Construction of Silence
Ronald Cohen
Summer 2016
POL 2101P: Introduction to Political Theory
Crina Archer
Spring 2016
HIS 2105P: The Founding Documents of the United States of America
Elizabeth Coleman
LIT 2050P: The Masculine Voice
Annabel Davis-Goff
SCT 2105P: Introduction to Social Research
David Bond
Fall 2015
LIT/SCT 2001P: Language and Thinking
Annabel Davis-Goff and David Bond
Continuing Education
Preparing for our first college graduation in 2020, we realized about one-third of our students are serving life sentences. For these men, college courses had awakened a curiosity and they expressed a strong desire to continue their education beyond a degree. So we began to build-out novel opportunities to deepen engagements with the humanities for those serving life sentences. In workshops we hosted for prison educators from across the nation, we also realized how substantial this population might be—in American prisons, roughly one in seven inmates are serving life sentences. And yet nearly every prison education program is organized almost entirely around the granting of degrees, a worthy achievement that nonetheless all too often also marks the end of educational opportunities for American prisoners. Encouraged that we were on to something that might serve as a national model for rethinking the humanities in prisons, we began to build out our course offerings, library holdings, assessment metrics, and facility resources to better support the men in our program serving life sentences.