Piedmont Virginia Community College is expanding its prison education program, thanks to a grant from the Mellon Foundation.
The Higher Education in Prison program serves approximately 120 incarcerated individuals each year across three correctional facilities and gives inmates a path to a different life when they are released.
The grant allows PVCC to strengthen its liberal arts education, offer additional student support and provide guidance and a toolkit for other institutions looking to develop or grow similar programs.
The Charlottesville-based community college became the first institution of higher education in Virginia to receive formal accreditation as a prison education program, or PEP, last August.
The program offers an Associate of Science degree in general studies to inmates at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women, Buckingham Correctional Center and Dillwyn Correctional Center. Classes include English composition, information literacy, humanities, life sciences, economics, business and math.
To date, more than 150 incarcerated students have completed the required 63 hours of instruction and earned associate degrees. Upon their release, the students will be prepared to transfer to a university to pursue a bachelor’s degree in the field of their choice.
The program at PVCC has supported incarcerated learners for nearly two decades.
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Crystal Graham
