Teaching Neuroscience In Prison

Teaching Neuroscience in Prison

Two Cornell instructors brought their college course to the inmates at the Auburn Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in upstate New York. They were accustomed to pre-med types; they found philosophers.

Sam Doernberg and Joe Dipietro | April 10, 2016

It’s the first day of class, and we—a couple of instructors from Cornell—sit around a table with a few of our students as the rest trickle in. Anderson, one of the students seated across from us, smiles and says, “I’m going to get an A+ in your class.” “No,” VanAntwerp retorts, “I’m getting the A+.”
You might think that this scene is typical of classes at a school like Cornell University, where driven students compete for top marks. But this didn’t happen on a college campus: It took place in a maximum-security prison.

For her work with teaching in Phillips State Prison and co-founding the Georgia State Prison Initiative, Sarah Higinbotham was awarded the 2011 GSU President’s Award fro Community Service and Social Action for Outstanding Community Impact. (January 2011) Source: http://magazine.gsu.edu/article/literature-and-exile/

<more at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/teaching-neuroscience-in-prison/477642/; related links and articles: http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR266.html (Evaluating the Effectiveness of Correctional Education. A Meta-Analysis of Programs That Provide Education to Incarcerated Adults. Lois M. Davis, Robert Bozick, Jennifer L. Steele, Jessica Saunders, and Jeremy N. V. Miles. RAND Corporation, 2013) and http://magazine.gsu.edu/article/literature-and-exile/ (GSU doctoral student goes behind prison walls to teach the classics. January 2011)>