About the Program
The Evergreen Prison Education Program (EPEP) “clears away obstacles to learning” (WAC 174-121-010) by making Evergreen’s interdisciplinary BA degree available to scholars incarcerated in Washington State Corrections facilities. EPEP's theme-based, inquiry-driven cohort model of experiential learning is anchored in a rigorous and responsive curriculum focused on critical thinking, scholarly agency, and the co-creation of knowledge.
Program Curriculum
EPEP’s interdisciplinary curriculum is anchored in a required sequence of core courses complemented by a constellation of electives. The core sequence offers the learning community an immersive foundation in the liberal arts and sciences, while the electives make it possible to narrow the focus in response to emergent student interest and need. Samples of previous offerings include:
BA Seminar: Utopia
Previous offering sample
“Democracy is a method of doing the impossible.” — W.E.B. Du Bois
Using the practices of experiential learning, collaborative inquiry, and reflective writing, this team-taught interdisciplinary seminar will focus on utopias past, present, and future through the lenses of the Social Sciences, on the one hand, and the Humanities, on the other.
Research Lab
Previous offering sample
Research Lab features faculty instruction in a variety of tried-and-true research techniques, including those articulated in The Craft of Research by Wayne Booth, et al. This required course builds on the repertoire previously introduced in Learning Lab and Writing Lab and is coordinated with BA Seminar: Utopia.
Elective: Order & Chaos
Previous offering sample
Based on the book Chaos: Making a New Science by James Gleick, this intensive elective will give students an opportunity for hands-on experiential learning in both physics and mathematics combined with a focused introduction to the history of science.
Elective: Readings in the French Revolution
Previous offering sample
Students in this reading-intensive elective will study the social, political, gender, and intellectual trajectories of the French Revolution from 1789 through the Terror and the Napoleonic Empire. Case studies will include the Haitian Revolution as well as the context of the Enlightenment.
Student Testimonial
"In Teaching to Transgress, Bell Hooks said, 'The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created' (Hooks, 207). In my two-plus decades of incarceration, learning never felt like a 'paradise' but EPEP turned into a reprieve from my everyday life. Going to school felt like I was truly in a higher education setting. My freedom as a student, individual and member of community was never compromised by the razor-wired fences that surrounded me.
From the onset I learned that my voice, opinions and thoughts mattered. I was not an inmate being pushed through a degree factory. Instead, as a student in EPEP, who was becoming part of a community, learning how to learn, and read with a purpose. I stopped rushing through texts and instead, turned my readings into small intimate conversations with the author."
- Benjamin Brockie, Program Participant
Contact Us
Contact
Phone: (360) 742-9393
Email: epep@evergreen.edu
Address
SEM II E, 2nd floor
Olympia Campus
Mailstop SEM II A2117
Office & Hours
SEM II E2131
Tuesday - Thursday
8 am - 5 pm