Twelve graduates walked across the stage at Stafford Creek Corrections Center this summer, with another two graduates receiving their degrees in absentia, marking a milestone years in the making for the Evergreen’s Prison Education Program (EPEP).
For the graduates, the ceremony represented years of study, discussion, writing and intellectual work. For the faculty, staff and partners who helped build the program, it was also a moment to reflect on how far EPEP has come, from an ambitious idea about expanding access to higher education to a degree-granting program with its first class of Evergreen alumni.
“Graduation was a wonderful moment to reflect on the years of hard work invested to make the bachelor's degree program a reality,” said Kelli Bush, EPEP Co-Director. “There were many points along the way, from dream to degree, where the vision could have faded.”
Instead, Bush said, people continued stepping forward to make the program possible.
“At each step, there have been hard challenges, but also champions stepping forward at key moments to support access to education,” she said. “So many people have contributed to make graduation day a reality.”
The first commencement came during a significant summer for the program, which launched in January of 2024. Along with celebrating its first graduating class, EPEP earned official accreditation from the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities after a rigorous institutional review.
The milestone adds another layer of significance to a commencement that Evergreen President John Carmichael said demonstrated both what the graduates had accomplished and what can happen when colleges expand access to education.
“What I saw at Stafford Creek was a group of scholars who challenged themselves, learned from one another and earned their place among Evergreen's graduates,” Carmichael said. “Their achievement is also a reminder of what higher education can make possible when we bring opportunity to students rather than ask every student to come to us. I am proud to call these graduates Evergreen alumni.”
EPEP brings Evergreen's interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning into Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen. While the setting is different from Evergreen's Olympia and Tacoma campuses, the faculty teaching team report that the education itself reflects some of the most fundamental elements of the college's academic model.
Students read, write and engage deeply with complex questions. They learn alongside classmates with different experiences and perspectives, and faculty approach the classroom with the recognition that students arrive with knowledge and experiences of their own.
That learning community took years to build.
Creating a bachelor's degree program inside a correctional facility requires more than developing a curriculum. It means building partnerships with the community colleges that provide the first 2 years of post-secondary education for many EPEP students (all of whom start with at least 90 credits towards their BA), securing approvals for supplies and equipment, recruiting and training faculty and staff, coordinating with the Washington State Department of Corrections and creating the infrastructure necessary for students to participate fully in a college education.
EPEP Co-Director and faculty member Eirik Steinhoff, who has spent years helping develop Evergreen's prison education work, describes that process as a succession of marathons: reaching one long-sought milestone only to find another starting line waiting.
This summer offers a good illustration.
EPEP has reached a significant point in its accreditation work. It has graduated its first 14 scholars. And more than 20 new students are expected to enter the program this fall, with just as many expected to continue.
At the same time, the work required to sustain EPEP continues, including hiring, coordination with the Department of Corrections, adhering to federal Pell Grant requirements, fundraising and the everyday work of providing a rigorous college education within a correctional institution.
For all the institutional significance surrounding the ceremony, however, the center of the day was the 14 graduates themselves.
“You’ve transformed yourselves, you’ve transformed each other, and you have transformed your environment: that is to say you have contributed positive change to the many social, cultural, and natural ecosystems that you find yourself a part of,” Steinhoff said at the ceremony, speaking directly to the graduates. “The aim of education is to prepare you to continue to learn and grow. The biggest obstacle to learning is the idea that it stops when you leave school. We can’t wait to hear what you do next.”
Their commencement represented something that had not existed before at Stafford Creek: a group of students who had completed Evergreen's bachelor's degree program and could leave the ceremony as college graduates and Evergreen alumni.
The first graduating class also changes what is possible for the students who come next.
For the more than 40 students joining or continuing with EPEP this fall, they will start the school year in a program that now has something its first students did not have when they began: graduates who have already completed the journey.
Prison education is often discussed through measurements such as recidivism, employment and public costs. Those measures can be important, but they capture only part of what happens in a college classroom.
Education also happens on a much more personal scale, like when students encounter an idea that changes their perspective, struggle through a difficult piece of writing, reconsider an assumption or discover connections among subjects that previously seemed unrelated.
It happens when people are given the opportunity to see themselves, and to be seen by others, as students and scholars.
“Research shows that when a state spends money on prison education, it saves much more money in the long run. We’ve known that for a long time,” President Carmichael said. “Seeing the graduation celebration at Stafford Creek showed me what’s behind the data. It’s education changing the trajectory for whole families.”
That idea is deeply connected to Evergreen's educational model. Students aren't treated as empty vessels waiting to receive information. They bring histories, experiences, knowledge and questions into the classroom and put those experiences into conversation with new people and perspectives.
Bush describes what students and faculty experience through EPEP as having “ripple effects” moving through relationships, communities and the lives of the people participating in the program.
“I feel deep gratitude for the students and the numerous faculty, staff, leadership and partners who invested time and care into this program,” Bush said. “We are excited for the future of this program and the ways it will continue to grow and thrive.”
This summer, Evergreen got its first glimpse of what that future can look like.
Fourteen students crossed the stage at Stafford Creek as members of EPEP's first graduating class.
This fall, another group will begin.
And for the first time, they'll begin knowing that the students who came before them made it all the way from their most challenging moments to an Evergreen degree.