The Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP) was established to provide college courses to people in prison in upstate New York, and to engage Cornell faculty and students with the vital issue of the country’s burgeoning incarceration population. In the mid-1990s when an act of Congress and subsequent state legislation caused the collapse of taxpayer-funded College programs in most state prisons – a move undertaken despite ample evidence that education reduces recidivism by more than 60% – a few faculty members, led by Professor Pete Wetherbee, undertook to offer a handful of classes on a volunteer basis in Auburn Correctional Facility. In 1999, Cornell enabled these college classes to be given for credit, charging neither tuition nor fees.
Before the Cornell Prison Education Program
Cornell at Auburn: An Experiment in Teaching and Learning (2008)
Pete Wetherbee, Professor Emeritus in English wrote about Cornell at Auburn before the Cornell Prison Education Program, describing prison teaching in the decades after Pell Grants were denied to prisoners.
Mary Fainsod Katzenstein (Government) joined the group in 2005 and initiated a search for funding of additional courses and a formalization of the program. Support was found in Cornell family/alumni, the Provost’s office, two Kaplan fellowships, and eventually a major grant from the Sunshine Lady Foundation. In 2010, the greatly expanded Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP) was born. Twelve courses began to be offered each semester. The classes were taught by volunteer faculty and graduate students, supported by undergraduate teaching assistants.
The Associate Degree Program
Cornell University began a partnership with Cayuga Community College to offer an Associate degree program for men incarcerated at Auburn Correctional Facility and Cayuga Correctional Facility. The largely liberal arts curriculum included courses on the natural sciences, humanities and social sciences.
A collection of Theatre courses led to the formation of Phoenix Players Theatre Group run by the men in the program with support from Bruce Levitt, Alison van Dyke, Judy Levitt. The program also began offering college preparatory courses for students not yet admitted to the credit-bearing college program.
A guest lecture series was launched at Auburn featuring prominent Cornell faculty and administrators in 2010. The series aimed to provide a more vibrant academic community within the prison by providing intellectual enrichment beyond the classroom. The series has included world renowned speakers representing disciplines and special topics unavailable in the curriculum.
First Commencement at Auburn Correctional Facility – June 5, 2012
The inaugural commencement saw the conferral of 16 Associate’s degrees from Cayuga Community College. Some of these students had been taking courses for almost a decade, with Cornell, before the partnership with SUNY allowed the program to launch a degree-granting program.
During 2013, Robert Scott took over as the program’s Executive Director, and the current CPEP staffing group began to take shape. An alumni group began to form to host fundraising events in New York City. In 2014, a gift from a wonderful alumnus allowed to the program to expand to Cayuga Correctional Facility, a medium security prison.
Second Commencement at Auburn Correctional Facility – December 10, 2014
The second commencement ceremony saw the conferral of 15 Associate’s degrees (two in absentia as a couple of students had transferred/paroled).
In 2015, a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation allowed the program to expand to Five Points Correctional Facility in the nearby town of Romulus. An Associate Director, and two coordinators were added to the staff. And a new partnership with the University of Rochester brought in additional faculty to the program.
Third Commencement at Auburn Correctional Facility – October 20, 2016
The third commencement ceremony at Auburn Correctional Facility saw the conferral of sixteen Associate’s degrees to successful candidates. As with all CPEP graduation ceremonies, the program included family and friends, pomp and circumstance, a graduation ceremony and a communal lunch afterwards.
In 2017, the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences voted to approve an offering of a Certificate in Liberal Arts to CPEP students involved in faculty-taught program consisting of five courses plus a research. Work was begun to establish a program at Elmira Correctional Facility, while funding was secured to build computer laboratories inside the prisons’ school buildings.
Fourth Commencement, at Five Points Correctional Facility – May 24, 2018
CPEP celebrated its first graduating class at Five Points Correctional Facility in 2018, two years after launching Cornell’s program there. Sixteen students qualified for the Associate in Arts degree from the State University of New York (SUNY), and nine students qualified for the Certificate in Liberal Arts offered through Cornell.
Fifth Commencement Ceremony at Auburn Correctional Facility, plus Graduates at Cayuga and Five Points – Spring 2019
This year, the momentum of college progress in our multi-facility program led to CPEP’s largest total number of incarcerated graduates for a single school year, with 12 at Auburn CF, 9 at Cayuga CF, and 2 at Five Points CF, for a total of 23 members of the CPEP Class of 2019. All received cap & gown ceremonies, as well as sponsored attendance for families and friends to celebrate the distinction.
We are also proud to extend our community of academic partnerships in 2019, now coordinating courses from both Ithaca College and Corning Community College at Elmira CF. The program now fully operates in all four prisons within a one-hour drive from Cornell’s main campus in Ithaca, NY.