Four years after Northwestern University admitted its inaugural cohort of students through the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP), Northwestern Provost Erik Luijten conferred bachelor’s degrees to 18 women at the Kewanee Life Skills Re-Entry Center, an Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) prison facility located approximately 130 miles southwest of the university’s campus in Evanston.
“At Northwestern, we believe in transformation,” said Provost Luijten in his address to the graduating class. “In fact, one of our guiding principles is ‘We transform society.’ And that’s not an easy thing to do. All of our graduates here today can attest to the hard work it takes to make a positive change.”
Since 2018, NPEP has partnered with Oakton College and IDOC to deliver credit-bearing courses to incarcerated students. The university admitted the inaugural class of 20 students in 2022 and has since graduated two cohorts of men. Currently, the program serves 68 students across Sheridan Correctional Center, a multi-level security state prison for men, and Logan Correctional Center, a multi-level security state facility for women.
“Today we celebrate our historic first. We are Northwestern University’s first women’s prison education cohort to graduate with bachelor’s degrees from a top 10 university,” said graduate Maria Garza, who returned for the celebration after she was released from prison in 2021. “I stand here, back inside [this] facility, not as an incarcerated woman, but as a Northwestern graduate, as an executive director and as an advocate for criminal justice reform alongside the women in the community who shared this journey with me.”