Doctoral student launches WMU Higher Education for the Justice-Involved program

COLDWATER, Mich.—At Western Michigan University, Bronco pride runs deep. It is felt by students from vastly different backgrounds whose varying dreams and goals will launch them to a myriad of different futures, all united by the transformative power of the spirit of brown and gold. For Dale Brown, a doctoral student in Interdisciplinary Studies, the potential found in that kind of passion inspires a desire to bring a quality education to individuals incarcerated at Western’s newest branch campus, WMU-Coldwater, officially located inside the Lakeland Correctional Facility. 

Brown's commitment to the transformative power of higher education has driven the establishment, in August 2023, of a program that will provide incarcerated individuals the opportunity to pursue and obtain a Bachelor's degree from Western. Entitled Higher Education for the Justice-Involved (HEJI), the program spearheaded by Brown will require its students to complete at least 122 credits within five years in order to earn a degree from the College of Arts and Sciences through the Student Planned Major program.

“During the beginning of my academic journey, I always knew I wanted to aim for some sort of social good, especially in terms of expanding access to higher education,” says Brown. “So when I arrived here for graduate school in 2016, I started asking, how could we start doing something like this in prison?” 

The program is both inspired by and follows from Brown’s doctoral thesis, which focuses on the transformative and humanizing power of higher education for justice-involved people. In 2018, Brown partnered with the Michigan Department of Corrections and the Department of Philosophy to offer a pilot program that provided incarcerated students with the opportunity to study the humanities. Although that initial foray did not provide academic credit, the new HEJI  initiative, which now also includes a partnership with WMU’s Center for the Humanities, makes it possible for program participants to earn a college degree. 

“The goal of the program is to provide credit and credential conferring programming in the liberal arts to incarcerated people,” says Brown. “We took the syllabi from the courses that we taught on campus, and we just went and did it in prison and we thought, let's see what happens.”

Classes in a variety of disciplines are intended to give students a well-rounded opportunity to learn. Most courses fall within the scope of the humanities, including anthropology, literature, philosophy, education, classics, religion and sociology.  

“We're focused on classes with themes that say something about the complexity of being human,” says Brown. “That’s going to be a big part of the program. We are unapologetic in that the humanities and liberal arts are not a fancy addition to a college education: they're the foundation on which it stands.”  

The first cohort of 25 students comprises students of different ages, backgrounds and experiences, all eager to learn by coming together to educate themselves and one another. This, according to Brown, is one of the most important parts of the program. 

“These are folks who are extremely dedicated to improving themselves through higher education,” says Brown. “There’s this hunger for self improvement within the incarcerated population.” 

For Brown, one of the best parts of the experience is being present to see the students find pride in their academic institution. He highlighted the way his students’ eyes light up when they receive their Bronco-branded notebooks and pens, their excitement reminding him of the importance of higher education. 

Brown confesses that before embarking upon the HEJI project, “I never had much school spirit myself, I never understood it. But I saw them get excited about a folder, and I started to understand. That's the type of student we want, right? Incredibly proud to be a Bronco.”

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