Contacts: Rebecca Ginsburg, rginsbur@illinois.edu; info@educationjustice.net
Program Description: The Education Justice Project of the University of Illinois offers advanced undergraduate courses to qualified men incarcerated at Danville Correctional Center, a men’s medium-high security prison about forty miles from the Urbana-Champaign campus. EJP’s mission is to create a model university-in-prison program that demonstrates the transformative impacts of higher education upon incarcerated people, their families, the communities from which they come, and society as a whole. The Illinois Department of Corrections makes GED courses available at Danville and other state prisons. Danville Area Community College(DACC) have offered lower-division courses. The University of Illinois’s program picks up upon where DACC leaves off, offering upper-division courses to ones who seek to continue their education past the Associates’ level.
Degrees Offered: No degree offered as of now; Planning in the next few years to offer a BA degree to those who fulfill upper-division course requirements
Programs Offered: Each semester EJP offers upper-division for-credit courses. Class size is limited to 15 students. To enroll, students must have already earned 60 credit hours of lower-division academic credits. The project offers programs both at (“on-site”) and away from (“off-site”) Danville Correctional Center. On-site programs include courses, Resource Rooms, which function as library, computer lab, and tutoring center, computer labs, writing, math, and science workshops, speakers series, reading groups, etc. Classes are supported by tutoring in Resource Rooms.
Unique Features: N/A
Headquarters: Urbana, IL
Correctional Facilities Served: Danville Correctional Center
Population Served: Incarcerated men at Danville Correctional Center who have completed a minimum of 60 hours of coursework in the lower-level courses.
Number of Students: Approximately 80 per semester
Graduates to Date:N/A
Year Founded: 2006
Founders: A group of University of Illinois graduate students, faculty members, and community members dedicated to higher education in prison
College/University/Organization Partnerships: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Funding: Funding for EJP comes from the University of Illinois, foundations, and private donors.