Cal State LA has been selected as a recipient of one of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ (AASCU) Excellence and Innovation Awards for its Prison Graduation Initiative (PGI), the first in-person bachelor’s degree completion program for incarcerated students in California and one of only five such programs in the CSU. The Excellence and Innovation Awards provide a means to celebrate and share successes, best practices, and innovations at AASCU institutions.
Cal State LA will be honored for winning the We the People Award: Excellence in Civic Learning and Community Engagement during the 2024 AASCU Summer Meeting for Academic and Student Affairs Leaders that will be held from July 16 to 19 in Denver, Colorado. The We the People Award recognizes institutions that demonstrate a strategic team commitment to prioritizing, institutionalizing, and advancing student civic learning and community engagement in regional, state, and national communities.
“We are pleased to receive this honor, which recognizes our efforts in preparing students to become agents of change within their communities while incarcerated, as well as upon their release from prison,” said Bidhan Roy, program manager for the Prison Graduation Initiative at Cal State LA.
The Prison Graduation Initiative at Cal State LA fosters individual and community transformation in California’s prisons through higher education. In 2016, the initiative was the first and only Bachelor of Arts program to be designated a Second Chance Pell federal program site in California, and it was the first bachelor’s degree program in California to award a B.A. degree to incarcerated students.
Since then, it has become one of the largest face-to-face bachelor’s degree prison programs in the country and has institutionalized community engagement into two B.A. programs: in Communication and Liberal Studies. All PGI students in the B.A programs at the California State Prison, Los Angeles County in Lancaster, California Institution for Women in Corona, and California Institution for Men in Chino are required to take at least one service-learning class as part of their roadmap to graduation.
“Community engagement offers our incarcerated students’ meaningful ways to engage with our campus and local communities through non-profits, like WordsUncaged, and embeds community-engaged restorative justice practices into the curriculums of our PGI students, as well as those on the main campus,” said Roy.
WordsUncaged provides platforms for incarcerated students to share their journeys of transformation with their families, the Cal State LA campus, and the broader Los Angeles community. WordsUncaged was originally founded by Professor Roy for men sentenced to life sentences in California prisons to dialogue and critically engage with the world beyond the prison walls.
AASCU is a Washington, D.C.-based higher education association of 350 public colleges, universities, and systems whose members share a learning- and teaching-centered culture, a historic commitment to underserved student populations, and a dedication to research and creativity that advances their regions’ economic progress and cultural development.
# # #
California State University, Los Angeles is the premier comprehensive public university in the heart of Los Angeles. Cal State LA is ranked number one in the United States for the upward mobility of its students. Cal State LA is dedicated to engagement, service, and the public good, offering nationally recognized programs in science, the arts, business, criminal justice, engineering, nursing, education, and the humanities. Founded in 1947, the University serves more than 26,000 students and has more than 250,000 distinguished alumni.
Cal State LA is home to the critically-acclaimed Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs, Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center, Hydrogen Research and Fueling Facility, Billie Jean King Sports Complex and the TV, Film and Media Center. For more information, visit www.CalStateLA.edu.
