As a faculty member whose research and teaching intersect with the legal system, I have always been interested in how to connect my professional work more directly with individuals impacted by the carceral system. This past Short Term was a perfect opportunity to take advantage of students’ flexible schedules and pursue a collaboration with the correctional system in Maine.

For my Short Term class, Morgan Kinney at the Harward Center helped me connect with Erika Grover, the Correctional Education Programs Coordinator at the Southern Maine Reentry Center (SMRC) in Windham.  The SMRC is a facility for women who have less than five years on their sentence. It is designed as a minimum-security/pre-release facility in which women prepare for their eventual release by attending educational programs, working outside the facility, and/or engaging in work training programs.

Thanks to the flexible schedule of Short Term, my students were able to set aside an entire Tuesday each week to present workshops on psychological science at the SMRC.  Because residents might have interest in multiple workshops, students designed 45-minute long workshops that were repeated four times throughout each of our visit days. For our first week of presentations, Bates students prepared workshops on social psychology, attention, feminist psychology, and the placebo effect. Each workshop contained descriptions of psychological research on the topic and at least one interactive component or opportunity for discussion. For example, the workshop on feminist psychology included opportunities for the residents to share examples of moments in which they felt silenced; in the workshop on social psychology, students conducted a classic demonstration of conformity. Finally, residents completed an anonymous survey to provide feedback and provide ideas for future workshop topics.  

One element of the workshops was inspired by early conversations with Erika Grover, the Correctional Education Programs Coordinator. In particular, she indicated that in preparation for release, residents needed to demonstrate how they spent their time at the SMRC.  Therefore, tangible evidence of participation in educational workshops would be valuable for the residents’ pre-release portfolios. In response to this input, students designed unique certificates of completion for each workshop. 

After the first set of workshops, we solicited input from residents about additional topics they would like to see in future workshops. Among the residents’ suggestions for topics, the most popular were: addiction, parenting, relationships, and the legal system.  Therefore, over the second week of class, students generated new 45-minute workshops on these requested topics, complete with new interactive activities, new certificates, and new research descriptions.  The most popular workshop topics were repeated during the final week of classes. 

Anonymous feedback from residents and Bates students indicated that both groups found the experience valuable.  Although it was somewhat challenging to develop rapport between the groups with such limited time together, both groups indicated that the workshop structure was worth pursuing in the future. The Short Term course was particularly impactful for the Bates students who had family members who were currently incarcerated or had been incarcerated. For one Bates student, their family members had benefitted from educational opportunities received while incarcerated; according to this student, the workshops were their opportunity to give back. 

Future collaborations between Bates and the legal system include the current semester’s partnership with the Reentry Sisters in which five formerly incarcerated students are enrolled in first-year seminars. Additionally, one student from the Short Term class worked over the summer to develop a book club with the women at the SMRC and Bates students, the first meeting of which will be at the end of September. We look forward to building on this momentum to strengthen the connections between Bates and students who have been impacted by the legal system.