“Prison education is about hope for a better self and hope for a better life,” said Mary Ellen Mastrorilli, director of the BU MET Prison Education Program.

University News

BU Marks 50 Years of Changing Lives behind Bars

Prison Education Program feted at milestone anniversary event

Community organizer and poet Elizabeth Barker was an untenured instructor at Boston University in the early 1970s when she brought a group of BU students to the medium-security prison MCI Norfolk to compete against men who had created their own version of the popular College Bowl quiz show on radio and TV while incarcerated there.

The students lost, and “Ma” Barker, as she was known, became a vigorous champion of offering college courses behind prison walls. With the support of John Silber (Hon.’95), then BU’s president, the University offered the first courses at Norfolk in 1972.

“I go back into my old pictures and see her, and I literally start to cry,” said Sam Williams (MET’92,’13) last week at a celebration of the Boston University Metropolitan College Prison Education Program. Williams earned a Bachelor of Liberal Studies degree through the program while incarcerated at Norfolk. “She believed in us back then, when, at least for me, I didn’t believe in myself, and I couldn’t see what the future was going to look like.”

The celebration of 50 Years of Transformative Education featured speakers and a panel discussion on the future of prison education. More than 100 people attended the event at One Silber Way, which touted the 401 bachelor’s degrees, 28 master’s degrees, and 41 undergraduate certificates awarded since 1990. 

A panelist at the event, Williams also earned a master’s degree from MET and is now executive director of Concord Prison Outreach, a nonprofit organization devoted to transforming the lives of incarcerated people and their families through education, opportunity, and human connection.

“I would not be here if not for Ma Barker [and others] that came in and really cared about us, and saw some things in us that we couldn’t see in ourselves,” Williams said.

Barker died in 1989, but the program is still going strong. Each class meets once a week for three hours, and participants can take up to three classes a week, although the schedule can be altered by operational needs at the two facilities where it now operates, Norfolk and MCI Framingham, the state’s women’s prison.

“Prison education is about hope for a better self and hope for a better life,” said program director Mary Ellen Mastrorilli, a MET associate professor of the practice. “It’s about access to a human right, that human right being education. It’s about belief in the idea that transformation unlocks human potential.”

“Metropolitan College is the college of second and third chances, and if needed, more restarts. In that, it is a fitting place for a prison education program,” MET Dean Tanya Zlateva said at the event. “Statistics about the usefulness of education are plenty, unequivocal, and important. But I believe it is just as important for each of us as human beings to understand how difficult it is to rebuild a life after a grievous mistake.”

The program has recently added to its offerings a certificate in interdisciplinary studies to reach more potential students, who may be serving shorter sentences and find a certificate program more manageable. A few students are finishing up bachelor’s degrees, but the program has paused new admissions on that track to address curriculum changes needed to align with the University’s revised undergraduate general education degree requirements.

The corrections department now provides incarcerated students with Orijin educational tablets, although Wi-Fi access inside can be spotty, Mastrorilli says.

“Boston University has always been an institution that engages directly in the community and the world,” BU President ad interim Kenneth Freeman told last week’s gathering. “Since its inception, the Prison Education Program has transformed many lives, and the longevity of the program reflects the University’s values and our commitments. It’s also a testament to the desire of individuals who thirst for knowledge and renewal, despite the circumstance of incarceration and hardship.”

Keynote speaker knows the struggles

The event’s keynote speaker is not directly involved in the BU program, and in fact, arrived at the School of Public Health only last September. But Noel Vest, an SPH assistant professor of community health sciences, knows about the transformative power of this kind of program from experience.

“I just want to show this picture because this is the face of addiction,” Vest told the audience, as a seemingly happy snapshot of himself and his young daughter appeared on the big screen behind him. “This was me in the middle of a methamphetamine addiction, on my way to Disneyland.”

Vest described how he lost everything, including his family, to alcohol, drugs, and the crimes he eventually committed to feed his addiction. He was serving a seven-year stretch in a Nevada prison when he enrolled in a prison education program there that pulled him out of despair

“It changed my life,” Vest said. “It was transformative in a way that I still look back on with awe.”

As soon as he was released on parole, in 2009, he enrolled in community college, beginning a decade-plus of education that finally brought him to the SPH faculty. “I didn’t see a criminal history box on that college application,” Vest said. “It was a weight off my shoulders.”

“Ma” Barker and program instructors weren’t the only ones at BU vital to starting the program at Norfolk all those years ago. Several in attendance noted that Silber went to bat for the program both inside and outside the University.

“There were times when the administration that ran the prison was reluctant to let Ma Barker and some of the other teachers in,” said Haywood Fennell, Sr., a Roxbury playwright and author who took the classes at Norfolk when he was incarcerated (although he didn’t get a degree until the 1990s, attending UMass Boston). “They had this mindset that we’re not worthy of second opportunities. Somebody had to speak up, and John Silber, he came down and did that.”

The BU program has faced other challenges over the years, ranging from sometimes cumbersome security procedures to political opposition. Pell grants for the incarcerated were cut nationally in 1994 and not fully restored until last year.

Looking forward

As part of the event, Mastrorilli moderated a panel discussion that included Williams and two other program alums, Lynne Sullivan (MET’09,’21), valedictorian of the program’s class of 2009, now regional manager with the Petey Greene Program, which provides tutoring and college readiness programs for the incarcerated, and José Bou (MET’08,’15), a senior associate with the nonprofit Great Schools Partnership.

Why is prison education key? “I’m a prime example,” Sullivan told the audience. “Education gives you opportunities. It gives you options when you are released from the prison system. If you don’t have options, you are going to go down the same path. But when you open up somebody’s mind with education, they start to find out who they are and learn about what they can become.”

Joining them on the panel were Abraham Waya (STH’98), a MET lecturer and ordained minister, and Mary Haynes, manager of continuing education at the Massachusetts Department of Correction, which now works with several other schools in addition to BU.

“We have grown tremendously, and it really is due to people’s passion for the transformative nature of education,” Haynes said. “I think we have BU to thank for that, because they continued to push through some really tough times and sustained interest.”

“How successful we are in this endeavor is a measure of our humanity,” said Zlateva.