Correctional Educational Program

The Correctional Education Program was established through UNC Asheville’s Division of Continuing Education and Distance Learning in 1998, after its director, Elaine Fox, was contacted by UNC Chapel Hill about providing the program in the Western North Carolina region. One of about eight higher education institutions in the state to offer Correctional Education Program courses, UNC Asheville sends faculty members to four facilities—Avery-Mitchell and Mountain View correctional institutions in Spruce Pine, and Foothills and Western correctional centers in Morganton. The federally funded program allows inmates to earn college credits and begin building a transcript, and to date 2006 inmates have taken classes. Current regulations require that students must be 35 or younger, within seven years of release, have a high school diploma or a minimum GED score, a 10th-grade reading level, and they must not have committed such crimes as murder or rape.

Fox works with correctional facilities on delivery of the courses. She conducts an orientation for faculty and initially accompanies them to the facility. Faculty arrive for classes with  books, handouts and syllabuses to teach subjects such as sociology, psychology, math, Spanish, art, drama, literature and language. Current courses include Introduction to Meteorology, Public Speaking, Racial and Ethnic Relations as well as five others. Upon successful completion, inmates receive a certificate showing the course name, when they took it, and credit earned.

The program’s goal is to aid inmates in transforming their lives and rebuilding their self-esteem. “We succeed in reaching many students, although I would consider it a success if we reached one,” says Volker Frank, chair of the Sociology Department, who has taught in the program since its inception. “We reach them and connect with them, and they realize society has not given up on them. They need to know that not everyone has written them off. I am proud UNC Asheville is giving them a chance to move on with their lives.”

Fox says, “If we believe in liberal arts and liberating mind and spirit, then what better institution is there to do this than UNC Asheville?”