A few dozen people gathered in a small room at Chillicothe Correctional Center in Livingston County last month. Blue, white and silver balloons floated alongside a blue backdrop covered in the logo of Kansas City's Rockhurst University.
Family, friends, coworkers and peers stood as the first notes of Edward Elgar's traditional graduation recessional "Pomp and Circumstance" filled the air. Rockhurst's President, a selection of professors and other administrators walked in, followed by 11 graduates in caps and gowns.
These graduates? They were the first class of inmates and staff at the women’s prison to receive their associate’s degree from Rockhurst.
The program is unique because it offers the same curriculum for free to both populations — and it has the potential to transform lives by expanding access to education to people who are often forgotten or left out.
Vermonn Roberts was one of the graduates. She’s been incarcerated for 21 years — since she was 18 years old — and she was selected as one of the student speakers.
“I am beyond grateful,” Roberts said in her speech. “By your generous efforts to afford us that ability to learn, you have given us restored self-worth, renewed safety and enlightened us with the ability to feel and breathe life again, which has increased our chance of success. Because of you, I am better equipped to move forward in my goal of seeking positive change for all.”
Roberts was one of the original 40 students that started with the program in 2018 — 20 inmate students and 20 staff students.
“I was amazed how students kept dropping out,” Professor Craig Watz said. “Well, the reason they dropped out was because they were released from prison. So, I thought, ‘What a great way to lose people in class.’”
Watz is the director of the Companions in Chillicothe program and a professor of criminal justice at Rockhurst, which administers the program.
He said the people at Chillicothe were skeptical at first when they were approached — why would Rockhurst want to offer education to inmates and staff for free?
Watz said, for him, it’s simple: “I define education as not a pathway to a career or pathway to a job,” Watz said. “I define education as an opportunity to learn about who you are, to become that critical thinker, to become that self-confident individual that can be that instrument of change — whether it's in a career or whether it's to demonstrate to others what you're capable of doing.”
Watz said Rockhurst didn’t have a specific end goal when the program began — they didn’t even offer an associate’s degree at the time — but they designed the program to give students a solid educational foundation.
Classes covered a myriad of topics, such as: composition, theology, environmental science, public speaking, history, criminal justice and more.
Students met in-person once a week for 2 hours and 45 minutes. Over the course of six years, the 11 grads earned the 60 credits necessary to receive their associate’s degree.
Watz said that while the staff class and the “residential students,” i.e. the incarcerated students, were in separate classes — they were learning the same material, which led to connections that may have not existed before.
“I would see them kind of communicating with each other, you know, ‘How did you do on this assignment? What'd you put down for this test question?’” Watz said. “So, it was really this camaraderie that I've seen built over time between the staff and the residential students … that really is kind of heartwarming.”
Watz was approached to lead the program by the former president of Rockhurst University, Father Tom Curran. Curran was the president of the university for 16 years, until he was asked by his superiors to move to Denver and create a multiple state network of Jesuit prison education programs.
JPEN, or the Jesuit Prison Education Network, launched in 2023 and included 11 programs in multiple states.
“The women here,” Curran said. “These women who are bright, who are quite capable, who are thoughtful, who are great students, and that, to me, is what matters. Do I ask about their crimes? No. Do they share them? Yes, but that's not my interest. We have homework to do.”
Curran said these programs are about the “forgotten of the forgotten” — women within the criminal justice system. But also, about offering education to staff, who are often left out of the professional development opportunities that are offered to inmates.
“Education transforms lives. It changes us, and when someone is taking the same course and they see we have a common goal here, they start to see one another differently,” Curran said. “This is an investment in this community, in our nation. The biggest crisis that we have is the failure to see one another as my sister and my brother — as fundamental as that.”
Penny Clevenger, a case manager at Chillicothe, was one of the graduates. She has held many jobs at the prison, and said she always wanted to go to college, but never had the means or opportunity.
“When Rockhurst offered free college classes, I jumped on it, because that was the way for me to promote within the department,” Clevenger said.
She said classes were totally free to students, both staff and inmates, as Rockhurst pays for the program through private donations.
Alex Earls, the assistant division director from Missouri Department of Corrections over education and reentry services, said the Rockhurst program is unique in that it offered the degree to both inmates and staff.
But the DOC currently has partnerships with nine institutions of higher education who provide programs through grants and donations, like Rockhurst, or through Pell Grant funds.
Pell Grant applications were made available to incarcerated individuals again in 2023, and Earls said this opportunity has made it much easier for inmates to access higher education.
He said prior to that and prior to the department’s investments in technology — each inmate now has access to a tablet computer — inmates had to pay for courses out-of-pocket and largely were restricted to correspondence courses.
Earls says this focus on education is intentional. Research shows that education and degree attainment drastically reduces a person’s chance of recidivism, or coming back to prison once released.
“How do we make a safer state? How do we really, truly invest in the people and give them a better life?” Earls said. “I feel like higher education is one of the many tools that we have. One of the better tools that we have to really be able to make an impact.”
Earls said, as of July 1, there were 1,004 DOC residents enrolled in higher education courses, and he hopes to see that grow. He wants to increase the number of higher education institutions a partnering with the DOC and wants to see 10% of the DOC population — that’s about 2,400 people — enrolled in classes.
Back at Chillicothe Correctional Center, Vermonn Roberts, her brother, sister and niece eat cake and take lots of pictures.
“It's just amazing to have the outside world and the inside world come together and just celebrate this moment. It's amazing,” Roberts said. “I definitely am so grateful and thankful to be in prison and have a degree and also have my family to be a part of it.”
And while Roberts has a life sentence and isn’t scheduled to see the parole board until, at least, 2036 – she said she’s excited to use her education to help her family and serve as one of the teaching assistants for the new class of students that began their schooling this fall.
For a full transcript of the broadcast version of this story, click here.
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