Hi all,
It has been a while since I have used this space, but now is the time to start harnessing whatever resources I have in my disposal in an effort to save our program.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Master of Arts in Humanities (HUX) program is the first online graduate program designed for and built around the needs of incarcerated students. As more and more students across CDCR facilities in California graduate from baccalaureate completion programs, hundreds of students are now asking the question, “what’s next?” HUX allows these students to not only continue their education, but it also empowers them to build programs, businesses, and organizations of their own that will benefit their families and communities.
We spent years developing our model, which contains both a wide variety of classes and curricular safeguards to accommodate the always-changing conditions of incarceration. You can read more about it here: https://www.csudh.edu/hux/
However, although we now have 76 students and over a year of instruction behind us, many of our students recently lost their tuition funding eligibility. I have my own thoughts on why this happened, but in the spirit of objectivity I would prefer to point you to yesterday’s article in LAist about what happened: https://laist.com/news/education/california-first-graduate-masters-program-in-prison-funding
Anyway, instead of trying to recreate the pandemic-era magic (for me, at least) of making another “Grandpa’s Letters” sort of blog anthology, I figured that I might as well use this blog as a means of sharing information about the program, stories from some of our students, and opportunities for those interested in helping out.
One quick thing you can do if you’re interested is to make a GoFundMe donation. I am collecting money to pay for student tuition. Although it’s going to be just a drop in the bucket, every little bit helps at this stage. Here is the link: https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-incarcerated-students-continue-their-studies
Thank you for your help, interest, and support at this critical time. More to come . . .
All the best,
Matt
