Partnership with Ascendium

We are thrilled to share that a new initiative from the Puttkammer Center for Educational Justice and Equity, “Expanding College Readiness and Success for Incarcerated Learners” was awarded a $700,000 grant from Ascendium Education Group. Ascendium’s generous support will enable us to expand our College Bridge program, while strengthening academic support programming to increase the number of incarcerated learners who access and succeed in postsecondary education programs.

Our project will focus on three core activities: a College Bridge program fostering the math, literacy, and English language skills of incarcerated learners who are preparing to enroll in credit-bearing college courses; tutoring and tutor training programs for incarcerated college students and scholars; and the production and dissemination of research on best practices in college readiness and tutoring pedagogy behind bars. In the long term, we will work to embed evidence-based college readiness and tutoring support in higher education in prison programs across the country, while changing cultures inside correctional facilities and in higher education in prison programs, elevating and supporting native, self-organized learning communities of incarcerated scholars.