The Do Good Team Podcast

Episode 4 - Prison to Education Programs with UC Irvine's LIFTED and Underground Scholars

• David & Nora as The Do Good Team LLC • Season 1 • Episode 4

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We're back! In today's episode Nora and David discuss UC Irvine's unique prison to education pipeline programs with Professor Keramet Reiter and Hector Cervantes. Professor Reiter teaches Criminology and Law & Society at UC Irvine's School of Law and, additionally, serves as the Director of LIFTED (Leveraging Inspiring Futures Through Educational Degrees),  the first in-prison BA-degree completion program in the University of California system. Hector Cervantes is the Program Director for Underground Scholars, a program designed to attract and retain previously incarcerated students so they may successfully complete their studies on campus after release.  We discuss the individual and societal benefits of these programs, how the programs continue to grow, and how you can help!

You can visit and donate to UC Irvine's LIFTED Program here: https://lifted.uci.edu/

You can visit and donate to UC Irvine's Underground Scholars Program here: https://undergroundscholars.uci.edu/

Don't forget to do some good and spread some love out there. Always remember that juntos, somos un buen equipo (together, we're a good team). 

David:

Thanks so much for listening to The Do Good Team Podcast. We've been working with several nonprofits over the past few months and a common theme keeps occurring. Please share these episodes. Awareness about the issues these nonprofits tackle is incredibly important to their mission, and you can immediately make an impact by subscribing to our podcast on the platform you're listening to and follow us on social media and leave us a 5 star review so others may find our episode. And now we present our episode.

Nora:

You're listening to episode four of the Do Good Team Podcast, a discussion about prison to education programs with UC Irvine’s LIFTED and Underground Scholars.

[INTRO MUSIC]

David:

Hello, do gooders out there and thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Do Good Team, a podcast where we highlight nonprofits and charitable causes with the goal of improving your life and those around you through inspiration and creating meaningful connections. I am one of your hosts, David.

Nora:

Hi everyone, I am Nora.

David: 

And we're back after a little bit of a hiatus note, and I had some fun adventures that we were going through over the past few weeks.

Nora: 

Yes, a lot of stuff. Different stuff going on, transitioning into a new position at work. David has also been really busy with other work related projects, and then we both got sick a couple of weeks ago and it seemed to last for quite a while, but we're on the mend with that. And then we also have some news about our cat. Please, David, do you want to tell the audience what that news is?

David: 

Yes, we have new members of the family. Our cat that we adopted. or our cat that adopted us about six months ago, unbeknownst to us, was pregnant. So now we have a cat and four little kittens. She's hidden them somewhere around the house, I've learned that's pretty normal, but as far as I know they're around, they're healthy and now we got four extra cats in the house.

Nora: 

Yes, we were very, very surprised by the news. She's actually a pretty small cat and the vet swore to us that the cat was younger than we are assuming the cat is, because I don't think that it's a special cat that had babies at a premature age. We realized that she was probably the runt of the litter and is actually a little older than she looks.

David:

And the other big development is I learned how to make sound effects while we're recording so huge round of applause for us. 

[WAITS FOR APPLAUSE SOUND EFFECT]

OK, maybe I didn't learn how to do it. 

[APPLAUSE SOUND EFFECT PLAYS AFTER DELAY]

Yay! OK, so I learned how to do it but not well. 

Nora: 

There is a delay in the process.

David: 

So yeah, we won't have such a long hiatus between episodes. We just had some, a few things coming up. It’s been a long time, we shouldn’t have left you without a podcast to step to, we won't do that again. 

Nora:

But we're back. We're back healthy, good, and excited to be back.

David: 

Healthy, good, extra cats, and excited to share today's episode with you. So today we're talking about prison to education pipeline programs at UC Irvine, which is pretty exciting. Well, it's exciting for Nora and me because we're both products of the UC system, but I went to UC Irvine to get my undergraduate degree in political science. So we had a joint interview this time. It was with Professor Keramet Reiter, the director of LIFTED, which stands for “leveraging inspiring futures through educational degrees,” and Hector Cervantes, the program director of Underground Scholars. Just a little bit of background LIFTED, it's a first of its kind program. It enables incarcerated individuals to apply and transfer into UCI as Juniors and earn bachelor’s degrees from UC Irvine while serving their sentence. So professors actually go into the prison system and actually conduct courses within the prison system. Underground Scholars, which Hector Cervantes operates, provides support for formerly incarcerated and system impacted students through recruitment, advocacy, and retention efforts. So those are keeping those formerly incarcerated on campus once they actually start going to the university on site? So we’re really excited to share this episode with you today.

Nora: 

And now we want to go ahead and share with you all why we are particularly excited about this episode today. So just a few key points of why we're excited. So from my end, as David indicated, I am also a proud alumni of the University of California system. Actually, we have a family that has been connected to the University of California, starting with myself. Was it also starting with you, David, that your family started? No, with your parents, that started within the University of California system. So we have both families that have been alumni. We have family from that has attended UCLA. We have family that has attended UCR. I graduated from UCSD, David attended UCI and UCLA. So also, what is the name of your mascot at UCLA, David?

David: 

UCLA's the Bruins, UC Irvines the Ant eaters. Ohh Ant eaters real quickly, you'll hear…

Nora: 

I was being facetious, David.

David: 

Oh well, I was gonna say real quickly when it comes to the Anteaters you'll hear the words “zot zot.” So just for some context, that is the sound that the Anteater makes. So we make a little anteater sign with our with our hands, and we go “zot zot!”. So when you hear that everybody that's just kind of our mantra.

Nora: 

So as a proud alumni and a family that has been graduating from the University of California system, we're very proud to share UC Irvine's programs and the work that they're doing towards equity and accessibility with education. You will hear that the Underground Scholars program originated in UC Berkeley, another campus of the University of California. The University of California system, as many of you know, is one of the most prestigious and most valued public systems nationally, and as a very elite program, the University of California works towards equity, working toward matters of accessibility within our communities is. So that is one piece and the other piece is somebody that works with in student support services. I'm very excited to be able to learn with students that I work with and also learn for myself of the different types of supports that are growing out there for our students as they enter the higher education system. I am very excited and very proud of this episode.

David: 

Yeah, really excited about this episode. I'm proud too. Like I said for myself, I’m a UC Irvine graduate, so really excited to highlight a program that my alma mater is has been running and it's such an amazing program. Additionally, as I might have mentioned in other episodes, but I'm currently serve as an appellate Court Justice through the Northern California Tribal Court coalition. I've mentioned before that I'm attorney, but because I serve as a judge in Indian country, we really use a lot of concepts of restorative justice. So that just means it's not about the adversarial system in the court system when we're adjudicating cases. It's also about the healing process and how do you make people whole. You're empowering individuals to be productive and realize their full self. So, again, keyword empowerment. We're not saving people. It's making them realize their own power and value that they have within themselves. That’s what these programs are, they're huge on restorative justice. it's near and dear to my heart. So I’m really happy to bring this episode to everybody. Nora, I know that I think you have some important stats to share with the audience today.

 

Nora: 

You know, there's several topics that are significant, or pieces of the conversation that you'll be hearing too, that really are important to the overall message of education, and especially why education is so important as a matter of equity and justice within the criminal justice system. You know, just in general, lots of data continues to show that it is a post secondary education that is one of the best ways for individuals of minoritized backgrounds to be able to ensure and help obtain an economic and social mobility level, meaning that those of us that have come from environments or from families that might be below the poverty line. I can use myself as an example. Growing up, just depending on my mom's wages, we grew up below the poverty line. Considering the family size and my mother's earnings, and continuing on to obtain an education gives one the best source of opportunity for being able to grow economically out of that level. When I graduated from the university, I was working a job that was clerical in nature. By graduating from high school and graduating from college, I was able to, just with my own salary, be able to get myself to not middle class level, but close to it on my own. Now that I have my husband and myself, we're very to have a good financial network, but for a lot of individuals and families of color, education isn't quite as accessible or as easy to obtain. This then hinders them from being able to make these jumps in social and economic class. Looking at statistics from the California Department of Education, this is making a comparison with graduation at the high school level, individuals that identify as white, have a 90.6% graduation rate from high school. Individuals that identify as African American have a 78.6% graduation rate, and those individuals that identify as Latino are showing an 84.7% graduation rate. So this is showing us that there's a differences that are not allowing for those students that are minoritized to have the same level of graduation rate as those that are white. And as we look at some of those factors, they can be related to just being able to not be 100% focused on education because families trying to get basic needs. Maybe having to stay home to take care of family, having to work and not being able to focus on school 100% of the time, living in areas that have a higher crime rate and then, you know, inevitably being victims and getting involved in that because there's just a lot of pressure when that's all you know. So that is definitely being highlighted with these sets and I want to show in addition to the high school rates. Moving on to higher education does not show any improvement with this. At the four year level statistics from the National Center of Education Statistics shows that for individuals that identify as white and this is a four year graduation rate is 45% twenty 1% for African American and 32%. For Latinos, so again, that same discrepancy is showing at the higher education level. Something that really has stood out to us with this interview is the inaccessibility and inequity that there is an education to start off with for students and youth that are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). And then when you add on the layer of overrepresentation in the criminal justice system, as well as seeing that the criminal system itself, the sentences are also inequitable. Statistics show that there's an overrepresentation in longer sentence for individuals that are BIPOC when we compare them to their white counterparts, so that currently our criminal justice system is in need of reassessing and considering a change in the rehabilitative nature of the work, our conversation today shows there is more work to be done and the programs and policies that are starting to be looked at and worked on are hopefully a sign that we're headed in the right direction. But this is definitely a topic that deserves and needs a lot of focus and attention.

David: 

Yeah, totally agree. Thank you so much for doing that research for the audience in Nora. Now, that's really great work that you did and providing some important context to why this conversation is. So important, and I'm about to say something now, I'm going to say it at the end, which is before we even discuss how you support these programs and any other program we highlight share these episodes. So when you hear this episode, share it, especially if you work at higher education, this is going to be very enlightening about how you can serve individuals who are part of a community that's overlooked and how to empower them to live a more fulfilled life through education. So share this episode and yeah, I think that's it. Nora are we buckled up and ready to go and to head into the episode?

Nora: 

Yes, we are. Let's go ahead and meet our guests.

David: 

See you on the other side of the interview, folks.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

David: 

Thank you everybody for joining us today on this episode of The Do Good Team. We're really excited today and I'm especially excited as a UC Irvine Anteater myself to have two really fantastic people with us today talking about the lifted program and underground scholars.

Professor Keramet Reiter:

Zot zot!

David: 

We're talking about prison to education programs today. We have Professor and Vice Chair of Criminology at the UC Irvine School of Law, Keramet Reiter, and we also have Hector Cervantes, who is the Program Director of underground scholars. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Professor Keramet Reiter: 

Thank you so much for being with us today and taking the time to discuss such an essential and important program to our students and to the community as a whole. Thanks for having us.

Hector Cervantes: 

Thank you for having us.

David: 

So I think both of you jump in and just share a little bit about yourself. Keramet, why don't you jump in first?

Professor Keramet Reiter: 

You gave me a great introduction in addition to my academic appointment, I am running the first bachelor's program for incarcerated students out of the University of California System at a prison in San Diego, and I think, kind of what brought us together and started the conversation, and I've been involved in work around prison education since I was in college. So for more than 20 years, so it's really exciting to see the university that I think we all really appreciate finally doing this work in the state of California for incarcerated students.

David: 

Hector, go ahead.

Hector Cervantes: 

And for myself, I got involved in this work as a student. I was part of the founding group of students that started Underground Scholars at UCI and I went to school here, completed my undergrad and grad studies here at UCI. I am also formally incarcerated and in October of 2021, I was fortunate enough to be appointed as Program Director to establish the program here on this campus, and I'm happy to announce that I think we've made a lot of great progress, you know, to this point and we still have to go, but yeah. I think we've accomplished a lot.

Nora: 

Thank you so much. I would like to see if maybe we could expand a little bit about. How, from a personal perspective, what got you connected and involved in this type of work? Where did your passion and interest develop for this specific area?

Professor Keramet Reiter: 

I first started teaching in prison when I was in college in Boston. I was really interested in teaching and I had some friends who were volunteering in prison and this was right after Pell Grants were actually eliminated for incarcerated students. So there was attention to the lack of educational opportunities, showing how long I've been involved in. I was a Middle Eastern studies major at the time, but I just kept being horrified by what I was seeing in prison by the lack of resources people had to get an education and the passion they had in spite of that, to overcome it and get an education, and I've been involved ever since. Work around trying to work with folks who are incarcerated or formally incarcerated to think about how to expand educational opportunities. I worked in what used to be the only college program in the state at San Quentin when I was in graduate school. I started a program on Rikers Island. So again, it's been a long standing interest of mine and doing this work in the UC is so exciting and particularly doing it in collaboration with Hector because I think we're really in a place now where people who have been through these programs are formally incarcerated are taking on the leadership roles and I often say my dream is to have one of our students take over my position. Like I can't wait for the day when the person running lifted the BA programs in California is a formerly incarcerated student. I think that will be one of the markers of success of these programs when we have faculty in the UC's who've come out of the.

Nora: 

So if we can hear a little bit from your perspective, Hector, how did you become involved in this type of work? Where did your passion and interest developed for providing advocacy and support in this very important type of work?

 

 

Hector Cervantes: 

So I was introduced to Underground Scholars by one of my classmates in Washington, DC. I participated, in the UCDC program, which is University of California program in Washington, DC and I was, I think, surprised to put it lightly. I was but also excited, you know, up until this encounter, I had never shared with anyone that I was formally incarcerated. I never thought that it would be an asset. I thought it's something that I had to just forget about, try to forget about. Even though I knew it would always be part of who I am, not just because of my experience with being formally incarcerated, but I think about half of my family has been incarcerated and I have a brother who's serving life in prison. So, yeah, the carceral system is something that has been very present in my life. So to be in higher education and have one of my peers sharing that, you know, I can actually change the narrative and use it as a as a tool of empowerment just drew me right in. When I got back to campus, it's around 2018, I received a text message from him asking me if I wanted to start a chapter at UCI and I said yeah right away. There wasn't much to think about. I didn't really know what I was going to entail, but I knew that something that I wanted to do because, you know, for the reasons I already mentioned. So yeah, and really Underground Scholars has been a vehicle, you know, for success, for myself. Personally, I've learned a lot, you know, at every stage of development. For this organization on this campus, it's just a new phase that I'm just learning more and more and more, and then now I'm just in a new phase of learning. And you know, I can't wait to just keep learning. I love being in an educational setting. You know, education was a transformative experience for me, really, really changed my outlook on life, it really changed my world view, it really helped me understand my community and my background and so I'm passionate about sharing that with folks who share my background. You know, I talked to my brother, who's serving life in prison every other day, and he's so excited about the work that I'm doing. I love that, first of all, my family's proud. But also, if I keep instilling education into my brother and he's taking Community College courses and I can't wait for the day that he gets home and I get to help him transfer to a four year institution. So yeah, that's where my passion comes from and how I got involved with this work.

Nora: 

I do have a kind of follow-up question specifically for you, Hector. So and then also Keramet, for your perspective as a professor, I'd love for feedback on from you as well. So why in particular do you feel that education, there's so many different areas where important advocacy could occur in employment? I mean, just so many different areas. Why do you both feel that it is so important that the work be done in the educational aspect of things?

Professor Keramet Reiter: 

There are a number of reasons why this is so important. Some are just purely procedural. I think, right? California banned the box a few years ago, and so these are students we’re working with in in UC LIFTED, who are incarcerated are students who should have been eligible as soon as that happened. For the UC's, they have met all the transfer requirements for admission. And the only reason they have not been included is because they have a felony conviction or because of where they're physically housed, but they're, you know, the residents of the state of California who've met the UC admissions requirements. So, you know, one way I think about it is just this is including students who in a sense always should have been included in a public university system. But I think another piece of this, of course, is just that, you know, I'm an educator, so I'm biased. But education is incredibly important, right? Education opens doors to replace the stigma of a criminal record which we know is incredibly powerful, with the legitimacy of a degree, and in this case a bachelor's degree from the University of California. And I think more than that, right, you know, there's community colleges and Cal States are involved in higher education in prison, in the state increasingly. But I think a UC degree is really important because it opens doors to Graduate School, right, and we have a number of now formerly incarcerated students who are earning PHD's at UC Irvine. And we have had a few go through law school in the UC system, right? There was one at UC Irvine. I believe there's one at Berkeley. Now one at Davis. We have students in the Business School, right? We have students who've done urban planning. So I think that is a really exciting piece of this is it's not just a bachelor’s degree, it's a pathway to graduate and professional school and all of the kinds of leadership positions that come with that, that make me really excited about it.

Hector Cervantes: 

Yeah, what I mentioned earlier, it does hint at why education should be like a reentry tool because of the upward mobility that comes with it. I think it's also important, at least for me personally, I'm from a lower socioeconomic background, right. I grew up in Santa Ana, you know, poverty, gangs, etc. And I think we need to acknowledge the failures, you know, of society. I guess in a nutshell, society fails folks twice. In the beginning when they don't provide adequate education that prepares students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. For, as Keramet mentioned, you know access to university where they they belong. Which of course comes with upward mobility and then they fail them again when they just send them off to prison and punish them and continue to deny them of that upward mobility that they should have access to. So yeah, they spend money twice when they could just spend it one time instead of spending money and poor education, and then in a prison cell, you can just spend money one time and provide these communities with, with adequate education and prepare them for four year institutions.

Nora: 

Like essentially getting it right from the beginning rather than trying to “quote unquote” fix things afterwards and which, you know, brings me to a really important question do – do you feel like programs such as the ones that you're advocating and working with that that is finally creating more of a true support and rehabilitation within the system.

Hector Cervantes: 

Absolutely. I know that education is not like one-size-fits-all, right? I know for myself I still have traumas that I'm dealing with from my lived experience. But education has given me the tools it has prepared me to deal with those traumas right where I said before, I just didn't even know where to begin because I didn't have the tools that you have. You're not just talking, reading, writing. You're talking critical thinking, analytical skills. These are all foundation transferable skills that apply to different things in life and that help you navigate life. So they're very important. So to answer your question, I think it is a step in the right direction.

Keramet Reiter: 

And let’s speak to the cost that Hector said, right? I often say you know it costs $100,000 per person per year to keep someone incarcerated in prison in California. UC tuition is about 16,000 a year, right? I think there's a growing sense that there's incredible pay offs that Hector is articulating to providing a UC education and that the $100,000 you're spending on prison actually has very low pay off. Right? We have a 50% recidivism for people who don't get an education. We have a recidivism rate approaching 0 for people who do. Hector speaks so eloquently to the individual effects, and there's also the institutional right, the broader effects and the importance of faculty who never thought about our incarcerated students going into prison, working with these students, seeing them as students and not incarcerated people, the students themselves seeing themselves. The students, instead of incarcerated people and the kinds of steps that takes in the right direction, right? But as Hector says, it is a very slow process for individuals and institutions. And I think something Hector and I have really been working on together is trying to develop resources at UC. Serving to account for the kinds of trauma people have experienced to educate faculty and staff about the trauma, people who have been systems impacted bring into the system and the ways we as an institution have a responsibility to try to support and mitigate that and to develop better resources for.

David: 

Have you felt support from people and in terms of developing those resources and getting additional support, within not just UC Irvine but also the UC system, California community colleges, Cal States campus? I'm sure you have communication with all those institutions but has it been overwhelming support? Have you felt that maybe it's, you know, support, but also education at the same time, people just needing to understand what the program is? How have you felt the support has been so far for both of your programs?

Professor Keramet Reiter: 

I think big picture….

Hector Cervantes:

You can go first chairman.

Professor Keramet Reiter: 

Yeah, I think big picture there's really a momentum that we're riding that's really inspiring, right? Like I said, I started this work just a couple years after Pel Grants were removed for incarcerated students, and we're now in a moment when federal power grants are going to be reinstated in July and California has been way ahead of that federal movement, right? So for the last almost nine years, California has been investing in higher education for incarcerated students, has allocated permanent funding. The state legislature has allocated permanent funding to community colleges to the Cal states to Hector right to underground scholars to project rebound. All of these organizations on the public university campuses that are supporting people as they come out and so big picture, I think it's a very celebratory moment of real understanding and investment that the. These are these policies work better and this is the direction that that we need to go. And these investments are paying off, right. Like these students are incredibly successful, they are taking on leadership roles, they are running these organizations day-to-day. I mean, and Hector can speak to this, right? It can be very frustrating, right? Moving these institutions and changing these cultures is hard, and I often joke that the University of California system is every bit as difficult as the California State prison system. To my shock, right, in terms of like getting the bureaucratic infrastructure in place to make these programs run in terms of actually doing what it takes to support these students on a day. So I think it is you know I like to I like to talk about what an incredible moment we're in, in terms of understanding the mistakes we've made and trying to repair, but also to acknowledge that on the ground this work is hard and these institutions often moving more slowly than at least I would, I would like it.

Hector Cervantes: 

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I can tell you like the community colleges and the Cal states. They have a centralized systemwide structure. That allows them to have some type of standardized programming. And Underground Scholars had that when it was strictly student led, but we lost it as soon as it was like we won. And then also we had more work to do as soon as we were allocated the ongoing funds because we lost that central system wide coordination. But I can tell you I can just, here at UCI, the day-to-day things are going they're really going great. I we finally got dedicated space on campus. It's a community that just keeps growing and growing everyday. It's been a long time coming. Since 2018, you know? And I think community is key. It's been my experience that community can sometimes be more important than even funding. I mean, obviously we need somebody here to do the work, but I'm saying like financial compensation for students, like just having that support system on campus is crucial in having that space to come together. And just build community together is crucial and that's what's happening, but we're also employing students. We're also having students participate in policy fellowships. You know, having students go to conferences. We just got back from New York. We went to be on the Beyond the Nars conference at Columbia University. And we had eight of our students here at UCI alone. And go and then they go there and they meet with their peers. So we met with other UC campuses while we were out there and make sure our students are expanding their networks. You never know where they want to go for grad school or you just never know. An extensive network is important, so these are the things that are happening day-to-day or student organs coming together and organizing events on campus, raising awareness. I hope that answers your question as far as like the day-to-day. Stuff here on campus and how the program is going.

Hector Cervantes: 

I mean, it is wonderful to get to hear the two different perspectives that both of you are presenting to us. Thank you so much. So this is a question for both of you in your work with the program, what are some of the greatest barriers and challenges that formerly incarcerated students most struggle with? Jamie, you could take it first.

Professor Keramet Reiter: 

I feel shy because Hector is the one who works so much with this day-to-day. So I might actually defer to him on this one. Hector's the one I go to to say. How? What do I need to understand and and how can I? How can I? How can I get faculty and staff in the institution to help these students better? So I think I defer on this one.

Hector Cervantes: 

I think it varies. It's a very diverse group of students and age, you know, cultural backgrounds, ethnicities. So one of the underlying factors is age group. So for example a new student population that I'm working with. This system impacted “quote unquote” traditional students, right? So students that we wouldn't expect to be impacted by the carceral system that still managed to get to UCI straight from high school. But then I'm coming to find out they're still getting involved. They're still living in the communities where their families live there because they're dependent students, right? So the university classifies them as dependent. They still come from lower socioeconomic background, so their parents probably don't have enough money to support them, even though they're dependent students. And then the universities giving them not the maximum amount of funding because they're considered to have a family contribution on their financial aid. And so they're forced to live in the communities of oftentimes with their parents, where they're still gang related area, still getting tied in to those activities. So these are some of the challenges that I have been exposed to. They're new to me right up to this point. I thought, well, I'll transfer and I was wrong. There's also students, for example, we've had a few former LIFTED students that are transitioning onto campus. They have their own challenges, whether it's finally getting to unpack their trauma because prison, more often, not more often than not, is not conducive to unpacking and processing trauma and just showing emotion. So they're getting on to campus and finally getting a moment to breathe, feel safe, unpacked trauma. That's a whole, you know, another process in and of itself. They're learning how to reintegrate into society and then on top of that, reintegrate into university culture, which university culture in and of itself was like a shock for me. You know, just being a person of color, formally incarcerated and being just not belonging here, I can just imagine what it's like for a student that's transitioning out of, you know, doing decades in prison and getting out. The world is a lot more different than when they went. In and then they still have to deal with navigating all these other barriers. And then we have student parents too, like regular, just transfer, formally incarcerated, went straight to Community College. Maybe they won't have a chance to reintegrate into society, but they still have children or other financial challenges as well. 

David: 

Keramet, I want you to also answer that question. I know you defer to Hector because of his lived experience, but I know you have something valuable to share from your perspective as a professor and faculty member, but also barriers that you see from a structural perspective as well, not just for the students, but what you perceive within, the prison system, what you perceive within the educational system. We would love to hear any of the structural barriers that you perceive that you know come to your mind immediately with that question about barriers.

Professor Keramet Reiter: 

Yeah. I mean, I think one thing that that Hector touched on, that's just the day-to-day is you know the lack of technology in prison, right, that they don't like our students and our bachelor's program have laptops for the first time, but they're largely disconnected from the Internet. And so, you know, people find ways to access some technology in prison. But the experience of coming out and having to navigate the existence of a UC student entirely online is just truly overwhelming, I think. And I mean, I now have, having watched students do this, I now have nightmares about how our now formerly incarcerated students manage some of this right. I think for someone who is not familiar with the system who didn't grow up with the Internet doesn't understand how to navigate bureaucracies, whatever that you know, whatever those personal challenges are. But I think they're particularly acute for formerly incarcerated students. It really is daunting and it's daunting on top of all the other challenges that they're dealing with and it can feel like the thing that you kind of throw your hands up with, right? If you don't have someone like Hector or like really supportive counselors who's really sitting down and literally like, right, I mean, I literally Hector. And I sat down and made sure that our first student who was released knew how to register for classes by doing it with him on his laptop and it's something I hadn't as a faculty member known how to do right, so I think I've learned a lot about the challenges our students face just with the kind of day-to-day bureaucracy that they maybe don't have. It's like learning a new language, right? And and they don't even have a dictionary. Often to do that, you know, I think I think more and that speaks honestly to the bigger picture structural barriers, which I see, as you know, I think I think faculty, in particular, tend to assume that our students come from a certain set of backgrounds, right, that they've gone to, you know, the vast majority of them gone to high school in California. Maybe they transferred from Community College. Maybe they went straight to a UC that there's a kind of a shared understanding about an educational background and pathway into college that I think are most interesting and resilient. Students like our formally incarcerated students do not have that shared background, right? A lot of them earned a GED in prison. They didn't go to high school in the state. They don't have that shared curriculum in their head. Just as one example, right? And like there's a lot of courses they have to make up as a result in order to graduate from the UC's they may be admissible. But they have all this stuff to catch up on because they didn't go to high school in California, just technically, right? But that speaks to, I think a broader sense. Of the different paths people have been on and the assumptions that a lot of us bring into the classroom space or the advising space about a shared set of educational experiences that a lot of these students were trying to incorporate don't have, and that we as an institution like as faculty and staff, need to do a lot. More work to understand and support people around. I think sometimes the instinct is to say, well, you go figure it. Out. But like there's no there's a possible there aren't. There aren't tools and resources for someone in particular who's been in prison for 2025 years to just go figure it out, right. They really need the kind of community Hector is talking about where there's literally a room full of people that's a safe space where they can go in and say, hey, I'm overwhelmed. Have you been through this and not just the steps to do it, but the kind of emotional support of I've I figured it out. Right? Like, like, not just someone saying here's how you do it, but someone saying modeling that they were able to.

Nora: 

Do it so this like actually is a perfect segue to learn a little bit more about your specific programs. And how through the various work that you do, you're able to support students through some of these challenges. So maybe Hector, would you like to start and share with us a little bit about your role and the program and what kind of supports and services and resources are available to the students to help them navigate some of these barriers and challenges? And then Karen met, we'd love to hear your perspective as well after.

Hector Cervantes: 

So my role is a program director and I'm happy to share that we finally got a program coordinator and they're they started today.

Nora: 

Hurray!

Hector Cervantes: 

Thank you but. If I can just sum up Underground Scholars, I think the slogan like really summarizes what we do. So prison to university pipeline, that's how our programming is. Getting folks in here and then retention supporting them while they're here and for recruitment. We have four programs here at UCI. We've only focused on 2, which is the transfer program and the ambassador program, the transfer program is pretty much how the name implies we get a group of students. We walk them through the UC application, the entire process. We review their personal statement. We review their transcripts. Help them, you know, make sure that they're meeting all the transfer requirements. The UC application is not, you know, the easiest thing to navigate, especially compared to like a Cal State application. And so that that's a transfer program. It's a cohort model. We help them every year. During our application season our ambassador program pays Community College students to participate in leadership classes. They meet monthly on Zoom and they pretty much have like soft skill workshops via Zoom and they get to meet students at other community colleges around the state that are interested in attending different UC's. We see students because, as I mentioned earlier, we employ students to help us carry this work out and so they get to meet some of our current students that are student staff members. We also invite students monthly and this just to help them kind of see themselves here. I know for myself I didn't set foot at UCI until his first day of class. I grew up 10 minutes away from here. I had never been here. I had no idea what it looked like and so it's really just getting them acclimated. We, you know, take them to the dining hall, give them campus tours. Just kind of help them feel like they belong here. So that's the ambassador program. We also have across the loan program, which we have not yet developed here at UCI, which allows Community College students to cross enroll here, and we walked them through, you know, the cross enrollment process and we partner with faculty members and then we have the Incarcerated Scholars Program, which is correspondence with incarcerated students to help let them know what their options are in terms of higher education, what are the next steps they should take and then letter writing like letter of recommendations for parole board hearings or letters of commutation on their behalf. I think we do this a lot more with LIFTED students because they're doing it. That's a great accomplishment, right? To be pursuing a four year degree while you're incarcerated. So that's a big plus. Then for retention, we have a policy advocacy fellowship where we pay students to, again, they attend the Zoom class. They learned the California legislative process, and then they formed 3 subcommittees, so they picked three bills that they want to advocate for and they choose which bill they want to advocate for, and we form 3 subcommittees, and then we actually fly students out to Sacramento, have them do legislative visits and just become familiar with policy advocacy. We also provide them with stipends on campus or scholarships. This is outside of whatever UCI and I would say, you know, space is also a retention tool, right? Being able to come together and have community holding, you know, social events. And then I would say all this work is through the Underground Scholars Initiative, which is a registered campus organization. I think that's what I love about Underground Scholars that it's really designed to empower students and, you know, develop student leaders. So we let Underground Scholars initiative, hold their own space, make their own decisions, plan out their own events and then I support and then I'll. So I'll leave it at that. I think that's in a nutshell, what our programming is.

Nora: 

You know, thank you that that's very thorough, very holistic, to like, looking at just the different pieces that you mentioned. There's a lot of skills that you had mentioned earlier, transferable to so many different spaces, to the academics to the professional. So there's just so much opportunity also to get involved with one of the most important pieces, the policy advocacy, not only for building confidence and seeing, like, OK, the work that we're doing and what we're doing for ourselves is something really important and valuable to take up. And create change within society just so thorough. And then what you had mentioned earlier like dealing with the individual on a day-to-day? There's things that I see that you probably also take on very much like a case manager will help me with housing helping with, like connecting students to like mental health services to deal with some of the trauma that comes with it. From what we can see, there's just not enough support that you can get. Also, congratulations with the new coordinator role. We hope that the work continues to expand and you continue to get more support because it really from what we've learned in our conversation with the both of you, the work is a lot and so you know getting. Like there's never going to be enough support that that you could get for really continuing with this wonderful work.

David: 

I was listening to a fantastic continuing legal education seminar that Professor Ryder put on in early January of 2023. For listeners who haven't listened to other episodes. I'm an attorney as well, so I needed some continuing legal education and you were smart because he also did it as an ethics continuing legal education. So you know how to get the attorneys in the seat.

Professor Keramet Reiter: 

And Hector was there too, right?

David: 

Yeah, Hector was there too. So you know how to get them into the seats. I recall from that from that seminar that you had mentioned that one of the biggest barriers was the technology component. I don't know if you want to expand on that or mention other barriers that you see when you go in and deliver the curriculum.

Professor Karemet Reiter: 

So I mean, you know our basic model is that we work with Community College partners. So there's a Community College and we're in one prison now, hoping that other uses will run with the model and expand and replicate in partnership with Underground Scholars. Right now we're in one prison, Richard J Donovan in San Diego, and we work most closely with Southwestern Community College, although we're hoping to expand those pathways in collaboration with Underground Scholars, so that students who finish other Community College degrees could apply to our program. But right now the model is that it's students who finish in sociology at Southwestern Community College apply to as junior level, transfer students to UC Irvine. We had 26 students admitted in our first cohort. As Hector was saying, one was released and is now on campus at UC Irvine and 28 more students have applied for our second cohort. So we're awaiting their admission decisions now we should hear about a month and then we work with them face to face on site at the prison. So they take four classes, just like a student on campus would, with faculty who go down to the prison and offer those courses. Of course, the logistics of that are more complicated, right? So, you know, one thing we do with them is we actually take screenshots of the UC application, which is only online. And take it in, they fill it out on paper. We input it back into the system for them, right? So there's a lot of work like that where we're kind of working around the technological constraints that we have just to get these students the really basic resources they need, I. I can't tell you how often I have conversations on campus about I can get that information to our student, but you have a whole bunch of hyperlinks in it that will be useful to useless to them. How can we turn this into a paper document that will be meaningful? So there's a lot of that work, but then you know, working with these students also, we really strive to give them as similar as possible and experience as they have on campus and of course, that that's very aspirational, right? There are obviously all kinds of limitations, but we have a full time counselor who supports both the formerly incarcerated students on campus and the currently incarcerated students in prison, and so she goes down and does workshops around wellness and academic well-being and all the kinds of challenges that you face beyond just doing the work in in your courses, time management, those kinds of things and. And we're working to try to provide more opportunities for this, they have an Underground Scholars chapter in the prison that Hector and our program coordinators support. So that's like giving them that sense of a student group that is, that is doing work in prison beyond the classroom. And we're hoping to continue to do more of that, bring in more guest speakers, give them more opportunities to have the kinds of extracurricular experiences they would have on campus. So that's something Hector and I are constantly writing grants to support. Also like how do we how do we get more resources to these? How do we together get more resources to these students in prison to give them more of a of a campus life. 

Nora: 

We would love to hear from each of you if you have a story that you'd like to share with our listeners of something that really stands out in your mind and in your heart that you've had an opportunity to experience. Through this work, a success story, something that has worked well for the program.

Professor Keramet Reiter: 

It's hard to choose honestly, which I guess is a good thing. I like this question, but maybe I'll talk about, I think some of our larger scale successes in our first quarter, 60% of our incarcerated students made honor roll. I think that was just a huge triumph, right? I mean, that's a much higher rate than on campus. And it was so, you know, I had been saying these are really amazing students. They feel really grateful for this opportunity. They're very committed and it was really nice to see that borne out in, in this incredible success. And I think another that I've loved in terms of institutional changes just so far, every faculty member who's taught in the program has said can I teach again next year? And when we put out a call for faculty on campus who were interested within a day, we had more than 30 faculty who said I want to teach in this program. So I think that's another piece is there's just real excitement about working with this population and it's growing, so, you know, I think the other just incredible success story is our first student who was released right that we have, you know, and also that you know, people often say, are you serving everyone? Like, are you serving people with life sentences? Why would you serve someone [with a life sentence] and our first student who was released had a life without parole sentence that the governor commuted. And so I think that that is a really you know to make the point, it's very eloquent encapsulation of what I often say, which is the sentence is change, right. You get sentences wrong, sentencing laws change, and the idea that someone had a life without parole sentence doesn't necessarily mean they're never getting out. And boy, would I rather they got out and came to a UC campus and finished a bachelor's degree. And so I think it's a nice example of the importance of keeping doors open for the widest possible range of students and and the successes we've had doing.

Nora: 

Thank you so much. Hector?

Hector Cervantes: 

And I'll add this same student have a different success story, but I want to add the same student is now a policy fellow here on campus and also was part of a group of students that flew out to New York City. Further “Beyond the Bars” conference and for me, you know, I just love, like seeing them every day, just experience new things and it's rewarding just to just to see it. But my success story has to do with sophomore student right system impacted student, student, that's from a gang involved background, was living at home and had lost like 3 of his peers in in a matter of months and feared for his life and had to navigate that and still drive all the way out to UCI, attend classes, complete assignments and still have that trauma. And the success story is that we were able to get him independent student status which granted him all the regular financial aid as A at least 25 or older student, or 23 or older. So now they live on campus and 1st we've got them emergency transitional housing to start living on campus right away because they were fearing for their safety, their physical safety and also they were processing this trauma. So just seeing the student, it’s night and day now hanging out on campus. You know, he's been here for a couple of years, so he has friends on campus. He had to go back home every day and deal with the pressures, you know, for listeners, your listeners that don't know what it's like to grow up and, you know, in a gang environment, there's social pressure to be involved. They don't care that you're a university student. And so it was great to see him be on campus socializing here, just staying here and being with his friends. And I just saw the difference, you know, in in his, his mental health is just more at ease safe. Also, what you mentioned earlier, we do resource navigation, so I also connected them to the basic needs center so they put together a little like a welcome home kit or like a so they had like veg sheets, cooking pans, all these different things and grocery. And so I was just excited to see him, you know, start this new beginning here at UCI. And now I'm pushing that same student to study abroad, so I can't wait to see him. You know their first time on an airplane was our trip to New York City, so I'm going to make sure it's not the last time on an airplane.

David: 

All right, so I have maybe what's the most important question. These are wonderful programs. How does the listener, how does the Community support both LIFTED and Underground Scholars? Whether it's, you know, volunteering, it's donating to the program. Maybe it's employers, how do employers hire recent graduates with the backgrounds they have. How do we support your programs? We'll start off with you, Keramet.

Professor Keramet Reiter: 

I always say even though we've been so successful obtaining state funding and getting institutional support, unfortunately the public university system runs on a lot of. Unfortunately, unfortunately runs on a lot of philanthropy from the local communities, right? Even in the best case scenario, some of our most wonderful programs, especially the ones that support the students that that need the most kind of development of institutional resources, are often very robustly supported by individual donors and community organizations. And that's an integral part of how we envision things like lifted working, so I I always say, you know one thing people can do is donate and it makes a huge difference. You know, a couple $100 means students have books for a year in the program. So that said, you know, the community support is also really vital, like having resources of people who are interested in doing resume consulting or. Networking or meeting with these students is really exciting. So I think the simplest thing for LIFTED is just. Our website is lifted.uci.edu and you can read more about the program. You can e-mail us from there. You can donate from there. So that's I'd say the best way to get involved and bigger picture. I often say to people when you hear about criminal justice policies, just paying attention makes a huge difference, right? Listening to this podcast. Talking to people about it, hearing these stories and sharing these. Stories you know, oftentimes people don't think about our prisons, and that's one of the biggest problems is that they're out of sight and out of mind. 

Hector Cervantes:

So the first step really is just starting to pay attention. Our website is undergroundscholars.uci.edu and you can e-mail us. Then you can write a check to UC Regents. But we can figure out all the details just through e-mail. All that information is online. Also you mentioned employment, so definitely you know partnering to even give summer internships to our students. You know, summer jobs. Since that our career track of, of course, I think that was helpful for me as well as a student., having a pretty cool internships over the summer, you know, continue to add to my skills, my toolbox and my resume. So those are great, great opportunities as well. Great ways to help.

David: 

Thank you so much. And for our last question, we asked this of everybody that we interview because all the work that you do is a labor of love and we'll start off with Hector this time. Hector, what is what is your definition of love?

Hector Cervantes: 

That's a good question. You know, if I had to, if I had to put words to it, I would say just caring and showing up, you know, and doing for the benefit of others for collective well-being. You know, and in this case I'm doing it for a specific student population. For individuals in your life, for society for showing up and doing for the benefit of others is is love. And for yourself too.

Nora:

That was beautiful, Hector.

Professor Keramet Reiter: 

I often think of it as just treating, treating others the way I would want to be treated with as much compassion as possible, but I also I also think of doing this work as creating this space for other people to be able to do that too, right? I mean I think often just there's, there's not the emotional space or resources for so many people who've been so failed by the systems over and over again. And then sometimes I think of this work is just making room for other people to be able to love or celebrate or care for their communities. Giving kind of giving the space and resources to make that even imaginable and possible.

Nora: 

Thank you so much, Kermit.

David: 

Professor Keramet Reiter, Hector Cervantes, thank you so much for joining us today. Everything you said was amazing, educational, and we thank you so much for the love and the good that you're doing in our communities and helping and marginalized group of individuals who need support. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Professor Keramet Reiter:

Thanks for your work highlighting these great communities.

Hector Cervantes:

Thank you for having us.

David:

Oh, and most importantly, zot zot!

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

David: 

What a great episode, and thanks again to Professor Keramet Reiter and Hector Cervantes for joining us and giving us such a great insight into the programs they run and how they're affecting lives and really changing the viewpoints within higher education on how to expand the educational message to a group of individuals that probably weren't getting that message before the message of, you know, hope and advancement. And really, ensuring that we're, you know, serving community members that may not have been served before, so we’re really happy to hear that message today.

Nora: 

Yes, thank you. We are very, very thankful to Professor Reiter and to also Hector. Thank you so much for your time and especially Hector. Thank you so much for your vulnerability and for sharing your story and for serving as a great example to others that may be in a similar situation. And I also wanted to do a very quick shout out to my current campus where I'm working to Cal Poly Humboldt for their work with supporting formerly incarcerated individuals. So we currently have project rebound that has been on campus for about the last two to three years. So definitely I am so proud to be a part of the institution. Seeing the work that is being done in that realm, just very hopeful and very excited about the work that.

David: 

A couple of things that stood out to me in this episode, specifically from Hector was this discussion about how education changed his outlook on life and worldview. So I think just having somebody give an investment in him and people like him because he, you know, kind of indicating that he lived a life of being ignored, not a lot of resources. And then finally, somebody investing in him and finally feeling the value that that he innately has as a human being, so that that was really insightful. And also this idea that we're failing incarcerated individuals twice, once with the poor resources before individuals are incarcerated and then failing them again after incarceration is over. So not give it the the tools to be successful. Professor Reiter mentioned this as well in the interview that they were providing education to somebody that had a prison sentence where they were not going to leave the prison system. So the conversation arose, why even provide education if they're not going to leave? Well, that individual's prison sentence was commuted or reduced, I can’t remember exactly what the term was, but they ended up leaving the system. They ended up having an education through the UC system after leaving, and now they have skills to be able to provide in the workforce. And again, they feel that value because they've been invested in. So it's a great program and an investment in people, it’s healing and it's empowering. Then Professor Reiter said that some of the difficult things to contend with are technology within the prison system. A lot of you know, paper pushing is occurring there, but also changing the system itself in higher education, I thought it was really insightful.  Sometimes the education system is harder to change than the prison system; they're all big bureaucracies, so that's why I said earlier at the top of this episode that it's so important to share this to create awareness about these programs actually happening and actually making meaningful changes. So if you don't have this program at your institution, whether you're a Community College, a state school or a research university, it is possible. UC Irvine has shown a path toward success with these prison education pipeline programs.

Nora: 

And I actually want to go to your second point, David. How those individuals that have been incarcerated have been failed twice, first with not having adequate resources before incarceration, and then, once the incarceration is over. And I think that this helps bring forward to us the fact that the conversation is not something to necessarily. Having one somebody has already been incarcerated, or when they're entering or trying to enter college. This helps us realize, based on the statistics that we were discussing previously, that with looking at the inequity that exists with high school graduation rates, that the resources that what you meant by. Having failed the individual way before, the point of even having contact with the criminal justice. So there are things at the level of the K through 12 system, there's things within the community, there's things within systems and organizational systems that can be changed and need reform. So we're being preventative and don't need to get to the point of incarceration. So thank you so much for highlighting that.

David: 

And there's a couple of other points that I want to highlight real quickly before we wrap up our substantive talk on the issue. And I'm going put these links in the episode so you could find them. But you heard in the interview that I met Hector and Professor Reiter at a continuing legal education seminar that they put together earlier in the year 2023, and they had a couple of important stats they do want to share, but I'll have those links in the actual episode itself, which is at least 95% of prisoners will eventually be released, but many lack tools to compete in today's job market or pursue degrees. according to a recent report, every $1.00 invested in prison education generates $5 in economic returns for society. So I'll put a link in this episode everybody, so you can find that research and additionally it may help you do some research on your own if you're interested in jumping a little bit deeper. Into this topic.

Nora: 

One last thing that I definitely wanted to say coming from my personal experience working with individuals that have had incarceration in their records several years ago, it's been, it's been actually many. Now I used to work as an employment services counselor for the County of Riverside. In this work, we would have pretty intensive intake work with our clients trying to find out what were the barriers to employment. If the if the client had a criminal record, there would be shame and embarrassment oftentimes coming from the client. And I would always share with them like you know there, there is definitely no need to feel that embarrassment and that shame the outcomes of things often happen. Because of lack of opportunity because of matters that really sometimes force individuals to make choices that they would not otherwise make if they had the appropriate support and resources in place. And what is the most important thing after having some like a situation where we may have something in our record, the most important piece of it is being able to become empowered with the experience, learning from it and then being able to take something that is going to help you a your family grow individually, so I am just so happy that we were able to talk to Hector today and Hector, thank you so much for showing this this resilience. I don't like to word use the word resilience because the word resilience sometimes doesn't feel like an option, so I'm going to say. Your courage and your strength and your vulnerability. Sharing your story.

David: 

And the courage of professor, writer as well. I think there is definitely a stigma when it comes to doing this work, I think people have preconceived notions and I am so happy that UC Irvine has a highly qualified professor that is willing to break down those barriers of stigma and empower that group of individuals. We offer a huge thank you to Professor Reiter as well for engaging in that work.

Nora: 

One thing that I really, absolutely love, and you all will obviously have heard,  is Professor Reiter’s humility and a modesty in her work. Often times in the interview she was like, this isn't my work. This isn't me. This is Hector. This is the individuals that are taking the work, and my goal is that they're going to replace me in this type of work so that I absolutely loved.

David: 

So thank you again and. Yeah, I I think we're moving on to the house cleaning part of the episode. I wanted to mention something really quickly, Nora. I'm deviating from my notes, everybody. We have notes. We have episode notes to keep us on track, but I forgot to mention this.

Nora: 

No, please don't deviate from them. You know that I'm going freak out.

David: 

OK, so we use Buzz Sprout to help us manage our episodes, they're not sponsoring us. But one of the things that's really cool about that program is that you can see where people are listening in from and we have some avid listener who's listened to ever episode from Frankfurt, Germany. So if you're listening, whoever you are in Germany, I I say to you, “danke schoen”, and keep on listening and tell other people.

Nora: 

Yes, thank you so much. Yeah, we are very excited and pleased. If you are listening to us, we hope that you maybe put a message somewhere so we can connect and like personally give you a thank you next time by first name if you're comfortable with it.

David: 

Speaking of which, you could send us a message. This is the house cleaning part. You could e-mail us at thedogoodteam@gmail.com. You could let us know how we're doing, give us feedback and give us suggestions for following interviews, or if you're the listener from Germany, let us know who you are and we would love to have a conversation with you. Also, follow us on social media. We're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn. The links are always in the description of the podcast, so please check it out. And please engage with our podcast. So if you're listening to this on Apple or Spotify, leave us Five Star review because it helps other people find the episode. You know, even we said it before, even if you don't like our episode, still leave the five star review because it helps people find us. But you could be constructive if you don't like us. You don't have to be too harsh on us or just starting out here.

Nora: 

We're very sensitive, so please, please be very careful with our fragile hearts.

David: 

With our fragile heart. Yeah, I think that's it. Am I missing anything in terms of the House cleaning order?

Speaker 2

No, just, you know, in terms of quick reminder of those of you who are asking well, how how do I help? So again, David has really reiterated this a ton and this like has been reinforced pretty much by all of our guests is that to share the story, to share information about, you know, the cause, to share just anything that stands out to you about the episode, share it with others. You know, as we kind of shared a little bit about this episode and just generally all episodes, the topic isn't something that necessarily is meant to only be isolated and kept within a certain realm, like for example, today it's not just intended to be kept within higher Ed. There are different ways that the story can be impactful and helpful to others, and then you know also donating and volunteering. There is an episode or there was an interview that we had a little while back with one of our guests that you know, I really loved how she highlighted. How individuals can help so kind of like assessing what your strengths are, what you personally have that you enjoy doing and supporting and others and then seeing how you're able to connect that to the organization that you're interested in because your personal strengths and your talents can be put to use in so many different ways. With various organizations, so I think that's all I have, David.

David: 

Alright everybody, thanks so much for listening to today's episode. We promised that we won't have such a big gap in the next episode that we post. We're currently working and editing it right now. We're really excited about that future episode, so.

Nora: 

There's some good stuff coming.

David: 

Good stuff coming. So everybody in honor of the Anteaters, zot zot, don't forget to do some good and spread some love together. And remember everybody. Together, we're a good team. 

Nora: 

Juntos, somos un buen equipo. 

David: 

Everybody take care. See you soon.