The seeds of the Education Preparedness Program were sown in 2015 with one blended Philosophy course entitled "Narrating freedom: Gender and Mass Incarceration" that enrolled 12 Marquette undergraduates and 12 incarcerated students from the Milwaukee Women's Correctional Center, alternating locations between MWCC and Marquette campus. The following is a list of blended courses that have been offered through the Education Preparedness Program. Learn about EPP's upcoming Course Offerings.

SOWJ 3170 Invisible Sentence: Policy and Practice for Children Who are Impacted by Parental Incarceration

Course Designer and Instructor: Ms. Wendy Volz Daniels

Class Details: Held at Racine Correctional Institution

Course Description: Increase understanding of the experiences and issues faced by children with incarcerated parents, focusing on racial, ethnic, and socioeconomically marginalized and disenfranchised populations. Evaluate appropriate evidence-based practices, strategies, and policies. Identify and evaluate evidence-based practices and policies that positively impact children with incarcerated parents. Develop legislative and advocacy strategies to promote these practices and policy change with an emphasis on collaborative learning.

EDU 1001 Psychology of Human Development of Children and Adolescents in Diverse Society

Course Designer and Instructor: Dr. Gabriel Velez

Course Details: Held at Milwaukee County House of Correction

Course Description: Applies psychological principles of child and adolescent development while critically examining variables (gender, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, culture, and language) that have an impact on physical, cognitive, social, emotional, and moral developmental outcomes. Twenty (20) hours of service-learning is required to complete the course.

ENGL 3261 Creative Writing: Poetry

Course Designer and Instructor: Dr. Angela Sorby

Course Details: Held at Racine Correctional Institution

Course Description: Learning to read and write poetry in the context of present-tense concerns and experiences. The course aims to forge a community of writers through workshop exercises and practice. Explore the relationship between textual revision and personal/social transformation. Discover how poetry connects to contemporary art, music, politics, and the environment.

HIST 4135 African American History

Course Designer and Instructor: Dr. Robert S. Smith

Course Details: Held at Milwaukee County House of Correction

Course Description: The role and response of African-Americans in American society with an emphasis on the problems of slavery, exclusion, accommodation, migration, urbanization, and currents of protest.

CRLS 3540 Surveillance, Law, and Society

Course Designer and Instructor: Dr. Anya Degenshein

Course Details: Helt at Marquette University

Course Description: When and why are we surveilled? Who benefits and who is harmed? What laws protect our privacy? Drawing on social science research, case law, journalism, and digital media, students will critically evaluate the socio-legal use and consequences of surveillance technologies with an emphasis on collaborative learning and reflection. No prior knowledge of the field is expected.

HIST 4150 A History of Native America

Course Designer and Instructor: Dr. Bryan Rindfleisch

Course Details: Held at Marquette University

Course Description: A survey of Native American history from 1491 (before Columbus’s “Discovery”) to the present. Explores the diverse cultures and histories of indigenous peoples in the present-day United States and focuses on particular themes such as colonization and decolonization, settler colonialism, intimacy and violence, removal and “survivance,” assimilation and allotment, along with sovereignty and self-determination. Grapples with contemporary issues related to Native mascots, treaties, casinos, cultural representation, and more.

Honors ESSV 1 Engaging Mass Incarceration: Justice, Freedom and the Arts

Course Designers and Instructors: Dr. Theresa Tobin, Ms. Marisola Xhelili Ciaccio, and Mr. Mahmood Watkins

Course Details: Held at Marquette University

Course Description: This collaborative, team-taught course explores social identity, oppression and freedom, and agency and responsibility through the lens of mass incarceration as a social system. The course offers an in-depth analysis of the effects of mass incarceration (particularly in Milwaukee) through a variety of methodologies and pedagogical strategies that focus on community immersion and collaboration. Students will critically engage with scholarly and creative material, participate in class discussions with community co-facilitators, read personal narratives about the direct impacts of incarceration, and develop methods for using their own agency in addressing these urgent social issues—through individual reflections and group projects that bring them in conversation with currently incarcerated populations.