Issue 1 Opening Remarks: Founding Director Jennifer Lackey
To our students, our community, and those of you whom we may be meeting for the first time,
Welcome to the inaugural edition of the Northwestern Insider, the first magazine dedicated to showcasing the work of students from the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP)!
Our students’ desire to further their education—beyond the classroom—has resulted in some of the most profound and impactful writing I’ve had the privilege of reading. In the coming pages, I hope you’ll feel the same.
This magazine is the latest in a wave of firsts for NPEP over the past year. The first statewide applications for NPEP went out to facilities throughout Illinois, leading to nearly 400 people applying for spots within our Stateville third and fourth cohorts in the program. (If you applied but were not accepted this time, I encourage you to apply again for future cohorts.) At Stateville Correctional Center, our students were able to use computers for their coursework for the first time, significantly reducing the time it takes to write papers. On the outside, our first cohort of Justice Fellows is organizing panels to inform the larger community about issues of incarceration.
And on November 15, 2023, we celebrated our first bachelor’s degree-seeking cohort graduating from Northwestern University—the first time incarcerated students graduated from a top 10 university in the United States. In 2024, NPEP’s next cohort will graduate with their bachelor’s degrees, and in 2025, our Logan students will be the first incarcerated women in U.S. history to graduate from a top 10 university. As amazing as all of these firsts are, it is the powerful sense of community in NPEP—including our students, staff, faculty, volunteers, and loved ones—that sustains me. I hope that the Northwestern Insider, from its very first issue, brings us all together, providing yet another way for us to learn together, grieve and celebrate together, and grow together.
With warm wishes,
Jennifer Lackey, Founding Director of NPEP
