About.Launched in 2016, the UCLA Prison Education Program creates innovative courses that enable faculty and students at the University of California, Los Angeles to learn from, and alongside, participants incarcerated at the California Institute for Women (CIW) and Barry J. Nidorf Juvenile Hall (BJN).
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Established in 2016.The mission of the UCLA Prison Education Program is to make postsecondary education accessible to women and young people who are currently incarcerated, and to bring UCLA faculty and students to learn alongside them, thereby challenging bias, discrimination, and injustice in a shared and collaborative learning experience.
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Program StructureThe program comprises of several committees which include UCLA faculty, students and community volunteers. The current committee list includes: communication, curriculum, evaluation and development. Steering committee oversees the entire operation and communication between these units.
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Our Team
Bryonn Bain
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Danielle DupoyDanielle is a doctoral student at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. She began her public health career as a social epidemiologist at the Sinai Urban Health Institute (Chicago) in 2006. Since then, she has directed and evaluated programs and initiatives related to racial disparities and social equity in the fields of maternal and child health, breast cancer care, urban agriculture and violence. In 2013, Danielle enrolled in the Community Health Sciences program at UCLA with a minor in Law to study incarceration and its’ effect on community wellbeing. She devotes her time to examining the U.S. justice system; its’ effectiveness as a publicly funded institution and as a social determinant of health in Black U.S. communities. Since coming to UCLA, Danielle has co-founded the UCLA Justice Work Group, is a member of the University of California Justice & Health Consortium and a 2015 Justice Policy Network Fellow. Locally, she has worked with the Violence Prevention Coalition of LA, helped establish the first UCLA college course for high school graduates incarcerated in the LA county juvenile detention system and is currently the Assistant Director for 'Million Dollar Hoods'
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Ryan Lo
Amber West
Dr. Amber West is a Lecturer in Writing Programs. Her interests include poetry and poetics, puppet theater, race and gender studies, performance studies, intersectionality, and service learning.West earned her B.A. in Literature & Creative Writing from University of California, Santa Cruz, M.F.A. in Creative Writing from New York University, and Ph.D. in English from University of Connecticut.West’s scholarship has been published in the Journal of Research on Women & Gender, Puppetry International, Episodes from a History of Undoing: The Heritage of Female Subversiveness, and The Routledge Companion to Puppetry & Material Performance.
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Mary Frances Corey
Mary F. Corey is a Senior Lecturer in American history at UCLA specializing in intellectual history, popular culture and Black nationalism. She is the author of The World Through a Monocle: The New Yorker at Midcentury (Harvard University Press) and is currently working on a book about Black Blackface performance, tentatively titled "They Stooped to Conquer.” Dr. Corey is a recipient of the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award.
Paul VonBlum
Paul Von Blum is Senior Lecturer in African American Studies and Communication Studies at UCLA. He has taught at the University of California since 1968, serving 11 years at UC Berkeley before arriving at UCLA in 1980. He is the author of six books and numerous articles on art, culture, education, and politics. His most recent book is “A Life at the Margins: Keeping the Political Vision,” his 2011 memoir that chronicles almost 50 years of political activism, starting with his civil rights work in the South and elsewhere in the early 1960s.
Donna Malmud
Donna Malamud has volunteered at CIW for the past eight years in restorative justice and in Jewish programming. She also serves as volunteer coordinator for Kids in the Spotlight (KITS), which provides hands-on film-making experience to youth living in group foster homes. In the 1970s she co-founded iBrowse Bookstore & Coffeehouse and InTouch office massage & Massage-AGrams.
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David Goldman
I'm the Program Director for the Humanities and Social Sciences at UCLA Extension. I'm also a teacher, a philosopher, and a father.
Lauri Mattenson
Lauri Mattenson is a Lecturer with UCLA Writing Programs. Each summer, she works with New Student and Transition Programs to represent UCLA faculty in a series of welcome speeches for incoming freshmen. Her website (www.LauriMattenson.com) offers motivational articles for teachers and students as well as personal essays inspired by the main theme of “Trusting the Body to Teach the Mind.” Previous publications include: The Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Mother Company, The Jewish Journal (“Small Steps on New Ground for Muslims and Jews”; “Finding my Place in History: A Love Letter for Father’s Day”), Massage Magazine, Turning Wheel: The Journal of Socially Engaged Buddhism, Bruinlink, and The Daily Bruin. Her ebook, BACKBONE: A BodyMind Breakthrough, illustrated by Arnel Baluyot with foreword by Darren Levine of Krav Maga Worldwide, is currently available on Amazon.com.
Dana Cairns Watson
Dr. Dana Cairns Watson is a Continuing Lecturer is UCLA’s Writing Programs and the HSSEAS Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. She teaches composition, public science writing, and academic engineering writing. She is the author of Gertrude Stein and The Essence of What Happens, “Building a Better Reader: The Gertrude Stein First Reader and Three Plays,” and “‘New Terms of Worth’: The Inclusive Economics of Robert Frost’s Poetry."
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Liz Galvin Lew
Liz Galvin Lew has a Ph.D. in Social Sciences and Comparative Education from UCLA, and an M.Ed. in Teaching Second Languages and Cultures from the University of Minnesota. She has taught English learners of all ages, from kindergarten to graduate school. Since 2007, she has been teaching ESL and Composition at UCLA. Her teaching and research interests include second language composition and bilingual education. She teaches ESL 39C, English Composition 2i, and English Composition 131B.
Alex Spokoyny
Alex Spokoyny is currently an Assistant Professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA and a faculty member of the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). Prior to this he received a Ph.D. from Northwestern University in inorganic and materials chemistry and conducted a post-doctoral stint at MIT in chemical biology. His group’s research encompasses an interdisciplinary approach focusing on pressing problems in chemistry, biology, medicine and materials science. He has co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed manuscripts and given over 60 invited lectures. His research has been covered by Science, Nature, C&EN and other popular science news outlets. Alex is also a recipient of several national awards including the recent Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship. Alex is passionate about social justice and prison education and has been involved with the UCLA Prison Education Program focusing on improving STEM literacy within prison population.
Matthew Mizel
Student Advisory Group Member: Matthew Mizel is a third year doctoral student in social welfare whose research interests include implicit bias, race, reentry from incarceration, and criminal desistance. He received his MSW from UCLA and his BA from Stanford University in psychology with honors. Matthew worked as a summer associate at the RAND Corporation where he studied racial inequality in school suspension. Over the prior twelve years, he has taught over 1,000 creative writing classes to incarcerated youth through the non-profit InsideOut Writers. Matthew also mentors young people after their release from incarceration through the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC).
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How to get involved?To learn how you can contribute to our effort, please contact our Administrative Director: Rosie Rios (E-mail - rosierios.uclaprisonedu "at" gmail.com).
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