Juwan Z. Bennett
University of Cincinnati
Dr. J.Z. Bennett is an assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Bennett is a Temple Made student, earning his BA, MA, and PhD in Criminal Justice from Temple University. He completed a Post-Doctoral fellowship in the Center for Urban Education (CUE) at the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests include juvenile life without parole (JLWOP), developmental and life course criminology, and the relationships between education and crime/delinquency. He also serves as the co-founder of the Temple University Urban Youth Leadership Academy, a program designed to equip the next generation of leaders. Dr. Bennett has been actively involved with The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program® since 2016 and is a member of the Graterford Think Tank. A fun fact about Dr. Bennett is that he is an accomplished musician, once performing live for President Obama.
Shaul Cohen
University of Oregon
Shaul Cohen is a professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Oregon, where he directs both the Prison Education Program and the Carnegie Global Oregon Ethics Program. His primary research area is ethno-territorial conflict, and he has conducted extensive fieldwork in Israel/Palestine and Northern Ireland. His work has been supported by fellowships from the MacArthur Trust, the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and by grants from the Ford and Andrew Mellon Foundations. He is a member of the international executive board of The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program®, and has been creating educational opportunities in Oregon’s prisons since 2010.
Jeri Kirby
Fairmont State University
Jeri Kirby is an associate professor of criminal justice at Fairmont State University in West Virginia. She earned a PhD, MA, and BA from West Virginia University. She has taught Inside-Out courses for several years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Hazelton and has conducted multiple think tanks there.
Schannae Lucas
California Lutheran University
Schannae Lucas is a Professor and Chair of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department at California Lutheran University. Dr. Lucas has been actively involved in The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program® since 2016, and she has taught Inside-Out courses over the years in correctional institutions and re-entry facilities. Dr. Lucas earned her B.A. at the University of California, Irvine, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Washington State University. Her primary research areas are family violence, prison education, and re-entry where she also runs the CLU “Pathway 101” workshop program which supports pro-social skill-based workshops in correctional institutions.
Lori Pompa
Temple University
Lori Pompa has been going into prisons for more than 35 years and has taken thousands of students (and others) into correctional facilities through a variety of courses and exchanges during that time. She has been on the Criminal Justice faculty at Temple University since 1992, and is Founder and Executive Director of The Inside-Out Center at Temple University, International Headquarters of The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program®, which she began as a single class in 1997. As a 2003 Soros Justice Senior Fellow, Lori collaborated with others on both sides of the prison wall to develop Inside-Out into an international model of transformative pedagogy. Click here for more.
Over the past 17 years, 1,450 college and university instructors from throughout the U.S. and several other countries have taken part in the Inside-Out Training Institute, of which 91 have been held to date. She has co-facilitated (or been involved in) each of those trainings. Hundreds of Inside-Out classes have been offered so far, involving more than 65,000 inside (incarcerated) and outside (campus-based) students. Lori regularly speaks about Inside-Out’s history and contributions, most notably at the Clinton School of Public Service, at the Fetzer Institute’s Global Gathering on Love and Forgiveness in Assisi, Italy, at the University of Sydney in Australia, and at Durham University in the U.K.
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Gabby Yearwood
University of Pittsburgh
Gabby M.H. Yearwood is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and Managing Faculty Director for the Center for Civil Rights and Racial Justice in the Law School at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a socio-cultural anthropologist earning his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in Anthropology focusing in Black Diaspora Studies and Masculinity. His research interests include the social constructions of race and racism, masculinity, gender, sex, Black Feminist and Black Queer theory, anthropology of sport and Black Diaspora. Dr. Yearwood holds a secondary appointment with the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program at Pitt.
“I will seriously examine the process involved in my own teaching and how I approach it. I need to think more about having the courage to ‘let go’ a little more. I think that the inside students may have a powerful effect on outside students by humanizing issues (substantive) and the educational process. More aware of the differences in how men and women communicate and bond, and I’ll think more about this particularly as an educator. I’m encouraged that a genuine college course can be done inside.”
(Inside-Out Instructor, reflecting on the weeklong training)
“…I now understand why... the type of subject taught is irrelevant. That is, while the academic material is important, it is not about conveying the information to the students. Rather, it is about getting students to unfold and create, first, a relationship with themselves. By doing so, that is when students will have the ability to connect with both themselves and others on a deeper level, which is why the academic subject is irrelevant. Essentially, what I will take from this training is that despite how scholarly or academically knowledgeable I may be, it is not my job to push my achievements and knowledge of my specialty toward the students. I am only there to facilitate that deeper human connection, and that is essential.”
(Inside-Out Instructor, reflecting on the weeklong training)
