Woodbourne, NY: Woodbourne Correctional Facility

I am receiving Bard College’s John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service at commencement exercises for graduates of the Bard Prison Initiative (BPI).  According to the BPI Wikipedia entry, the program offers a liberal arts degree to incarcerated individuals in five different prisons in New York state.  It enrolls nearly 200 students and is one of the few degree-granting programs that exists since the government eliminated funding for prison education in 1995.