News and Events
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Events
Inside Out Speaker Series: Fall 2025
Monday, Aug. 25: Murals! Curator Genevieve Cortinovis will give a brief presentation on the history of murals; then artist-in-residence Stan Chisholm and his workshop will discuss the murals they have been painting at ERDCC. Cortinovis is Associate Curator of Decorative Arts and Design at the Saint Louis Art Museum. She holds a master’s degree in the history of decorative arts, design, and material culture from the Bard Graduate Center.
Monday, Sept. 29: The Kendrick Smith Quartet will perform and discuss jazz. Saxophonist, composer, and arranger Kendrick Smith has a career that spans two decades. Born and raised in East St. Louis, Illinois, he studied under the tutelage of the late great Hamiet Bluiett and has shared the bandstand with musicians such as Branford Marsalis, Russell Gunn, and Kamasi Washington, to name a few. With three albums under his name, he is director of the “Yes Jazz” Big Band, Founder of the All-Star Jazz Festival, CEO of Truly Reeds, and director of the nonprofit “Build A Yes” Jazz Music Society, which works to create more opportunities for musicians and the communities they serve.
Monday, Nov. 3: R. J. Hartbeck will present his photography of artist’s studios in St. Louis. His photographs will be the basis of a discussion of artistic process, St. Louis art, as well as the rewards and challenges of making a living as a freelancer. This discussion will be moderated by Stan Chisholm, artist-in-residence of Saint Louis University’s Prison Education Program. Hartbeck is a freelance commercial photographer and producer based in St. Louis. His storytelling is informed by his love for street photography and the belief that photos should be a way to connect with one another.
Monday, Nov. 17: Liza Hudock will read and discuss her poetry. She is the author of Reveille (Flood Editions, 2025), lyric poems addressed to—among other things—the loss of her mother, her brother’s incarceration, and ravages of the opioid epidemic. Daisy Fried comments, “I love Liza Hudock’s poems, for their tact and their feeling, their amusement and curiosity, their skill and attractive oddity, their clarity and complication, their fascinations and quiet audacities, all in the service of thinking about—among other things—family relationships, familial troubles, and the experience of great loss.” Hudock lives in Detroit, Michigan. A veteran of the U.S. Coast Guard, she received her MFA from Warren Wilson College. Reveille is her first collection of poems.
These events are open to guests of the Prison Education Program. If you are interested in attending any of these events, please contact Mary Reising at mary.reising@slu.edu.
Summer 2025 Courses
BIOLOGY 1460
Taught by Jonathan Fisher, Ph.D., this course will explore exercise metabolism, how the body responds and adapts to exercise, and the health implications of physically active and sedentary lifestyles. For non-science majors
POLS 1100
Taught by Chris Duncan, Ph.D., this course is designed to provide students with an introduction to politics and government in the U.S. The course will focus primarily on political institutions (the rules and constraints placed upon political actors operating in the three branches of government) and mass behavior (how citizens behave and interpret the political world).
News
Higher Education in Prison
Open Campus: Adams State University hires David Carrillo as adjunct professor making Colorado one of the first states to employ an incarcerated professor.
Unlocking Potential: Basia Skudrzyk and the STEM OPS Journey: Follow Basia's journey from incarceration to doctoral studies in business administration focusing on supply chain management and food insecurity at the University of Missouri–St. Louis (UMSL) and Business Journals Top 40 Under 40.
Achieving Liftoff: From Incarceration to Graduation: Raymond Haug was caught in a cycle of addiction, homelessness and prison. With the help of scholarships and a campus community, he transformed his life and found a calling in mechanical engineering.
Voices of Incarcerated People
The XSTREAM Media Center located in the Eastern Reception Diagnostic and Correction Center was featured in the latest edition of The Prison Journalism Project (PJP) newsletter. PJP seeks to empower marginalized communities by bringing transparency to the world of mass incarceration through journalism.
Voices of Reentry: This project invites formerly incarcerated people to tell their stories and, through storytelling and community dialogue, engages the public in conversation about the role we can all play in welcoming returning citizens into our communities.
Inside Wire: Colorado Prison Radio beams music, stories, news and entertainment into prisons across Colorado and broadcasts its sounds to listeners outside facilities as well, across the U.S. and beyond.
Legal Aid Justice Center: The Legal Aid Justice Center partners with communities and clients to achieve justice by dismantling systems that create and perpetuate poverty.