ECCE Speaker Series - Fall 2020
What is it like teaching in prison? Magic Wade taught a college course to 15
incarcerated men at the Danville Correctional Center through the Education
Justice Project. In this lecture, she
reflects upon her experiences teaching in the prison, shares her thoughts on
expanding educational opportunities to incarcerated individuals, and answers
questions about prison-based higher education in the US.
Magic Wade holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and has been
a faculty member
in the Political Science Department at UIS since
2015. Her research and teaching evaluate
the
effectiveness of government policies aimed at
alleviating social problems related to human welfare, public health, criminal
justice, and economic inequality. In
addition to being an assistant professor at UIS, Dr. Wade works with the
Education Justice Project at the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign
(EJP). EJP strives to be a model college
in prison program and offers for-credit courses and other educational
programming to incarcerated men at the Danville Correctional Center in Danville,
Illinois. Dr. Wade has served as an
instructor with EJP and is currently the for-credit course coordinator for the
project, where she assists with the recruitment, hiring, and training of college
instructors to work within the prison
