For nearly five years, UNT Associate Professor Haley Zettler and a dedicated group of individuals called the UNT Restoration and Reentry Alliance have been doing incredible work through the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program, bringing traditional students to learn in a shared environment alongside incarcerated students at Bridgeport Correctional Center. Recently, the Mellon Foundation awarded a $500,000 grant to expand the program and increase transformational education opportunities in the region.

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program was founded in 1997 as an innovative educational approach tailored to facilitate dialogue across differences during a semester-long course and has since expanded into a variety of other forms.

Zettler, who worked as a probation officer before pursuing academia, first read about the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program in an NPR article while earning her Ph.D. Having kept the idea filed away for years, Zettler successfully started an Inside-Out program in partnership with a local prison while working at the University of Memphis.

After a move to North Texas in 2019, Zettler began teaching criminal justice courses at UNT and immediately floated the idea of starting a program to colleagues.

“I knew I wanted to start an Inside-Out program in Texas because no one had done it before,” Zettler says. “And then COVID happened, and I wasn't getting into a prison anytime soon. But I started putting feelers out again in 2021 and found the contact information for the chaplain and the warden at Bridgeport Correctional Center.”

After meeting with the team at Bridgeport, Zettler developed a criminal justice course as part of Inside-Out and sought the proper channels for course approval. Both the traditional students and the incarcerated students go through an application and interview process before being accepted into the course.

The first UNT Inside-Out course was taught in fall 2022, and there have since been four additional criminal justice classes offered and this semester is offering the first Inside-Out English class at the facility.

“Bringing people from the outside to learn from people on the inside transcends just higher education — it becomes a life changing experience,” Zettler says. “I think for both sides, it breaks down barriers of what we think prison is like, or people in prison are like. And it also breaks the barrier of the incarcerated individual seeing those on the outside as being against them.”

Now, through the Mellon Foundation grant, the program can extend its reach even further. Zettler says she and her colleagues had been trying to think of ways to grow the program since the beginning.

“But without resources, without time, without funding, without more people, we could only do so much with what we had,” she says. “I think we did a great job, but we were hitting that point when, to do what we want to do, we're going to have to find some more support. So, this is coming in at that crucial time.”

The transformational grant will fund the development and implementation of four credit-bearing courses at UNT, including Texas Core Curriculum credits in English, which transfer to any Texas higher education institution. Funding will also provide training for faculty and advisors — ensuring more access to equitable and inclusive education that fosters collaborative learning.

“As a result of this grant, we've already hired two academic counselors that will be helping those on the inside who want to apply for college before or during release transition to campus,” Zettler says. “We also have funding for the fellowships, which former inside students that come to UNT can apply for and work with our program.”

Zettler says Inside-Out provides higher education along with a human experience that can't be accomplished in a traditional model.

“That's why I'm so passionate about this program — I see how much of a difference it makes beyond completing a college class,” she says. “It changes the human experience.”

Looking forward, Zettler hopes to further expand reach, and has had instructors from across North Texas reach out about assisting with their training to begin their own programs.

“Growing higher education in correctional facilities in North Texas is a goal — by offering more classes, training more instructors, getting more classes and reaching more correctional institutions,” Zettler says. “And then the second goal is where those academic counselors and those fellowships come in: which is creating a pathway from taking a class while incarcerated to pursuing higher education on the outside.”