SDSU’s programs such as Project Rebound and VISTA are transforming lives of incarcerated individuals by providing education and rehabilitation, significantly reducing recidivism and fostering successful societal reintegration.
A year before Stephanie Majsterski was released from incarceration, she noticed a flier with a picture of a woman wearing a red and black cap and gown standing in front of Hepner Hall, a familiar landmark to her.
“Why is this picture here,” Majsterski thought to herself at the time. “Does anyone know I used to go to SDSU?”
Prior to her arrest in 2017, Majsterski was attending San Diego State University (SDSU). When she saw the woman in the picture, she made it a priority to figure out who she was.
Whether it was by coincidence or fate —her “bunkie”— the person who shared the cell with her at the time, not only knew who the woman in the picture was, but had her contact as well.
In that moment of awe, Majsterski said she was inspired to go back to school to finish her degree.
It turned out the woman in the picture was Laura Murray. Formerly incarcerated, Murray graduated from SDSU with the help of Project Rebound (PR), a program that helps formerly incarcerated students earn their bachelor’s and master’s degrees at California State Universities (CSU).
With Murray’s ties to PR, she and Majsterski became pen pals. Before her release date, Majsterski received a letter from SDSU to welcome her back to campus through the help of the program.
Although recidivism —or the rate at which people return to prison after being released—has dropped since 2005 according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the rate of relapse among people 24 or younger is stubbornly high at 81% within five years of release.
At SDSU, a fierce group of scholars and staff are collaborating and working toward offering alternatives to currently incarcerated students.
In April of 2022, SDSU became one of the 73 colleges part of the Second Chance Pell Grant Experiment, a nationwide initiative to reduce recidivism and help incarcerated individuals access federal need-based financial aid to pursue educational programs.
The university entered into an agreement with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to support the Bachelor of Arts at Centinela State Prison in Imperial County in 2023.
Professor Annie Buckley, known for her award-winning work incorporating art with social justice, launched the BA degree at Centinela State Prison with colleagues at SDSU and directs the program. Program Coordinator Azucena Wood Hardesty joined shortly after and helped gather input on the program name, VISTA (Valuing Incarcerated Scholars through Academia).
Three years in the making, VISTA is centered around a new B.A. degree in interdisciplinary studies in collaboration with Centinela. It is offered to students who have completed a two-year associate degree for transfer (ADT) while incarcerated.
What sets this program apart from others is its focus on hands-on learning. Three creative fields, communication, journalism and media studies and art and design, can be chosen by students to help them learn the tools to communicate, and expand their view of the world through dialogue and projects.
“We wanted to cultivate creative and critical thinking and empower students with the tools to tell their own and other stories,” Buckley said to the SDSU News Center. “We also considered the careers that this would open to them would most likely have fewer barriers to entry for people who are formerly incarcerated than some fields.”
VISTA is designed to serve students who are incarcerated from both the general population and those who have been separated into a more restricted population, including those convicted of more severe offenses, ex-gang members or those who identify as LGBTQ.
Arthur Santana, journalism professor at SDSU, is a member of VISTA’s faculty. Through his interaction with the students at Centinela, Santana said he was impressed with the knowledge and passion they showed in earning their degree.
Understanding that there may be stigmas, Santana said that the students are just people trying to better themselves through the power of education.
“They are scholars who are engaged in the act and the practice of learning about new material,” Santana said. “Every single one of them is leaning forward in the class and wanting to learn more, just excited about the learning process. I have nothing but respect for that.”
Buckley is also the founder and executive director of the Prison Arts Collective (PAC). PAC is a statewide Arts in Corrections program, with its headquarters in the School of Art and Design at SDSU.
According to its mission statement, PAC believes in art as a human right, and that the capacity of art cultivates community and positive change.
Project Rebound’s Founding Executive Director Alan Mobley, who is also a professor of criminal justice and public affairs at SDSU, said that he has seen incredible growth in the power of transformative justice which shows through the increased access to higher education for underserved populations.
“It's remarkably successful, right,” Mobley said. “No one can argue with the results that, when folks who were in prison or formerly incarcerated people who are out of prison, when they enter higher education, they tend to graduate at rates much, much higher than the average student.”
According to Project Rebound’s 2022 report, the number of annual graduates increased by 151% from 61 graduates in the Class of 2019 to 151 graduates in the Class of 2022.
“How many Project Rebound students are going back to prison? Virtually none, reading our recidivism rate is something like 1% compared to the contemporary recidivism rate being around 50%, Mobely said.”
According to the U.S Department of Justice, research shows that inmates who participate in correctional education programs have 43% lower odds of returning to prison than those who do not get any education while imprisoned, and that every dollar spent on prison education saves four to five dollars on the costs of re-incarceration.
Programs such as PR, PAC and VISTA are what’s paving the way for formerly and currently incarcerated students. According to the people who know the programs best, through the power of art, education and rehabilitation, SDSU’s work towards education during and after prison is showing great success rates.
Buckley said that with the thousands of people she has worked with in prisons over the last 10 years, she has noted how these types of programs make an impact on their mindset.
“What I hear so often is how much the experience humanizes them,” Buckley said. “It never occurred to me that it was a privilege to take it for granted that I'm treated like a human.”
A lot of the students in the VISTA program are first generation students.
“We started by being part of the Second Chance Pell, so everybody calls it a second chance…But what I saw, it was their first chance at getting an education,” Coordinator of VISTA, Azucena Wood Hardesty said.
There are currently 34 students in the first cohorts of the VISTA program. Since it launched in 2023, two students have been released from the correctional institution and are enrolling in summer classes at SDSU.
On March 16, Buckley received a $1 million dollar grant from the Mellon Foundation to further the university’s mission to bring higher education to prisons, as it has proven its value.
This upcoming August, VISTA plans to offer a journalism degree and will include expanding to an additional degree in humanities, with the Mellon grant.
“We obviously would like to expand to other classes and other yards (at Centinela Prison) that we're working on, which aren't accessible to more people,” Wood Hardesty said. “One thing that I would really like is if we could expand to a women's prison.”
With the success SDSU has had with its programs, education has shown that it is a key factor in transformation. Opportunities given by these programs have brought light to incarcerated individuals, giving them a chance to rehabilitate, turn their life around and make a positive impact.
“Before I knew that I was even going to be allowed back on campus as a person with a felony, I had so much hope from getting that San Diego State Project Rebound letter while I was in prison,” Majsterski said. “I just said, ‘I don't know what it's going to take, but I'm going to be that girl in the cap and gown in front of Hepner Hall.’”
In May, she will be.
Majsterski will be graduating with her B.A. in sociology and has also been admitted to the 2024 Masters of Fine Arts graduate program at SDSU.
This project was produced as part of the capstone class for journalism majors at San Diego State University’s School of Journalism and Media Studies. The class, JMS 550 Multimedia News Lab, was taught in the spring of 2024. Students were exposed to different generative AI tools, including Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity.ai, Google’s Gemini, Adobe Express’ Text to Image, and ChatGPT 3.5, which assisted in some aspects of content creation. These tools were employed for generating story ideas, structuring outlines, crafting headlines and decks, conducting topic research, and summarizing information. While exploring these tools, the class engaged in discussions about ethical and professional consequences of using AI in journalism. At all times, critical human judgment remained essential. We acknowledge the ethical considerations and encourage transparency when incorporating AI-generated content. For more information about class assignments and class dynamic when using generative AI, you can contact professor Lourdes Cueva Chacon at lcuevachacon@sdsu.edu.