Congratulations, Class of 2020!

YPEI owes a special debt of gratitude to the graduating Class of 2020 for your extraordinary contributions to our program, your dedication to incarcerated students, and your commitment to the cause of higher education access in prison.

We have accomplished so much this year — from offering Yale credit-bearing courses and academic support programming in prisons, to winning formal faculty approval of our program at Yale. Class of 2020, you have been there every step of the way: providing peer tutoring support in prison, recruiting your favorite faculty members to teach, leading workshops inside prison, raising awareness on campus, and bringing Yale extra-curriculars inside prison walls. You helped our students publish historic Op-Eds in the YDN, you helped them remotely access Yale libraries to do research for papers, you submitted their writing to academic conferences, and you acknowledged and encouraged their success as students.

Thank you — and congratulations:

Graduating Members of YPEI's Student Advisory Committee (Pictured above, L to R:) Mery Concepcion (PC 2020) Minh Vu (SM 2020) Diana Saavedra (TC 2020) Past Summer Fellows: Mery Concepcion (PC 2020) Joshua Murray (SM 2020) Dustin Nguyen (BK 2020) Diana Saavedra (TC 2020)

Dwight Hall Urban Fellows: Meghana Mysore (DC 2020) Diana Saavedra (TC 2020) YPEI Program Volunteers: Edward Gelernt (DC 2020) Hersh Gupta (GH 2020) Joshua McGilvray (TD 2020) Adrian Rivera (JE 2020) Minh Vu (SM 2020) YPEI Transcription Network Members: Adriana Colon-Adorno (TC 2020) Claire Elliman (DC 2020) Jaster Francis (BR 2020) Alexyss Lange (TC 2020) Alice Lieu (TC 2020) Jasmyne Pierre (TC 2020) Joshua Murray (SM 2020) Diana Saavedra (TC 2020)

...with special gratitude to the entire Class of 2020 for selecting YPEI as a recipient of the Alternative Senior Class Gift, raising $1,100.08 to support Yale's commitment to higher education in prison program.

REFLECTIONS

"Working with the YPEI students has indelibly shaped my college experience, as well as my professional trajectory. As I begin a PhD in American Studies at Yale next year, I plan to pursue the master’s program in Public Humanities with emphasis on incarceration studies, as well as dedicate my teaching load during the third and fourth years of the PhD to YPEI... A major reason why I chose to pursue doctoral study at Yale is to continue sustained engagement with YPEI. This work is not merely marginal but a centerpiece to my studies, as I am dedicated to the public humanities as a scholarly method." -Minh Vu, Yale Class of 2020

"Thank you for everything. Thank you for keeping us connected and for continuing our education. We know this is a juggling act right now, but we appreciate YPEI. Many of us would not be the people we are today without this program." -Incarcerated YPEI student at MacDougall-Walker CI