April 27, 2018 // Local

Around the Diocese: April 29, 2018

Todays Catholic

Holy Cross College hosts national consortium

NOTRE DAME — Holy Cross College and the University of Notre Dame hosted the 2018 Convening of the Consortium for the Liberal Arts in Prison in early April, led by the Bard College Prison Initiative from upstate New York.

Consortium representatives from across the country met for a site visit to Westville Correctional Facility, where they had the opportunity to meet Holy Cross College students enrolled in the Moreau College Initiative, formerly Westville Education Initiative. Colleagues who lead similar programs at Yale, Washington University-St. Louis, Goucher, Grinnell, Wesleyan-Connecticut, Bennington, Hampshire and the University of Iowa later gathered at Holy Cross College for a reception to kick off three days of planning sessions and meetings with consortium members. Representatives from the Vera Institute of Justice and Koch Industries, as well as directors and commissioners from the Indiana, Tennessee and Connecticut departments of corrections also shared their work.

“It was an honor to host colleagues from across the United States, including our partners in departments of corrections, who are committed to educating incarcerated students,” stated Holy Cross College Provost Dr. Justin Watson. “This endeavor affirms our Catholic mission of reaching out to the marginalized and the forgotten.”

As a member of the BPI Consortium, Holy Cross College has worked together with the University of Notre Dame and the Indiana Department of Corrections since 2013 to guide and oversee the Westville Education Initiative. Through this academic collaboration, faculty from both institutions offer a wide range of courses that lead incarcerated students to earn Associate and Bachelor of Arts degrees from Holy Cross College.

“This program has deepened the academic ethos of our community,” said Dr. Michael Griffin, senior vice president at Holy Cross College. “From the beginning, what impressed us is the fact that the intellectual life is at the heart of this endeavor. The focus is on developing top-notch student-scholars, and it just turns out that some of the best prospects are incarcerated, so we bring the collegiate life to them.”

For more about Holy Cross College, visit www.hcc-nd.edu.

Jose Solis portrays the namesake fiddler in a recent St. Elizabeth Ann Seton School drama club Junior Broadway version of the musical “Fiddler on the Roof,” mounted as the Fort Wayne school’s 2018 production. Teachers Nancy Laudeman and Kristin Spoltman led the students in presenting the shows April 13-14. — Provided by Emily Diehm