PEP Teaching Fellowship

Welcome!

Many of us are currently teaching incarcerated students and may not even know it. The purpose of this group is to bring together faculty who work with incarcerated and justice-impacted students both inside and outside prison walls to be a teaching fellow with the Prison Education Partnership at UMA.

Beginning in Spring 2022 and spanning the 2022 calendar year, selected fellows will be asked to attend professional workshops focused on prison pedagogy, engage in a reading discussion group, and then develop or modify a course that reflects this work. We know that we all have a lot to learn, and want to support a cohort of faculty that are engaged in this work. A modest stipend of $800 will be available to participants in $400 increments following the close of the Spring 2022 and Fall 2022 semesters.

The PEP Teaching Fellowship is one facet of the larger Mellon Foundation-supported Prison Education Partnership at UMA. Please address any questions to the PEP office at umapep@maine.edu.

Expectations

Fellows will participate in a range of PEP-related events and pedagogy workshops, as often as they have the capacity to do so, over the Spring 2022 and Fall 2022 semesters. These opportunities will include teaching workshops, speakers on prison abolition and the carceral state, and informal discussion and reading groups. These events will be virtual and can be attended from a distance in almost all cases.

Fellows will use what they have learned on trauma-informed and anti-racist pedagogies to complete and share a new or modified syllabus and 1-2 sample assignments by December 2022. These materials will be shared within the group, with the option to make public on the UMA PEP website at the faculty member’s discretion.

Who should apply?

• Applicants do not need to have prior experience teaching incarcerated students or working within the justice system.
• Applicants may be teaching in any field. We warmly welcome all interested applicants, including graduate students and adjunct faculty, to apply.
• Applicants should be affiliated with a higher education institution with Second Chance Pell eligibility or are able to offer courses for credit without charging students.
• Applicants should have at least two years of experience teaching in higher education.

How to apply

Compose a 1-2 page statement explaining your interest in the course that addresses the following two prompts:

• What are your professional development goals as they relate to working with students impacted by the justice system?
• What course do you plan to develop/modify over the course of this project? Why are you choosing that course to focus on?

Applications are now closed. Decisions will be sent out by the end of January. The first events will begin in February 2022.