For individuals who are incarcerated, access to high-quality Higher Education in Prison (HEP) programs can play a vital role in their pathway to personal and professional advancement and opportunity. HEP programs provide access to important skills and knowledge, foster personal growth, instill a sense of purpose, and help develop critical thinking skills and self-discipline.

Led by the opportunities created through the Second Chance Pell Initiative, many HEP programs have developed effective tools to meet the needs of their students within the context of their own programmatic and carceral settings. The recent historic legislation that reinstated Pell Grants and simplified the FASFA application has led to a significant increase in the number of HEP programs. This rapid growth presents an opportunity to identify, investigate, and share these effective tools with the broader HEP field.

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Request for Proposals

This Request for Proposals (RFP) invites HEP programs to propose a programmatic resource they currently use and believe could be refined and disseminated to help other HEP programs design and implement rigorous and equitable programs, especially those that address the highest leverage needs of students (see full RFP for details). Selected programs will comprise a cohort of grantees that receive two years of collective and individual support and coaching from AIR through a Community of Practice (CoP).

Over the course of the two-year initiative, AIR will facilitate learning and knowledge sharing events with the CoP; conduct site visits at each program to collect data on how its resource promotes student success; and work with grantees to help refine, package, and disseminate their resources into scalable, free, and open-access tools focused on the high leverage needs in the HEP field.

This two-year initiative will support the design and implementation of robust, high-quality, and comprehensive HEP programs through:

• Development of a repository of high-quality resources focused on the most critical needs of the field;
• Sharing of effective resources with other programs; and
• Generation of data understanding the effectiveness of resources in various contexts.

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Proposals are due on August 23, 2024. View the request for proposals.

AIR will be hosting an informational webinar on the initiative on July 31, 12:00-1:00 p.m. ET. Register for the webinar.‍

View Frequently Asked Questions about this opportunity.