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Access to higher education in prison improves the quality of life for those incarcerated and increases their opportunity to sustain a successful life after release.

Currently, University of Houston-Clear Lake offers three degree programs at TDCJ’s W.F. Ramsey Unit and Beto and Coffield units for men.

Glenn Sanford, dean of the College of Human Sciences and Humanities, said the program is now expanding to include women.

“The population of incarcerated women has been increasing, and we need to offer services to them as well,” he said. “There are some other opportunities for women to get their undergraduate degrees in Texas, but we are expanding to include a graduate program for women, which makes us one of the only programs in the entire country offering undergraduate and graduate programs for incarcerated men and women.”

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Christina Novakov-Ritchey, the program’s first-ever designated professor, will be teaching in-person undergraduate courses in the Humanities program, and for the first time, graduate courses will be livestreamed for women incarcerated at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas.

“These students have lived generational patterns of poverty, abuse and addition,” she said. “Many have never had a chance at anything. The Transforming Lives By Degrees program at UHCL is a unique opportunity to extend a chance to these people, to help them develop their voice, their critical thinking skills, and their critical perspectives on the world.”