STORY ERIN WEAVER | PHOTOS JASON WALLACE For the past two years, College of Arts and Sciences faculty and graduate students have been teaching in an unconventional classroom: the female pod of the Payne County Jail. Through a partnership with Catholic Charities of Eastern Oklahoma, CAS professors are helping Payne County Jail inmates earn their high school diplomas. Equipped with jail-safe pencils and paper curriculum while being escorted by a guard, faculty enter the jail once a week for two hours to host classes from behind a yellow line painted on the floor. Female inmates are invited to attend classes in math, language arts, social studies, science and writing. After they complete their coursework, students take the High School Equivalency Test in each subject. A passing score on all five tests earns them their diploma. The partnership dates back to August 2022 when Dr. Kathryn Weinland, a teaching associate professor in the Department of Psychology, got the call from jail officials that her vision for teaching high school education courses inside the facility would come to life. She and mathematics teaching associate professor Dr. Melissa Mills began coordinating courses after a successful meeting with jail officials. “That meeting helped solidify things a lot,” Weinland said. “Leading up to that meeting had been difficult, because although I’m grateful for everyone who said yes, a lot of people and organizations said no. I just had to keep pushing past the no’s until I asked CAS FACULTY PREPARE PAYNE COUNTY JAIL INMATES TO EARN HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMAS LEARNING IN LOCKUP 24 CONNECT 2024
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