To Our NPEP Community

Dear Reader,

This issue of the Northwestern Insider is devoted to family, and the pages that follow are filled with stories that are powerful, generous, and deeply moving.

As I reflect on the many forms that family takes—biological, chosen, and forged through the bonds of shared experience—I can’t help but think of my own family and the role they’ve played in the unfolding story of the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP). My husband, Baron, and daughters, Izzy and Cat, have been part of this journey since the very beginning as both supporters and active participants who have been essential in shaping NPEP into what it is today.

When NPEP launched in 2018, Izzy was a first-year student at Northwestern herself, and she was one of our original tutors, not only showing up to provide academic support each week to our community members but also actively recruiting other on-campus students to get involved with NPEP. (The photo on the right, above, is Izzy in one of the classrooms at Stateville.) Since then, she has done everything from picking up catering orders for community hours to driving a U-Haul up and down narrow streets from Evanston to the South Side of Chicago to collect and deliver furniture for one of our students who returned home after 27 years of incarceration.

While Cat was originally too young to do in-person work for NPEP, she typed up handwritten assignments from students, added content to the website, and stayed up until all hours of the night baking cookies for holiday celebrations. After she moved out of state for college, she became a correspondence tutor for two of our students. When she learned that the last NPEP commencement would take place during the review sessions for her own final exams, she didn’t hesitate to drive over 12 hours in a roughly 24-hour period of time to ensure that she was present for this monumental moment in the lives of our community members.

And Baron—known to those he’s taught in the NPEP community as Professor Reed—has, at one time or another, filled just about every role in NPEP: website designer, academic advisor, professor, business manager, counselor, commencement planner, and so much more. (The photo on the previous page is of Baron, William Peeples, Cat, Robert Cloutier, and me at NPEP’s 2023 commencement at Stateville.)

Through it all, my family has never once expressed anything but joy at sharing me with so many other adopted family members, even when this means that I have less time for them. Their open hearts and generous support show me over and over that education, at its core, is a family endeavor that requires a network of commitment, care, and shared values.

As you read the stories in this issue, I hope you’re reminded of your own families—those who walk alongside you, uplift you, and believe in your dreams, even when they seem impossibly far away. NPEP is a reflection of many such families, woven together by purpose, driven by enduring hope, and sustained by love.

With gratitude,

Jennifer Lackey

Director, Northwestern Prison Education Program