overcoming adversity and achieving dreams through higher education
Eager faces. Tentative voices. Nervous laughter. Odyssey Beyond Bars (OBB) offers noncredit courses in the summer at Columbia, Racine, Taycheedah and Waupun Correctional Institutions. Each site’s offerings are slightly different, but the aim of the courses is the same: to help students feel more confident in their reading, writing, and discussion skills. A high percentage …
Across Wisconsin, Odyssey Beyond Bars (OBB) students marked academic milestones in large and small ways. At Waupun Correctional, one student held his certificate of completion over his head like a Super Bowl trophy. At Racine, a student choked up at a poignant moment in his five-minute personal story, the final project for his English composition …
On May 18, students in full caps and gowns, diplomas in hand, turned their tassels and celebrated the completion of their degrees at Oakhill Correctional Institution. Governor Tony Evers congratulated the graduates, shaking their hands. The bachelor’s degrees awarded at Oakhill and Stanley Correctional Institution this spring are the first that any UW has awarded …
OBB’s first course for incarcerated women welcomed 12 students at Taycheedah Correctional Institution as new Badgers. The students, who ranged in age from 25 to 55, quickly identified something they all had in common: a passion for lifelong learning. Many shared they had spent years on waitlists for educational programming before being accepted to OBB. …
“Our creative minds burst like piñatas when tapped into, for without creativity there would be no color in our bleak environment,” writes one Odyssey Beyond Bars student. “I write to find myself,” adds another, “and to speak for the ones who are mute and without a voice.” Amplifying student voices in transformational ways is at …
“Teaching in prison has been the most democratizing experience of my life,” says award-winning journalist and Odyssey cofounder Jean Feraca. She adds, “It cuts me down to size while it equalizes and exalts me. It is humbling to observe how much raw talent, human potential, and untapped humanity lie fallow in our grotesquely punitive prison …
“Because of Odyssey Beyond Bars, I found hope and the pathway to becoming a better man and father,” wrote one incarcerated learner at Oakhill Correctional Institution. So much has happened in the five years since Odyssey Beyond Bars (OBB) launched its first transformational UW composition course at Oakhill. We have more courses in more prisons, …
This article is part of a series celebrating 20 years of the Odyssey Project. Follow along as we remember where we’ve been and look forward to where we’re going. After serving 38 years in prison, Robert Taliaferro returned home in January 2022. As he walked away from Oakhill Correctional Institution in Oregon, Wisconsin, he …
In December 2021, alum Robert Taliaferro had a lot to look forward to. He was celebrating the end of a successful semester with Odyssey Beyond Bars, writing a feature for the Prison Journalism Project — and completing the last of his 38 years in prison.
At Odyssey Beyond Bars, we know that connecting people with high-quality education in prison equips them with tools for lifelong success — and we were thrilled to celebrate some of those successes at the Second Annual Correcting the Narrative Awards.