COVID-19 Update

Odyssey, Onward Odyssey, and Odyssey Junior

Our Odyssey families live near the poverty level and will be hard hit from loss of wages and hungry children home for school. We are worried for their health and safety – not only will it be more challenging to access medical and mental health services, but isolation and crowded homes may increase domestic abuse. We are working to share community resources (below) and to tap into our own “family fund” for emergency help to keep our families fed, housed, and medically safe. Thank you SO much to those of you who have contributed over the years (or more recently through our gala or my dad’s 90^th birthday benefit) to increase this fund. To help support Odyssey families during this challenging time, please donate to our Friends of Odyssey Family.

Odyssey Beyond Bars

The COVID-19 pandemic has created new and significant challenges for programs that offer higher education in prison. Face-to-face instruction has been suspended, but Odyssey Beyond Bars remains grateful for our strong relationship with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, who has worked tirelessly to facilitate our transition to a remote teaching format. For fall 2020, we have been able to offer a new section of our pilot course, English 100: Writing in the World, taught by Odyssey Project co-director Kevin Mullen. While we had to limit the number of enrolled students to ten in order to maintain social distancing protocols, Kevin is able to join the students each week for live, synchronous classes via Zoom. A team of tutors also meets each week with students for small group sessions on Zoom.

While we continue to hope for an end to the pandemic and restoration of face-to-face instruction, we plan to continue remote instruction for the remainder of the 2020-21 academic year. In Spring 2021, Professor Craig Werner and Anthony Black will teach Afro-American Studies 155: Multicultural Literature via live, synchronous Zoom classes. This will be the first time UW-Madison has ever offered this course to students in prison. We are also excited to be partnering with Moraine Park Technical College, who will provide a prison-based online learning management system that will complement Craig and Anthony’s live classes.

Contact Information

If you are a student or alumni and have any questions or need support, please contact Emily Auerbach at emily.auerbach@wisc.edu or 608-712-6321 or Brian Benford at brian.benford@wisc.edu or 608-807-7224. If you are an Odyssey supporter and would like to know how you can help with immediate needs or have any other questions, please contact Jenny Pressman at jenny.pressman@wisc.edu or 608-287-8216. If you have any questions about the Odyssey Beyond Bars program or its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, please contact OBB director Peter Moreno at peter.moreno@wisc.edu. If you have additional resources that you believe could be helpful for our students and their families, please email these ideas to Emily Azad at emily.azad@wisc.edu.