Sandra Evans sent an email that Jim is out of the hospital a week earlier than expected.  He's looking forward to returning to his normal routine as soon as possible.

Members are reminded of the upcoming District Governor's visit.

The November 13 meeting has been cancelled in favour of other events.

Spirit of Giving is still looking for sponsors of families.  Speak to Karen for more information.

There were no birthday, anniversary etc. announcements this week.

The 50:50 pot is up to $89 but there was no winner

Speaker: 

Shoshana Pollack was introduced by Paul Puopolo.  She is a social work professor at WLU.  Dean Sherk, the development officer for WLU was also present and spoke briefly.

 

Shoshana Pollack spoke about the Walls to Bridges programme, designed to provide university level courses to inmates of various prisons.  Operating at Grand Valley here in Kitchener and several other prisons in Ontario, other provinces and Europe.

The programme seeks to overcome the access (lack of internet availabiltiy) problem faced by prisoners who want to take university level courses which are only available by correspondence.  In essence, a course is taught to a mixed class of prisoners and "regular" university students at the prison by a professor from the university, for regular credit.  These are regular, semester-long courses.  Tuition for the prisoners is waived while books and other materials are provided via the Walls to Bridges programme.

The programme thus aims to provide an education to the prisoners but also to break down the barriers between prisoners and outside students.  Peer relationships are created within the classroom.  Prisoners seeking to join have to have a high-school education and be approved by the prison authorities.  Both prisoners and outside students are interviewed by the professor prior to acceptance into the course.  Usually there are more applicants than places available.  Class size is about 20 in total, usually.

Classes are not held in traditional lecture form.  Rather seats are usually in a circle and art, theatre and group work methods are used to overcome academic differences between the various students.

So far the courses have been in the humanities but other faculties/disciplines are being attracted.  There are no exams but papers are required.  Courses follow the general university schedule.

At graduation, all students wear identical tee-shirts.

Before a professor can lead one of these classes he/she must take a 5-day introductory course.

 

Following her talk, Shoshana showed a TVO video of the impact of this programme on one particular inmate.

 

Shoshana was thanked by Todd Aitchison.