The Education Justice Project (EJP) has made the commitment to apply to become a center at the University of Illinois. This decision comes after a multi-year process involving our largest external funder, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which awarded EJP a $1 million grant in 2017 and most recently renewed the grant for additional 36 months in December 2023. We also have been engaged in conversations with the Provost’s Office at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, which has generously provided EJP with an annual budget of $600,000 in support of our plan to seek center status. With this financial backing, EJP is now positioned to solidify our status on campus for the long term.
We first began seriously exploring the possibility of becoming a center in 2018. Our discussions were interrupted when prison staff removed 200-plus books on race and equity from the EJP Community Library at Danville prison. That situation required all hands on deck to address the threat not only to EJP but to college-in-prison programs across the state. Soon after a legislative hearing resolved the situation, the COVID-19 pandemic halted all programming inside and turned our attention to providing protective equipment to individuals in Illinois Department of Corrections custody.
We only returned to discussions about becoming a center in 2021, recommencing conversations internally and also with campus stakeholders across the University of Illinois. We held information sessions, conducted a survey that indicated broad support among EJP members for our seeking to become a center, and began to hold monthly discussions to ensure our members received regular updates on our progress.
Applying to become a campus center requires submitting a lengthy proposal that explains how EJP becoming a center will contribute to the University of Illinois’ mission, allow EJP to meet state priorities, and expand learning opportunities for students. In addition, the proposal requires that we state the home of the future center. Since 2011, EJP has been housed in the College of Education (COE) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. We have benefited in multiple ways from being in the college. For example, with college leadership we developed a certificate in Learning Studies that we now offer to EJP students. EJP students have presented papers at education conferences. Education instructors who have taught for EJP have published their insights on the experience in academic journals, such as this article by Erin Castro in Harvard Educational Review. We have also been fortunate to involve COE faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students in EJP programming, including Christopher Getowitcz, PhD candidate in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership; Helen Neville, Interim Head at the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, and professor of Educational Psychology and African American Studies; Scott Filkins, Lecturer and Program Coordinator in Curriculum & Instruction; and Maria Valgoi, who completed a PhD in Educational Psychology.
“EJP is a valuable resource that aligns with the College of Education’s commitment to making education equitable and accessible for all learners,” says Helen Neville. “In my interactions with EJP students and alumni, I have found them to be some of the most engaged learners — deeply committed to lifelong learning, skilled in synthesizing and applying critical frameworks to real-world events, and continually expanding their understanding of the world. I have seen students and alumni use this knowledge not only to advance themselves but also to strengthen their relationships with self, family, and community.”
When we first began discussions around becoming a campus center, some administrators suggested that we consider housing EJP in a different unit. Over the past couple of years, we have explored options. The most promising was the possibility of moving to the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS). EJP held a series of mutually beneficial discussions with that college’s leadership.
Earlier this year, though, we learned that LAS had decided not to invite EJP to move our administrative functions to that college. However, LAS and EJP remain excited about the potential for programmatic collaborations in areas of shared interest. One possibility is housing for-credit EJP internships for undergraduate students in LAS.
Now that we know that the College of Education will remain our long-term home, we plan to begin developing even greater ties to that college. We look forward to developing more certificate programs, bringing more COE faculty into our programs at the prison and on campus, further strengthening operations systems within the college, and advancing the college’s mission of impacting policy through research, teaching, and engagement.
We are grateful to the College of Education for offering a space for EJP, providing outstanding Human Resource and Finance support, and sharing a deeply held commitment to educational access. We value our work together. Writing the center proposal will be a long process, and the approval process is likely to take over a year. It requires review by COE faculty, the provost, the Senate Committee of Educational Policy, and other entities up to the Illinois Board of Higher Education.
Like everyone else, we are watching the news and concerned about funding uncertainties for public universities under the current presidential administration. It could impact the financial climate at UIUC and our plans for becoming a center. Still, we remain hopeful that becoming a center will provide lasting permanence for EJP on campus.
