Eighteen women walked out of a ceremony at the Kewanee Life Skills Re-Entry Center on October 16, 2026, holding Northwestern University bachelor’s degrees. They are the first incarcerated women in the country to earn a degree from a top 10 university.
The degrees came through the Northwestern Prison Education Program, which Northwestern runs with Oakton College and the Illinois Department of Corrections. The program’s own site describes it as the only bachelor’s degree-granting program for incarcerated students offered by a top 10 university in the United States. Jennifer Lackey, the Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern, is its founding director. Kewanee sits roughly 130 miles southwest of the university’s Evanston campus.
Three graduates spoke. “My daughter and my granddaughter, they are my ‘whys,'” Shurese Bailey said. Chelsea Raker said: “I implore us all to imagine the potential of communities that protect and provide for their children.” Elbonie Burnside thanked the founding director by name: “I am most grateful to Professor Lackey, who came to the mud and planted seeds through the NPEP program.”
Lackey told the class to keep planting for the future they may never see.
Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to serve as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, gave the commencement address. “Be confident, be yourself, that’s the most valuable thing I can say to you,” she said. Emanuel “Chris” Welch, the first Black lawmaker to serve as Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives, and Latoya Hughes, acting director of the Illinois Department of Corrections, also offered remarks.
Northwestern graduated its first class of incarcerated students in November 2023, sixteen men at Stateville Correctional Center. The program opened at Logan Correctional Center, a women’s prison, in January 2022. No women had finished until October.
Maria Garza left prison in 2021 and now works as an executive director and a criminal justice reform advocate. She came back inside for the ceremony. “Today we celebrate our historic first,” she said.
