Arcadia University is expanding its experiential learning opportunities this spring with the new course, Ecology of Community: An Exploration in Art and Writing, taught by Assistant Director of the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Mentoring (CTLM) and Adjunct Professor Monica Day.

The course is part of the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program and will bring together an equal number of Arcadia students and incarcerated students to learn side-by-side in a correctional facility. Both groups earn Arcadia credit. 

Day’s course fulfills students’ Global Connections Experience and Reflection (GCE&R) graduation requirement, which provides students with a local way to engage with global learning goals.

“This is an invaluable experience for students to not only learn from the content of the course, but to also develop a learning community across the divide of inside incarcerated students and outside college students,” Day said. “Unless someone has had direct experience with the criminal justice system in general and incarceration specifically, they often only have stereotypical views, and are much more informed by media than by the real lived experience of individuals in these circumstances. As with most divides between people, biases and stereotypes fall away when replaced by first-hand experience.”

This course explores how other species build community and what humans can learn from those models. While Day’s previous teaching has incorporated arts-based pedagogy and environmental themes, adapting those approaches to a correctional facility presents new challenges and creative possibilities.

“One thing I’m mindful of is that the inside students don’t have access to nature or the environment as much or at all while incarcerated, and I do wonder how that will be for the class,” she explained. “I also often use arts-based pedagogies in my classes, but the restrictions of a facility will curtail what’s possible in that regard. That said, constraint is often a precursor to creativity, so I feel like this will only deepen the learning and discussion across the inside and outside students.”

This past summer, with support from the Division of Civic and Global Engagement and the CTLM, Day and Associate Professor of Psychology Logan Fields, who will teach an Inside-Out course next fall, participated in the program’s intensive 40-hour instructor training. The national training is facilitated by veteran Inside-Out instructors and formerly incarcerated coaches who were once Inside-Out students themselves, who help new faculty understand the unique considerations of teaching across the prison boundary.

“Overall, my motivation was to explore a teaching model that could meaningfully expand what learning looks like for my students while challenging me to grow in ways that align with my values around equity, stigma reduction, and community-engaged education,” said Fields. “I want students to engage with real people, real systems, and real complexity instead of learning in a vacuum. I’ve always gravitated toward high-impact practices that push students to grow through structured discomfort, dialogue, and meaningful contact, and Inside-Out is built around exactly that.”

“I have wanted to teach in a prison setting for many years, but I never quite knew how to go about it,” added Day. “So I jumped at the opportunity when it was presented to me.”

Registration for Day’s course is open until the start of the spring semester, but registration requires an additional application. Students can apply for a seat here.

“When living through a political moment where dehumanizing rhetoric is becoming more and more normalized and accepted, we are all at risk of becoming complicit in the dehumanization of those who feel different or foreign to us in some way,” said Day. “The Inside-Out Program has been around for a long time, and its classes have given thousands of students the opportunity to push against this narrative and to commit to always seeing the humanity in others, regardless of their circumstances.”