From Prisons 2 PhD's
The mission of the Gaucho Underground Scholars Program is to provide peer-driven support, assistance, and guidance to formerly incarcerated and system-impacted University Of California, Santa Barbara students, who are adapting to the challenges of acclimating to the University while striving towards successful community and academic reintegration. It is our aim to connect formerly incarcerated UC Santa Barbara students with the resources and information that may help to increase those students' prospects of success.
Recruitment
Our Recruitment Strategies:
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Academic Advising & Support: We provide academic and transfer advising to currently and formerly incarcerated students. This includes transcript analysis, major preparation, counseling, writing personal statements, and completing the application.
Incarcerated Scholars Program: We do outreach, academic advising, application support, and advocacy for incarcerated students.
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GUS Ambassadors: Our ambassador program includes over a dozen ambassadors at community colleges throughout the state who support community college students and connect them to useful resources.
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Cross Enrollment: We partner with key faculty on campus to offer cross-enrollment in UC Santa Barbara classes for community college credit. This program provides students with the opportunity to experience UC Santa Barbara while attending community college and also improves their transfer application by showing admissions that they can thrive in the UC Santa Barbara environment.
Campus Tours & Outreach: We arrange visits and tours of UC Santa Barbara for youth in continuation schools, youth under correctional control, recently released people, and others who have been impacted by the criminal punishment system. Our students also engage in outreach in communities impacted by incarceration and our allies.
Advocacy
Our Advocacy work:
Access to Higher Education: We’re working to build a prison-to-university pipeline by increasing the number of formerly incarcerated people in higher education. We do this in our own program and also by advocating for policies that increase access to higher education for all currently and formerly incarcerated people.
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Capacity Building: In partnership with the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, Berkeley Underground Scholars is convening a Leadership Institute dedicated to developing, implementing, and institutionalizing on-campus support services for formerly incarcerated students. Twenty-eight community colleges have been selected to participate in this Institute.
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Access to Housing: We are currently working on increasing access to housing for students and community members with conviction histories.
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Ban the Box: We won our campaign to Ban the Box on the University of California employment application in 2017.
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Language: We advocate for the use of humanizing language when referring to people with convictions. Our common vernacular - in conversation, in the law, in media, and in academia - is filled with dehumanizing language. We denounce labels like “felon”, “ex-offender”, “inmate”, and “criminal” and insist on being called what we are - people.
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Letters of Support: We offer letters of support for parole hearings for the incarcerated students we work.
Retention
Our Retention Services:
Tutoring & Academic Advising: We have a team of tutors and advisors who work weekly with students to ensure their academic success. We also offer support with grad school and law school applications, scholarships, and fellowship applications.
Gaucho Underground Scholars Program: GUS is a program that supports formerly incarcerated students by building community, hosting events, and engaging on campus in various ways.
GUS also does outreach and tabling at community events.
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Research: We provide support and guidance for our members to pursue top research opportunities with highly acclaimed programs such as: McNair Scholars Program, RAAB Writing Fellowship, and Summer Research Undergraduate Research Fellowships.
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Leadership Development: Through our Credible Messengers program. We provide training and opportunities for students to engage as leaders in GUS, USI, the broader UC Santa Barbara community, and the communities the students represent. We do this through political education, creating opportunities for students to teach & present their research, creating supported leadership roles for students, and connecting students to other leaders and mentors at UC Santa Barbara and beyond.
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Space & Other Resources: We currently borrow space from the Gaucho Recovery program and are working diligently to get our own space from the university.
Incarcerated Scholars Program
We are currently developing a program to teach behind the wall in the county jail and also the local federal and state prisons.
Testimonials
our students speak wisdom and empower each other through their personal narratives.