The Bard College graduates started to sweat under their heavy robes as they stood in the yard of the Woodbourne Correctional Facility last weekend on a bright and humid day. Their friends and families enjoyed the shade under the tent where everyone gathered to celebrate the graduating class of 2018.

Since 2001, The Bard Prison Institute (BPI) has been offering the opportunity to receive a college education inside prisons throughout New York State. They offer courses inside three maximum-security prisons - Coxsackie, Eastern New York and Green Haven - as well as three medium-security prisons - Fishkill, Taconic and Woodbourne.

The Woodbourne facility acts as a transition center for inmates who were previously housed in maximum security institutions and have since been stepped down to a medium security level.

Gregory Phillips, of Brooklyn, New York, was one of three students who delivered a speech to the graduating class and those assembled. He thanked Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, Anthony Annucci, acting commissioner of the NYS Dept. of Corrections and Community Supervision and Woodbourne Correctional Facility Superintendent Lynn Lilley for bringing a college education opportunity into prison.

Phillips remembers when he was first transferred to Woodbourne three years ago. “I was just happy to be transferred closer to my family. I gave no thought to college. Truthfully, I believed I had destroyed any chance of me receiving a higher education,” Phillips said.

When a long-time friend introduced him to BPI, he applied and was accepted. He was first inspired by the “quiet energy” he encountered in BPI's computer lab. It was a community of students and educators, engaged in a serious pursuit they were all working toward together.

“The energy that was so unfamiliar, but enticing, was created by hard work,” he said. “It radiated from the sound of fingers typing, papers printing and deep academic conversation. I'm now one of those voices, and I feel that energy [today].”

Shaun P. McKnight, of Washington D.C. said for many years of his life he lacked confidence as a student. “Prior to Bard it had been 15 years since I was in a school setting. A high school drop out who hated school - that was me,” McKnight said. Upon his second attempt at attending college in prison, a spark was ignited. “The professors who believed in me more than I believed in myself and gave me the push that I yearned for.”

John Bruce Henson Jr., of Westford, New York. “When I came to prison, I know I disappointed a lot of people. Especially my family. I was overwhelmed by guilt and despair. I closed my eyes every night and reasons to die consumed me. I struggled to find peace and I searched for anything to cling to that could give my life coherence.”

Henson said that his sense of meaning first came from serving others as a hospice aide. Watching others struggle for life made him want to do more with his own. College was a way forward when that seemed almost unimaginable.

A college education dramatically reduces the rates at which students return to prison after release. It affects all those whose fates intersect inside our prison system - not only for students, but for their children and extended families. It offers the prospect of change that can reverberate through future generations.