LIFE program marks 15 years by awarding 13 master’s degrees

‘Inside students’ called to act as ‘ministers of presence’ and reconciliation behind prison walls.

Janel Shoun-Smith | 615.966.7078 | 12/21/2022

Fifteen years after the first Lipscomb professor entered what was then called the Tennessee Prison for Women through security gates and strong sealed doors to teach a group of “inside” and “outside” students, it was clear this December what the outcome has been: family.

Over and over as the 2022 graduates of the Lipscomb Initiative For Education (LIFE) Program stepped to the podium at their Dec. 15 graduation ceremony held in the gym of the prison, the family theme was mentioned time and again.

From women who wheeled in their fellow graduate in a wheelchair to the cheers of the graduates’ blood relatives and the cries of infants who attended the momentous event, from the faculty’s hugs and tears to the loving comments of five “outside” students who received their degrees at the ceremony along with the “inside” students, it was an afternoon all about family.

The fifth LIFE commencement ceremony, a smaller but equivalent version of the university’s Allen Arena ceremony held in the prison’s gym, marked the 15th year of the highly successful program by awarding the program’s first masters degrees to eight inside students, four of whom began with the program on its first day in January 2007. Those four women now hold Lipscomb associate, bachelor’s and a Master of Arts in Christian Ministry (MACM) degrees.

“People asked me today, ‘Is your family here?’ one graduate said from the podium after she received her degree, and then gesturing to the audience full of Lipscomb faculty and staff, said, “There is my family, right there.”

The LIFE Program provides Lipscomb University students an academic and service-learning experience like few others. Up to 20 traditional students each semester enroll in a course held onsite at the prison, now called the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center (DJRC), and study alongside residents of the prison. The course content for these women is essentially the same as the courses offered on campus, but the classroom context and diversity of students provide a rich, life-changing educational experience.
 

It’s an experience that the women of the prison have come to “hunger for” even before they became part of the classes themselves.

ReAsha Frazier (AA ’15, BA ’19, MACM ’22), age 45, who began taking courses in 2009, said when she saw the enrolled women head off to class every Wednesday evening she would say to herself, “I want to be a part of that.”

“It was a hunger inside of me,” said Frazier, who has been at DJRC since she was 19 years old. “There was always something within me that wanted to do something different… to expand my mind, to move forward. I wanted to be like them.”
 

She applied to become part of the LIFE program three times before she was accepted, she said. LIFE participants must have a two-year record of good behavior and a high school diploma or GED in order to participate in the program. 

“This program has such an impact once our residents are released, but it also has such an impact while they are here,” said Rachel Riley-Coe, assistant commissioner of rehabilitative services for the Tennessee Department of Correction. “People see them as leaders, and they become peers. If you lock people up with no rehabilitation and no education, you are not fixing the problem, you are just deferring it.”

The women’s innate desire to “move forward” was one of the factors that fueled the LIFE program coordinators’ idea to offer the Master of Christian Ministry program, which began in 2018.
 

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Media coverage of 2022 LIFE graduation ceremony

Associated Press | yahoo.com  |  WSMV-NBC  |  WTVF-CBS  |  Tennessee Tribune  |  Christian Chronicle  |  The Tennessean

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According to Dr. Kate Watkins (BA ’89, MDiv’08, DMin’14), LIFE program consultant and executive director from 2016-2020: “The idea for the MACM solidified one Wednesday night when an officer came to get one of our students who was called to go to the chaplain’s office because her mother had died. I wondered what it would be like if we equipped our graduate students to be ‘ministers of presence’ in a place that the university will never be able to fully enter? 

“So what it looks like now is, literally scattered throughout the prison, are these new MACM graduates who have been trained in theology, psychology, conflict management and spiritual direction,” she said. “We equipped them with each of these skills on a graduate level, so that they are prepared with really good theological tools to help the rest of the residents whom we could never reach.”

According to Watkins’ research, Lipscomb is the only university in the nation to offer a seminary degree in a women’s prison. 
 

Ministering to those women on the inside as well as impacting the world for the better on the outside is a calling that emerged early in the LIFE program. At the first graduation ceremony in December 2013, one graduate told news media that, “now I have the tools to help them,” referring to other women who would be released from the prison. One original student was dubbed “the saint who walks the halls of the prison” by one of the Lipscomb faculty.

“Because of the Lipscomb program, I am a different person,” said Evetta McGee, who received her associate degree at the ceremony and who was inspired to apply for the program by seeing the lives of the women already enrolled. “I found my purpose. The professors have shown me each day what the love of Christ is about. My life is truly changed and in nine months I get to go home and use it all.”

Five outside students—Randi Baxter, Leslie Larkins, Mary Anne Locke, Beth Mangrum and Terra Tucker—who have studied alongside the inside students for four years received their degrees along with their incarcerated classmates at the DJRC ceremony. These women could have completed the MACM degree in 12 months had they chosen the traditional on-campus offering.
 

“I learned to drop my assumptions at the door,” Mangrum told her classmates at the ceremony. “I found warmth of friendship in an unexpected place. There has been healing, debate, growth and transformation in this place… each of you has brought me closer to God.”

To date, 13 bachelor’s degrees, 22 associate degrees and eight master’s degrees have been awarded to DJRC offenders enrolled through the LIFE program.

Several DJRC inside students have been paroled or released and have gone on to take additional courses on the Lipscomb campus, said Robbie Spivey, current director of the LIFE program. None of the students who have graduated through the LIFE program and have been released have returned to prison, she said.
 

To build on that success, in 2021, LIFE established the Dr. Richard C. Goode LIFE scholarship for inside students who wish to pursue a Lipscomb degree after release from prison. In the first year of the scholarship, recipients included two graduate students and two undergraduates, said Spivey.

In true LIFE fashion, the scholarship is named after a crucial member of the LIFE family. Goode, Lipscomb professor of history, created the program and has taught the students many times over since 2007.

He certainly considers everyone involved in the program as part of his family, as he stated in his opening prayer to the Dec. 15 commencement ceremony: “God, you have built here a family… Ready these graduates for every good work of justice, equity and peace … so that they may be ministers of reconciliation.”
 

— Photos by Kristi Jones