Kyes Stevens (middle) and Dr. Peggy Shippen (right) highlight components of the Alabama Correctional Education Summit program.

An outreach partnership between the College of Education and the College of Liberal Arts will bring representatives from several state organizations to campus this week for the first Alabama Correctional Education Summit.

The summit will be held Thursday, May 7, from 9:30 to 1:30 p.m. at The Hotel at Auburn University and Dixon Conference Center.

Dr. Peggy Shippen, an associate professor in the College of Education's Department of Special Education, Rehabilitation, Counseling/School Psychology, and Kyes Stevens, director of the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project, organized the event with the help of a $15,000 competitive Outreach Scholarship Grant.  The Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project, an outreach initiative of the College of Liberal Arts' Department of Psychology, works to stimulate creative and intellectual opportunities in Alabama's prisons with the help of artists, writers and scholars.

The goals of the summit involve the exploration of the roles and resources of organizations that contribute to prisoner education programs, identification of independent and overlapping prisoner education programs and formation of a working community of prisoner education stakeholders.

In addition to including faculty members and administrators in Auburn University's Colleges of Education and Liberal Arts, the event will also bring together representatives of such agencies as the Alabama Department of Corrections, the Alabama Department of Youth Services, the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole, Aid to Inmate Mothers, the Society of St. Dismas, the Alabama Department of Post Secondary Education, the Central Alabama Laubach Literacy Council and New Beginnings Foundations.

The Alabama Correctional Education Summit represents the shared vision of Shippen and Stevens, who received funding through the Office of the Vice President for University Outreach in 2008. Their project, "Enhancing the Educational Skills of Alabama's Prison Population,'' focuses on expanding basic literacy tutoring programs and enhancing Auburn University's prison-based education efforts.