The Story of APAEP

The Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project was built on the belief that all people deserve access to education, and that the creative spirit is an essential part of our humanity. Education, for us, means introducing new levels of engagement with curiosity, creativity, and intellectual pursuits. Education, for us, means fostering pathways through the inherent interconnectedness of learning and creating. The kind of educational engagement we believe in becomes a way of living, where people have individual agency and voice and become the agents of change in their communities.

We work to create spaces of respect, trust, and empathy where people have the opportunity—through the act of learning—to take ownership of their stories and journeys. APAEP exists for students, and we value their voices to help shape our community and our future initiatives.

We understand that this is rarely a simple process. Learning can be messy. Signing up for a class can mean taking a risk. People with good intentions still stumble. Maintaining open and honest communication with our students has been fundamental to the history of APAEP. The voices and experiences of people who take our classes have guided this program’s development.

We also recognize that access to education is nothing without inclusion. Systems of inequality remain pervasive inside and outside of prison, but every single APAEP class is part of a cooperative investment in the future. People grow best in community with other people, especially those of diverse backgrounds, beliefs, and values. We believe individual and collective successes are inextricably linked, and working toward a better life, a better system, and a better world requires both individual voices and collective action.

APAEP is a community that is always growing, always becoming. Over the last two decades, APAEP has served thousands of people inside. Thousands have joined with teachers, artists, allies, supporters, and advocates across the state and nation. With every new student, supporter, educator, and friend, our community strengthens and grows. No matter your background, your interests, or the reasons you have found us here, you are welcome. We want to hear from you.

The APAEP Path

The Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project was not formed on a particular day in the past. It was initially conceived in 2001 when Kyes Stevens began teaching at the Talladega Federal Prison through a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The first phase of what is now APAEP was called The Alabama Prison Arts Initiative, which was first funded by the NEA in 2003. The Center for the Arts & Humanities in the College of Liberal Arts at Auburn University served as the fiscal agent for the small initiative. In 2004, APAEP took its current name when it became a full-time program of Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for the Arts & Humanities with an administrative position dedicated to the growth of the program.

APAEP grew from one poet teaching in one prison to a community of hundreds of writers, artists, and scholars teaching in correctional facilities across Alabama. Course offerings have grown from poetry to a wide variety of courses in the arts and humanities, social sciences, STEM, and currently includes the first Bachelor’s degree option from a major public university in the state.

On January 2008, APAEP moved to the Department of Psychology in the College of Liberal Arts. The move served to strengthen APAEP in multiple capacities. Graduate students became more involved in research on the impacts of APAEP programming. After two years in the Psychology Department, APAEP moved to the College of Liberal Arts, and then into the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences in the College of Human Science, which allowed an expansion of course offerings including relationship classes.

APAEP and the MFA program in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama have formed a strong partnership, which allows APAEP to increase the number of classes offered each semester, in addition to providing the rewarding opportunity for graduate students and faculty to teach in the prisons. The UA MFA program established Prison Arts Fellowships to support graduate students each semester to teach. In 2022, this model was expanded to include graduate students and faculty fellows from the Department of Gender and Race Studies at UA.

In the spring of 2012, APAEP offered its first programming in hard sciences and mathematics through partnering with the College of Agriculture and the College of Science and Math through the inaugural SPARKs science and math lecture series. In 2013, the first engineering classes were offered. In the fall of 2013, the first Algebra class began. This program grows as we find opportunities and build partnerships to offer new programming.

In January 2017, APAEP began a college program through the U.S. Department of Education’s Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative. Pell funding was taken away from incarcerated people in 1994, effectively destroying most higher educational programming in prisons around the country, but the Second Chance Pell Initiative allows people who enroll through a select group of universities and colleges nationwide to access Pell grants to use toward tuition despite being incarcerated, as an effort to understand impact and create strong strategies for higher education within prisons. Auburn University/APAEP was chosen as one of 67 sites nationally. Acccess to Pell grants will be reinstated for people who are incarcerated in July 2023.

Auburn University and APAEP offer a Bachelor of Science degree in Interdisciplinary Studies, combining emphases in Business, Leadership, and Human Development and Family Sciences at Staton Correctional Facility and Tutwiler Prison for Women. We wanted a degree that would serve the largest number of students for the broadest potential use for the degree. We want students to have options and a strong foundation, no matter where they return to or what they want to do.

APAEP resides in the Office of the Provost at Auburn University, within the administrative leadership of the Office of the Associate Provost for Academic Effectiveness.

Kyes Stevens

kyes@auburn.edu

334-844-8946

Shaelyn Smith

ses0139@auburn.edu

334-844-3240

Robert Sember

res0106@auburn.edu

334-844-8946

Jason Wren

jaw0018@auburn.edu

334-728-9133

Dena Dickerson

fld0005@auburn.edu

334-707-9625

Rob Hitt

rdh0030@auburn.edu

334-752-1056

Traci Wade

tpc0026@auburn.edu

334-844-8946

Tammy Ortiz

tlo0013@auburn.edu

334-844-8946

Valerie Downes

vad0012@auburn.edu

334-844-8946

Tameesha Matthews

tmz0111@auburn.edu

334-752-2201

Grey LaJoie

gwl0011@auburn.edu

334-752-2349

Kyes Stevens, Founder and Director

Since 2001, Kyes has worked to design and build an innovative and sustainable outreach program that works with the underserved adult prison population in Alabama. Currently, Stevens oversees all program aspects of the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Program (APAEP).
 
Additionally, she has served as a grant reviewer for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Alabama State Council on the Arts, was an inaugural member of an emerging arts administrators’organization in Alabama andworks in advisory capacities nationally for individuals and programs seeking to develop arts and education programming within prisons.
 
Kyes is the fourth generation of her family to work in Outreach at Auburn University and was awarded an Auburn University Young Alumni Award for her efforts building APAEP. She was also an inaugural recipient of the Lillian E. Smith Writer in Service Award and continues to publish poems.

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Shaelyn Smith, Academic Program Manager

Shaelyn holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Alabama. She first taught with APAEP in spring of 2016, before moving into an administrative role.
 
Shaelyn was recognized with anOutstanding Staff Award for Inclusive Excellence and Diversity from the Auburn University Office of Inclusion and Diversityin 2019. She oversees APAEP’s academic programs and teaches grammar and writing courses

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Robert Sember, Special Projects Staff

Robert is trained in cultural studies, medical anthropology, and art. He is a member of the international sound-art collective, Ultra-red, which contributes sound-based practices to community organizing initiatives. Ultra-red’s collective listening practices, based on the principles of popular education, are used in anti-racist, anti-gentrification, and migrant rights struggles in the U.S. and Europe. Robert’s ethnographic research in the U.S.and South Africa has focused on governmental and non-governmental HIV/AIDS policies and programs and related concerns including homelessness, substance use, and mental health. Robert work has specifically focused on health justice and equitable treatment access. As a member of the Program Evaluation Unit at the National Development and ResearchInstitutes in New York city and the Evaluation and Technical Assistance Center and Center for Gender, Sexuality andHealth at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, he has worked with a variety of populations,including incarcerated and formerly incarcerated men and women, multiply diagnosed persons, youth in foster care,immigrants, and rural communities. He has taught ethnographic research and cultural studies in graduate andundergraduate programs in the United States, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Brazil, and has designed and deliveredtechnical assistance programs for service providers in both face-to-face settings and on distance learning platforms. Heis the co-founder of the Arbert Santana Ballroom Archive and Oral History Project, an initiative by and for members ofthe African-American and Latino/a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community in New York City.
 
In recent years, Mr. Sember has taught in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at the University of California in Los Angeles, the Center for HIV/AIDS Networking at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, the SummerInstitute on Sexuality, Culture and Society at the University of Amsterdam’s Graduate School of Social Sciences, and the School of Theater at Ohio University. He is currently on the part-time faculty of The New School’s Eugene LangCollege where he has directed the Social Justice ScholarsProgram in the office of Civic Engagement and Social Justice and was a co-organizer of the Lang Prison Education Initiative. He was co-chair of the national organizing committee of the 400 Years of Inequality initiative, which called for national observances of the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans at Jamestown to be sold into bondage. Robert is the recipient of the Distinguished Teaching and Social Justice Teaching Awards at The New School. Most recently, he was presented with the Ally Award by the House Lives Matter movement, which addresses concerns specific to LGBTQ people of color.

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Jason Wren, College Program Coordinator(Staton)

Jason received his BFA with a concentration in painting from the University of Montevalloin 2000. He worked as both a commissioned artist and an art teacher in a private school for K-12. During that time,he volunteered with drug recovery programs for incarcerated people and worked within that framework to aid those individuals in transitioning into healthy and productive lives.
 
Jason went on to study design in Finland where he eventually worked as a course instructor in the Professional College system. During that time, he worked as a freelance designer and illustrator. Upon returning to the United States, he continued a career as a designer until 2019 when he was hired by Auburn University as an Event Operations Coordinator. In March 2022 Jason was hired as one ofAPAEP’s Program Coordinators.

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Dena Dickerson, Re-Entry Coordinator

Dena is a positive example of success after incarceration. In 2014, Dena assisted in founding the Offender Alumni Association (OAA), the first of its kind peer support organization for those with lived experience. OAA serves as a change agent and walks formerly incarcerated individuals forward by actively engaging to reduce recidivism and restore communities.
 
Dena believes that others, through their lived experiences, are uniquely purposed to provide mental and emotional support, while offering guidance,assistance and encouragement to newly released individuals to become successful and productive citizens. Production for Dena means contribution and having their basic needs met without the struggles and collateral consequences that accompany prison sentences. Dena served as the Executive Director of OAA on a volunteer basis for 6 years. Currently, she serves as the Director of Programs and youth advocate, and carriers credible messenger and peer specialist credentials.

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Rob Hitt, Outreach Program Manager

Rob was born and raised in Washington State. He received his MA in English from Western Washington University in 2013 and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama in 2017. Rob taught with the program as a Prison Arts Fellow at UA before starting as a program coordinator. Rob manages the Community Education Resource Center in Birmingham and oversees the Community Education Program around the state.

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Traci Wade, Community Education Program Coordinator

Traci Wade is the Business Coordinator for the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project at Auburn University. Traci was born and raised in Alabama along the Chattahoochee River. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Education at Auburn University. After 27 years in the private sector, she joined Auburn University in 2019. Since 2007, she has volunteered with housing initiatives within Alabama, Arizona, Georgia and Minnesota.

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Tammi Ortiz, Project Manager

Tammy is the editor of The Warbler and a recent graduate from the University of Northern Colorado where she received her Master’s in Applied Sociology, focusing on persons with felony convictions and their voting practices. She is also involved within Community Engagement and Reentry for APAEP. Tammy currently lives in Northern Colorado with her husband and has two grown children, three grandchildren, two dogs, and one ornate box turtle. Tammy is passionate about prison reform/abolition work and loves to garden, hang out with the grandbabies, and take care of Bradley the turtle. Someday she hopes to retire in Puerto Rico where she can visit the beach daily.

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Valerie Downes, Print Designer

Valerie was born and raised in Montgomery, Alabama and studied Graphic Design and Illustration at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her first design jobs in newsprint taught her the power of print and how the act of sharing information is crucial in building community. In the 20+ years since, she has had the great privilege of collaborating with many on mission-driven creative work — primarily in the South. Her love of type and deep respect for designing on a grid are constant companions, and her work has been recognized by the Society of Publication Designers, PRINT, HOW, Graphic Design USA, the American Advertising Federation and the Association of Educational Publishers.

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Tameesha Matthews, Community Education Coordinator

Tameesha is a Community Education Coordinator at Alabama Prisons Arts + Education Project. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Communication from Auburn University at Montgomery, and later became an English Teacher for Phenix City Schools. She is presently enrolled in Troy University, pursuing her Master of Science in Strategic Communication with a specialization in social media management. Beyond her roles in education, she is also a proud mother to her son. She has been involved in community outreach for over three years within the states of Alabama and Georgia as she volunteered for education initiatives and religious based organizations.

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Grey LaJoie, Community Education Coordinator

Born in Western North Carolina, Grey Wolfe LaJoie is a writer and educator who first began teaching with APAEP in late 2020, before becoming one of APAEP's full-time Community Education Program Coordinators.
 
The recipient of a 2023 O. Henry Prize selected by Lauren Groff, their writing has been featured in numerous journals and anthologies, and their debut collection, Little Ones, will be released in the fall of 2024.
 
Grey believes that the person who sleeps out on the street, or in the prison, or the slum – the one who is believed to have little to say, little to contribute, merely because his articulation is disregarded and deterred – this person in fact contains universes, libraries, infinite worlds of truth and beauty, which nowhere else exist.

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