WORKS Immersion (Prison Education)

Catalog description

This is an experiential learning course in partnership with Resilience Education, where the core organizing activity is teaching business topics inside prisons. While this is a professor-led course, it is also a co-created experience where your role is essential. Your work this term will be hugely impactful for your incarcerated learners and their families, as well as foundational for future Wharton MBAs. For these reasons, I thank you in advance for your co-leadership. I hope you take the opportunity to lend your talents to important initiatives. We are bolstered by the fact that research has consistently shown that there are positive returns to education for incarcerated people. At the same time, formal education in prison is usually limited to liberal arts topics. As a result, returning citizens have a need to understand personal finance and how businesses operate in a way that compliments other forms of education that they may be exposed to. There is a particular interest among incarcerated people to learn about entrepreneurship, either because they have promising business ideas or because they see entrepreneurship as a viable alternative given persistent labor market discrimination. This course provides a means for you to pass along these important skills and tools.