By Elisabeth Costanzo Stewart
Members of SUNY Broome’s campus community and representatives from the Broome County Sheriff’s Office gathered on Tuesday, February 27, 2024, to celebrate their groundbreaking collaborative effort by offering a mini college-level success course to the men and women currently incarcerated at the Broome County Correctional Facility.
Undersheriff Davis took a moment to thank Broome County Sheriff Fred Akshar (CJPO ‘99) for embracing a philosophy of change and for allowing him to run with his idea to teach this micro-course with the correctional facility.
Over a period of five weeks, Undersheriff Sammy L. Davis (CJPO ’96) volunteered off the clock to lead nearly sixty incarcerated men and women in group discussions surrounding life skills and success strategies. He adapted Professor Gian Paolo Roma’s 15-week course into a “meat and potatoes” version that Davis personally designed to be both accessible and encouraging to the individuals participating in each pod.
Professor Roma’s newest textbook, Student Success: Foundations of Self-Management, encourages readers to introspectively explore core questions such as “Who am I?” “What type of person do I want to be?” What are my values?” and “What do I really want in life?” through the “5 C’s” of self-management.
“The textbook emerged from my unending lifelong struggle to figure out who I am, what I want to stand for, and why I am the way that I am. The central premise of the textbook is that without luck or inherited wealth, behavioral skill is a precondition for realizing individual and societal potential,” Roma reflected.
To Undersheriff Davis, Professor Roma, and their champions at both the College and Sherriff’s Office, the purpose of this pilot is twofold: (1) to help all individuals (individually and collectively) fulfill their unrealized potential; and (2) to provide the tools that they need to leave the world a better place than they found it.
President of SUNY Broome, Dr. Tony D. Hawkins, proudly celebrated the opportunity to provide second chances through education. “We are committed to providing opportunities for education
and upward mobility to this population of learners by providing additional programming to
incarcerated individuals, and we hope that when they reacclimate into society, that they will
continue their education here at SUNY Broome,” Dr. Hawkins said.
Based on the results of the pilot, SUNY Broome and the Broome County Sheriff’s Office hope to explore expanding the program to a longer and potentially credit-bearing format.
Professor Gian Paulo Roma holding his textbook, Student Success: Foundations of Self-Management. Photo Credit: Matt Ebbers
