POTSDAM -- Eight faculty members from the Associated Colleges of the St. Lawrence Valley recently completed an intensive interdisciplinary summer seminar titled "'They Call it Culture': Problems in the Encounter Between College and Prison."

Each year, SUNY Potsdam offers National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar open to faculty from the four area universities, providing them with knowledge of the subjects that they teach and research by working with distinguished experts, studying alongside other scholars and instructors, and undertaking individual projects of their own design. The program comes through SUNY Potsdam's NEH Faculty Development Program.

This year's seminar was led by visiting scholar Daniel Karpowitz, JD, a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute and a visiting assistant professor of political studies at Bard College.

Karpowitz led the group of eight faculty participants in examining contemporary undergraduate college programs inside prisons against the broader social landscape of contemporary American inequality. The seminar was held from July 1 to 17.

The participants in this year's NEH Summer Seminar included Matthew Chick, visiting instructor of politics, SUNY Potsdam; Dr. Robert Cowser, professor of English, St. Lawrence University; Dr. Nancy L. Lewis, associate professor of sociology, SUNY Potsdam; Dr. Liz Regosin, Charles A. Dana Professor of History, St. Lawrence University; Rivka Rocchio, assistant professor of theatre and dance, SUNY Potsdam; Dr. Pamela Thacher, professor of psychology, St. Lawrence University; Dr. Jeremy van Bloomestein, chair and associate professor of sociology, SUNY Potsdam; and Dr. Penny Vlogopoulos, assistant professor of English, St. Lawrence University.

Karpowitz led participants in discussions about inequality, looking at mass incarceration on the one hand and educational hierarchy on the other. The seminar concluded with critical assessments of existing state models being developed to offer college study in prisons.