Chillon Project

“The Chillon Project is a testament to Life University’s sincere commitment to promoting secular ethics to bring about constructive solutions to social challenges. I hope those of you who read this will share my enthusiasm for the transformative potential represented in this endeavor.”

–His Holiness the Dalai Lama, “Letter in Support of the Chillon Project,” 2015

The Chillon Project is an initiative of Life University’s Center for Compassion, Integrity, and Secular Ethics to provide high-quality credit-bearing degree programs to people in prison and formerly incarcerated people in Georgia. Life University offers two degree programs through Chillon at Arrendale State Prison, a maximum-security women’s facility in Alto, Georgia. Seventeen students are currently earning their Associate of Arts in Positive Human Development and Social Change (AA in PHDSC) at Arrendale, and twenty-two have completed the AA in PHDSC and are now earning their Bachelor of Science in Psychology. Chillon also includes full scholarships for correctional staff and formerly incarcerated students who began Life U degrees while in prison. These scholarships enable students to complete a Life University undergraduate degree of their choice.

Life University AA in PHDSC graduates, January 2020.

The degree programs offered at Arrendale reflect Chillon’s aims to empower students to be compassionate leaders and agents of social change.  Courses emphasize critical analysis of systems, understanding of our interdependence and common humanity, and development of inner strengths such as resilience, compassion, emotional intelligence, and ethical mindfulness.

The AA in PHDSC provides an interdisciplinary liberal arts education. Alongside traditional courses such as English Composition and Biology the curriculum includes Creativity and the Artful Life, Environmental Ethics, Conflict Transformation, Identity and Otherness, Spiritual Autobiography, and other courses that build creativity, ethical reflection, effective communication, and critical analysis.

In the BS in Psychology, students take classes ranging from Research Methods in Psychology and Statistics to Critical Social Theory, Artist as Social Change Agent, and the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.  To earn the degree, students complete an original research project under the advisorship of University faculty.

“Education is a liberator for it makes us conscious of the systems (whether abstract or concrete) that enslave us, and it encourages us to be pioneers in the field of social change. Life University has successfully taught me that the goal is not simply to change policies and laws, but to change hearts. That focus has to be self- and other-concentrated for it to be effective and sustainable.”

–Student from the BS in Psychology class of 2022

Life University student and Chillon scholarship recipient Kareemah Hanifa delivers a TEDx Talk in September 2019.

Providing high-quality postsecondary education in prison contributes to the well-being and empowerment of incarcerated people, with a ripple effect on children, families, and communities inside and outside of prison. Research on higher education in prison has tended to focus on its powerful impact on recidivism, the rate at which people released from prison return to prison.

Our program is not primarily motivated by reducing rates of recidivism, however: We believe that all people deserve access to educational resources that enable them to thrive personally while building the world they wish to see. We believe in addition that Universities have a special vocation to share resources with people who are impacted by racist systems, including people affected by mass incarceration and systemic exclusion from access to higher education.

“For over five years I have been encouraging my 25-year-old daughter to go to college. I have impressed on her that education is something that no one can ever take away from you and the benefits will last a lifetime. I have been sharing my college experience with her. She has subsequently enrolled in college on her own. I am so grateful for this life changing program…I feel that my grandchildren and their children throughout the generations will reap the benefits of this college education.”

–Student from the AA in PHDSC Class of 2020

AA in PHDSC class of 2020 graduate Darchelle Arnold receiving her degree from Life University President Rob Scott.

The Chillon Project began in 2015, when Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, then a member of Life University’s faculty, was teaching courses on Buddhism and Contemplative Practice at Arrendale under the auspices of a non-credit-bearing Certificate in Theological Studies administered by Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. The students in Dr. Ozawa-de Silva’s classes spoke passionately to him about their desire to be able to earn a college degree while incarcerated. He brought this message back to Life University’s erstwhile President, Dr. Guy Riekeman, in the form of a proposal to begin a degree program at Arrendale. Dr. Riekeman responded with an enthusiastic “yes,” and that affirmation has been echoed by Life University’s new President, Dr. Rob Scott, as well as by  administrators, faculty, and staff throughout the University who have committed their support to this program as a reflection of Life University’s vitalistic philosophy and principle of lasting purpose: “to give, to love, to do, and to serve out of abundance.”

With the help of a grant from the Laughing Gull Foundation and the wholehearted support of the Georgia Department of Corrections and staff at Arrendale, Life University became the first college or university based in the state of Georgia to provide a degree program in prison since 1994, when Pell Grants were banned for incarcerated people as part of the federal Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of that year. Life University admitted its first incarcerated students at Arrendale in July 2016, and the first class graduated with their Associate of Arts degree in January 2019. These eleven students graduated with an average cumulative GPA of 3.9, and the second class graduated in January 2020. In January 2020, Life U also began offering a Bachelor of Science in Psychology at Arrendale, and all AA in PHDSC graduates can go on to earn that degree. 

Our project’s name, “Chillon,” takes its name from the poem by Lord Byron entitled “The Prisoner of Chillon.” Life University’s founder and first president, Dr. Sid Williams, used to recite passages of this poem to draw attention to how environments influence our lives. He noted Byron’s key message: “So much a long communion tends to make us what we are.” The question before us at Life University became, “Could we address the systemic inequities represented by mass incarceration by transforming the ‘communion’ of those at the center of it all?”

Portrait created by Jesca Cates of the Associate of Arts in PHDSC class of 2019 at Arrendale.

In addition to providing full scholarships, Chillon covers all costs for incarcerated students to participate in the program, textbooks and supplies to all incarcerated students, to full-time administrative support on site at Arrendale. The program is supported by generous grants from the Laughing Gull Foundation and the SunTrust Foundation, but we also rely on private, individual donations. 

If you are interested in donating to Chillon, please click the “donate to Chillon” button here:

Any contribution you can make will go directly to supporting high-quality, in-person education for incarcerated students in Georgia.

GACHEP participants, including Life U students, at a GPB screening of College Behind Bars at 7 Stages Atlanta.

Chillon is part of a coalition of people and programs in Georgia dedicated to empowering incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in the state to pursue higher education. To learn more about the coalition, visit www.gachep.org. The coalition also includes the following programs that provide higher education in Georgia State Prisons:

The Georgia State University Prison Education Project (perimeter.gsu.edu/gsupep/) 

Reforming Arts (www.reformingarts.org)

The Certificate in Theological Studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology (candler.emory.edu/programs-resources/institutes-initiatives/certificate-in-theological.studies.html)

Common Good Atlanta (www.commongoodatlanta.com)

• The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) has designated Arrendale State Prison as a site of Life University. The AA in PHDSC and BS in Psychology are accredited degrees equal in rigor and content to those offered on the main campus of Life University.
• Over half of Life U students at Arrendale State Prison are mothers.
• All Chillon students complete Compassionate Integrity Training (CIT), a multi-part training program that cultivates basic human values as skills. Students have the option to go on to be trained as facilitators in this program so that they can share what they have learned with others, and Chillon students now facilitate CIT trainings for other incarcerated people at Arrendale. 
• Students have written business proposals for social enterprises, competed in Lincoln-Douglas style debates, created educational modules in social and emotional learning for K-12 students, written sociological literature reviews, and composed grant proposals for spearheading programs among their incarcerated peers.
• An on-going study of the program found that students scored higher than a control group in a control group in measures of personal, social, and emotional well-being. Results showed a significant positive impact on participants’ resilience, overall mental health, and ability to manage emotions, for example, while participants experienced lower levels of depression, anger, and anxiety; students also reported improved relationships with correctional staff and children, better ability to handle conflict, and improved outlooks on their future.
• Tuition, books, and supply costs are waived for all incarcerated students.
• In the last three years, Chillon has provided full scholarships and enrolled six correctional officers and other staff people from Arrendale in degree programs at Life University’s main campus in Marietta, GA.
• Students at Arrendale who are released before finishing their degree can also continue at the main campus; currently, six students who began the program at Arrendale are finishing degrees outside of the prison.
• Our program is funded by Life University, private donations, and a grant from the Laughing Gull Foundation (www.laughinggull.org), who have been transforming the landscape of higher education in prison in the south through their support of these programs, and from the SunTrust Foundation.