Center for Compassion, Integrity and Secular Ethics
Thomas Fabisiak serves as Director of the Chillon Project, CCISE's initiative to bring degree programs to incarcerated people, correctional staff, and returning citizens in Georgia. He began teaching at Arrendale State Prison, a maximum security women's facility in north Georgia, in 2012 through Emory University’s Certificate in Theological Studies (CTS) program. Fabisiak co-directed CTS, which provides non-credit classes in theology and religious studies, from 2015-2016 while working with other members of CCISE to launch the Chillon Project. After Arrendale was designated as a site of Life University in 2016 by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Fabisiak began working full-time on site at the prison. He spends most of his time each week working with the students enrolled there in Life's Associate of Arts degree program in Positive Human Development and Social Change. Fabisiak completed his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Religion at Emory in 2014. His previous research, including The "Nocturnal Side of Science” in D.F. Strauss (SBL, 2015), focused on genealogies of critique and secularism in the modern study of religion. His current research focuses on the functions of moral discourse in and around prisons in America.
