History of EPP

Like many of CURTO's projects and initiatives, EPP was ignited by student and CURTO's commitment to support public facing scholarship. In 2014, Marisola Xhelili Ciaccio was in her second year as a doctoral student at Marquette. Ciaccio's research on women’s incarceration made her aware that some areas in Milwaukee had the nation’s highest rate of incarceration for Black men. Ciaccio and a fellow graduate student connected with Dr. Theresa W. Tobin, Associate Professor of Philosophy, and CURTO's director, Dr. Robert S. Smith, to begin conversations about blended philosophy courses taught to a mix of college students and justice- impacted people. 

That conversation seven years ago sparked a series of ideas and collaborations that, five years later, landed a $745,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and some profound moments of learning for Tobin, Xhelili Ciaccio, and students on and off the Marquette campus. What began as a way to bring meaning to a course of studies has blossomed into an ambitious humanities-anchored effort to reverse entrenched inequities in the treatment of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated (IFC) communities. Learn more about our history here.