Inside Out Was Delayed Again. What Does That Mean for the Program's Future?
Ryleigh Johnson | April 29, 2025
Before taking her first Inside Out class, Sarah Puterbaugh, a senior photography major, was seriously considering dropping out of Warren Wilson College (WWC).
“My sophomore year, they ended photography classes, and [it was] like…I don't understand why I'm here,” Puterbaugh said. “I feel like maybe I'm wasting my time a little bit. Then I took the [Inside Out] sociology class and…I really felt like I was learning something that I couldn't find somewhere else, and I was learning something about myself. I felt like it mattered that I was there.”
Inside Out, the program that Puterbaugh and many other students and faculty have found so transformative, brings WWC classes to the nearby Western Correctional Center for Women. Part of a global model for higher education in prisons, the program began at WWC in 2016 and has offered courses in subjects like finance, philosophy and farming. While it was expected that the program would return in the fall of 2025 after Hurricane Helene-related disruptions canceled classes for the fall of 2024 and the spring of 2025, WWC’s administration recently indicated this would not be the case.
Provost Jay Roberts ultimately decided to halt Inside Out for another semester after citing the need for a more sustainable way to support the program long term.
“What has delayed [the Inside Out program] is that [I], the provost…[want] a more comprehensive analysis of the program as a whole to make sure that it is structurally and financially sustainable in the long term…” Roberts said. “This is a really important relationship. The college wants to continue it, just like we do with any important sort of non-profit partner that we have. To be good stewards, we want to think about that, not just hurry up and restart the program but, what are the structural things we need to put in place so that we have a long term vision and a plan for it?”
Inside Out was funded from 2016 to 2024 by a grant from the Laughing Gull Foundation, a family foundation that focuses on LGBTQ+ issues and higher education in prisons. When that grant ended in 2024, Lucy Lawrence, chair of the social work program and director of Inside Out, knew she had to find another donor.
“I have worked with the North Carolina Department of Adult Corrections (NCDAC)...and they have pledged funding for at least two semesters…” Lawrence said. “This could be more than just two semesters, but they are having to be very cautious because of what is happening at the federal level, as well as…what the North Carolina General Assembly decides in terms of the budget.”
Roberts also mentioned the possibility that NCDAC could become the benefactor of the program, while maintaining that part of the reason for the program’s delay was due to funding not yet being secure.
“We have the possibility to apply for a grant with the Department of Corrections, at which point we assume, and it's probably a fair assumption, because we've had some verbal confirmation, that money will come when we apply,” Roberts said. “Then we can support the program.”
Roberts' other main concern regarding Inside Out is the potential strain it might put on WWC’s already stretched resources.
“The greatest need for courses, typically, is in that first year,” Roberts said. “When we remove courses from that first year inventory, or even when we take a course that could be filled at 25 and it only is at 10, because that's the limit for the Inside Out [program], it's just math, right? 15 seats disappear, yeah, and 15 seats over here, 15 seats over here, 15 seats over here. Suddenly, there are 30 seats for first years that they need, that don't exist.”
Jay Miller, an associate professor of philosophy and chair of the public humanities program at WWC, has previously taught an Inside Out course and was slated to teach another this fall. He has felt confusion regarding the administration’s decision to halt the Inside Out program, even considering the concerns Roberts had raised.
“Any of the questions that Jay [Roberts] had about the overall sustainability of the program really had no bearing on implementing or continuing the programming for the fall…” Miller said. “We are asking [for] two classes per semester…I think I don't quite understand [why the program is being delayed] even if it posed all of those challenges. [There is] the uniqueness of the program, the way that it aligns with the values of the college: experiential learning, community service, not to mention the diversity of perspectives, which all of us recognize the college needs so badly — all of those values, piled up. Whatever minor administrative inconvenience that it poses seems to me so obviously outweighed by the value.”
Puterbaugh was also quick to note that the diversity of perspective she found in her Inside Out classes made a deep impact on her.
“[The Inside Out program] is so unique and special and important–the education, the connections and the human view that you get,” Puterbaugh said. “It's a bubble here [at WWC], there's such a privilege and safety that I also have experienced my entire life…It was really cool to realize how little I knew and how much I got to learn.”
She also emphasized that her disappointment over the effect the program’s delay would have, not only for students who would be denied the experience, but also for the incarcerated women who would no longer have an opportunity to engage in higher education.
“This isn't an educational right for them,” Puterbaugh said. “It's an educational privilege…This is also some of those women's only formal college education, high school education that they've ever received and might ever receive. They can't afford it outside. They might not be accepted outside, and they might not have the time or like privilege to get to take college classes on the side, because now they're leaving an incarcerated situation and they have bigger [stuff] that they need to handle…It sounds really easy [to delay the program] when [WWC’s administration] is just writing it on a piece of paper, but it means so much to them.”
Roberts emphasized that the administration still desires to continue the program, with the tentative plan being for courses to resume in some way for the spring of 2026.
“It is a pause, not a stopping of the Inside Out program,” Roberts said. “We just got to figure out some of these administrative kinds of details. I think it's one of our signature programs, and I'm very proud of it. I want us to continue it. It makes a profound impact, both on our inside students and our outside students. So the provost is, and the college as a whole, I think, is really wanting to support it.”
Despite these assurances, Puterbaugh remains worried about the future of Inside Out. She urged students to speak up about the value the program holds at WWC.
“The more delayed it's going to be, the less likely [the administration is] going to want to start back up again,” Puterbaugh said. “They're not going to want to. They're not going to have the same publicity. Students who know about it and care about it [will] all graduate and leave, and they're gonna have even less people pushing for it, and then it's gonna get delayed more and more. Maybe it's gonna be one class a semester, one class a year, and then nothing...If we don't fight for this program, no one will…Even if you don't want to take the class, fight for it. You have to understand how important this is for students, for those women, and for our college as a whole. This is bigger than a class.”