By Maegan Murray, ���سԹ�

RICHLAND, Wash. – Washington State University Tri-Cities will host several presentations on potential solutions for the school-to-prison pipeline, as well as barriers for individuals’ successful reentry into society from prison, as part of its latest “Community Classroom” series that begins this month.

Presenters will provide perspectives and strategies for how communities can proactively change statistics and create pathways for successful rehabilitation. Attendees will be invited to explore the current state of affairs in the regional Tri-Cities area and investigate opportunities for stronger partnerships for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated members, locally.

“This series provides a great opportunity for individuals to examine issues that pertain to incarcerated people and youth that are at greater risk for entering prison,” said Anna Plemons, ���سԹ� assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs. “Attendees will hear from and have the opportunity to converse with formerly incarcerated people, researchers, counselors and more.”

The presentations are free and open to the public. They will be presented online via Zoom. For more information, visit tricities.wsu.edu/community-classroom.

Cultivating the prison-to-college pipeline: A conversation with Noel Vest on addiction recovery, post-secondary education and prison reentry 

Wednesday, Feb. 10 | 4 p.m.

Noel Vest, a formerly incarcerated scholar and ���سԹ� alumnus, will discuss principles and strategies for building a pathway out of incarceration and into higher education with moderator Anna Plemons, ���سԹ� assistant vice chancellor of academic affairs. Drawing on his expertise as a post-doctoral research fellow in the Systems Neuroscience and Pain Lab at Stanford, Vest will speak to the ways addiction and recovery impact reentry.

The role of the community in disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline 

Thursday, March 25 | 4 p.m.

This panel will discuss the role of the community and schools, in particular, in reducing the number of individuals entering the prison system. Speaking from respective areas of expertise, the moderated panel will discuss the possibilities and challenges of this work, as well as share ideas about how communities can come together to support members most vulnerable to incarceration.

Panelists:

• Ericka Walters – Founder and CEO of Launching Legacies
• Harry B. Grant, Jr. – Registered drug and alcohol counselor
• Emmanuel “Manny” Garcia – Middle school/high school counselor for the Soap Lake School District

An inside look at Washington state prison rehabilitative programs and the role of community advocacy in program success 

Wednesday, April 21 | 4 p.m.

Join this panel discussion on the affordances of rehabilitative programs for incarcerated people. Each panelist will present on programs they oversaw or currently work with, as well as the role of the community in advocating for and providing resources and opportunities within local and state facilities.

Speakers:

• Stephen Sinclair – Secretary of the Washington State Department of Corrections
• Robert Jackson – Superintendent of the Washington State Penitentiary
• Carol Hinds – Family advocate

 

Media contacts:

Kristine Cody, coordinator for the ���سԹ� MOSAIC Center for Student Inclusion, 509-372-7600, kristine.cody@wsu.edu

Anna Plemons, ���سԹ� assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs, 509-372-7267, aplemons@wsu.edu

Maegan Murray, ���سԹ� director of marketing and communication, 619-403-3617 (cell), maegan_murray@wsu.edu

By Will Ferguson, WSU News

Noel Vest’s goal was to go to community college to earn a degree as a chemical dependency counselor when he walked out the doors of a Nevada prison on June 28, 2009.

Other than hard labor, it was the only career he thought was possible for a formerly incarcerated person.

Almost a decade later Vest is about to graduate from Washington State University with a PhD in psychology and start the next chapter of his life as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University.

“Never in a million years would I have dreamed I’d be where I am today,” Vest said. “There’s a lot to be said about finding what drives you and for me that has been pursuing a career in higher education. It gave me the direction and motivation I needed to turn my life around.”

Road to recovery

As a young adult, Vest’s personal struggles with alcohol, drug and substance use left him isolated from his family and young daughter and eventually landed him in a Nevada prison cell. He served seven years for 21 different charges, ranging from drug convictions to identity theft.

Halfway through his sentence, he knew he needed a change.

In addition to attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, Vest started taking courses at the College of Southern Nevada and teaching in the prison school. He quickly discovered learning and teaching others gave him a sense of direction and purpose he had never felt before.

When he was released from prison, Vest moved to Richland, Wash., and became a certified chemical dependency counselor through the Columbia Basin College.

He later attended ���سԹ� and graduated with a bachelors in psychology and a 4.0 GPA, a marked improvement from his 2.02 GPA in high school. In 2014, Vest was accepted into the WSU experimental psychology doctorate program in Pullman.

Vest’s PhD advisor and mentor, Sarah Tragesser, associate professor of psychology at ���سԹ�, expressed to him early on the importance of publishing frequently and having at least one publication as the first author.

Vest leveraged his connections in the chemical dependency field in the Tri-Cities to orchestrate a series of projects examining how mental illness, chronic pain and other co-occurring conditions influence the likelihood of a person developing a substance use disorder. He used the results of his studies to publish four papers, three of which were first author publications.

“Noel’s research identified how physical pain, depression and other individual differences can impact treatment and how certain points of time in treatment can be critical points of intervention,” Tragesser said. “I will miss his great sense of humor and infectious passion for substance use research. He is always thinking about how his work can make an impact on the world.”

Lasting influence

While at WSU, Vest founded Cougs for Recovery, a support group for students struggling with any behavioral or chemical addiction. He also played an instrumental role campaigning for the passage of the 2018 Fair Chance in Higher Education Act, which prohibits Washington State institutes of higher education from inquiring about a student’s criminal history before that individual has been accepted for enrollment.

“When you take jobs or the ability to go to college away from someone, they aren’t going to be successful whether they have a criminal history or not,” Vest said. “My hope is that the work I’ve done at WSU will continue to play a role helping formerly incarcerated persons in Washington to turn their lives around.”

Next steps

This June, Vest will move to Palo Alto to begin working with Keith Humphries, professor of psychiatry at Stanford and one of the world’s foremost experts in the prevention and treatment of addictive disorders.

Vest said his hope is that his research will ultimately play a role in changing the U.S. justice system’s prevailing deficit-based approach to prison re-entry, where individuals are viewed as lacking appropriate skills or abilities, to a more strength or hope-based approach that focuses on reinforcing pre-existing qualities that can be nurtured to reinforce positive change.

“Eventually I would love to be able to recruit formerly incarcerated scholars to a research program,” Vest said. “There is a certain level of lived experience that really can never be learned in a book that enables you to see the picture more clearly and ask the right questions.”