












































Supporting Incarcerated Seminary Students


Listen and Learn sessions  307

Supporting Incarcerated Seminary 
Students
Matt Ostercamp, Director of the Library, North Park University
Evan Kuehn, Assistant Professor of Information Literacy, North Park University
Antonio Pizarro, Assistant Director of the Writing Center, North Park University

ABSTRACT How can we provide access to theological scholarship for stu-
dents in a maximum-security prison? This session will discuss how the North 
Park University library supports seminary students in two different Illinois 
correctional institutions. We discuss the founding and history of the School 
of Restorative Arts, how Brandel Library built and managed remote prison 
collections, and how we support the research and writing of these students. 
We then discuss future plans for SRA library services and questions for semi-
nary libraries to consider as they plan to serve incarcerated students. Finally, 
Tony Pizarro will share from his experience and work within the SRA program 
and as the assistant director of North Park’s Writing Center.

INTRODUCTION

Matt Ostercamp
In 2018 North Park Theological Seminary, in Chicago, Illinois, 
launched the School of Restorative Arts (SRA) which offers an MA in 
Christian Ministry with Restorative Arts to incarcerated students. 
We currently are offering classes in two locations: Statesville Cor-
rectional Center, which is a maximum-security men’s prison in the 
Chicago area, and Logan Correctional Center, which is a multi-level 
security women’s prison in central Illinois. 

In this paper, Matt Ostercamp will share some of the big picture 
issues we’ve faced and some questions we hope you think about if 
you try to provide classes and library services in similar contexts. 
Then Evan Kuehn is going to share in more detail how the library is 
currently assisting SRA students and plans we have to improve our 
services. Finally, our Writing Center colleague, Antonio Pizarro, will 



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share his unique perspective of starting off as a student in Statesville 
in the School of Restorative Arts; then, after being granted his release 
and finishing his degree on the outside, he subsequently was hired 
by North Park as the full-time Assistant Director of the North Park 
Writing Center. In his current professional capacity, he continues 
to support SRA students as well as our general campus population. 

NORTH PARK UNIVERSITY’S SCHOOL OF RESTORATIVE ARTS

Matt Ostercamp
North Park has had a long history of connecting with our home city, 
Chicago. If you’re on our campus for more than an hour, you’ll prob-
ably hear somebody talk about being “city-centered” as part of our 
ethos. We started off as a Swedish immigrant school, and the Semi-
nary particularly has consistently sought out ways to address social 
justice issues and be a redemptive presence in our city. 

Former North Park Seminary faculty member, Dr. Michelle Clif-
ton-Soderstrom, was for many years a leader in advocating for theo-
logically informed social justice on our campus. She would even-
tually become the Dean of the Seminary. While on the faculty, she 
became engaged in the national conversation around mass incar-
ceration and dedicated a sabbatical to exploring inequity in educa-
tion. Her research agenda included spending time inside Statesville 
building relationships with the inmates and administrative staff. As 
she started asking how a seminary could play a constructive and re-
demptive role in that space, she heard from inmates that they wanted 
to acquire knowledge and develop skills that would allow them to be 
agents of transformative change in communities that in many cases 
have suffered from generations of trauma and injustice. The vision 
for the School of Restorative Arts emerged from these conversations 
and the potential students played an active role in developing the 
curriculum and shaping the degree.

In reviewing this history with Dr. Clifton-Soderstrom, the two 
points she suggested for you to reflect on start with how you will col-
laborate, ideally from the very start, with the students you hope to 
serve. Being invited to help create and implement a program gives 
your incarcerated students ownership and agency. In our experi-
ence this builds a rich community dynamic that doesn’t replicate 
the existing authoritative and dehumanizing prison social dynamic. 



Listen and Learn sessions  309

The second point to reflect on is how doing this kind of work con-
nects with the existing mission and ethos of your seminary. Clifton-
Soderstrom emphasized in conversation with Evan and Matt that 
strong institutional mission alignment is absolutely critical to sus-
taining this work in the face of inevitable obstacles. I would encour-
age any institution considering starting a program like the School of 
Restorative Arts to reflect deeply on your existing identity and call. 
Why does your seminary exist? How does offering classes in a prison 
connect to that purpose? This type of education may not be for every 
school and in our opinion should not be pursued as a side project. 
For North Park, our history of serving marginalized communities in 
Chicago and advocating for justice provided the rich institutional soil 
for a program such as this to take root and sprout. 

One of the obstacles for seminaries offering programs to incar-
cerated students will likely be funding. This was true at North Park. 
An initial donor came forward with a gift that allowed the School of 
Restorative Arts to get off the ground. North Park was also award-
ed a Lilly grant, and used part of this grant to assist with start-up 
costs. To sustain the program a tuition model for SRA students was 
created to make credit hour costs as low as possible. For example, 
faculty were all assumed to be either adjunct or teaching in SRA on 
overload which lowered the costs for faculty. It remains unclear if 
the current model of low credit hour costs will be truly sustainable 
for our institution and also clear accreditation hurdles. North Park 
administration has been asking churches and individuals to sponsor 
students in the SRA program. We do not charge the students directly 
for tuition. A challenge in implementing this model is to ensure the 
tuition covered SRA students aren’t seen as a lower priority than the 
traditional tuition paying students. We share the financial challeng-
es of many small seminaries and can feel the pressure to categorize 
students according to how they contribute to the bottom line. This 
is seen as a real danger for the long-term prospects of the SRA. We 
would encourage you to anticipate these pressures and think about 
how you will continue to hold students with less financial prospects 
on an equal playing field as you allocate student services. 

Beyond finances, another challenge is to find ways to integrate 
incarcerated students into the regular rhythms of your institution. 
You can easily let these out-of-sight students also slip out-of-mind. 
Thanks to the vigilance of many campus leaders, North Park has 
had some success on this front. For example, incarcerated teaching 



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fellows were asked to by plenary speakers at the fall faculty retreat 
in 2022. Speaking via a Zoom connection, these men addressed the 
whole university faculty and shared their experiences with and pas-
sion for Christian education. They also fielded questions from the 
faculty. The North Park Writing Center, to move to another example, 
has trained SRA students to be writing advisors and assign them to 
support classes throughout the university via Zoom. So, freshman 
composition students may be assigned to meet virtually with an 
SRA student to discuss their writing. The Writing Center also helped 
launch an SRA newsletter, entitled Feather Bricks. This newsletter 
is produced by the SRA students and provides them an opportunity 
to share their academic and creative writing as well as their visual 
art. It is a source of real pride for the SRA students. Feather Bricks is-
sues are strategically placed around campus to give us all a chance 
to hear from and connect with our SRA students. We have also fea-
tured SRA artists in campus galleries. All these efforts have helped 
us remember that we have students in Statesville and Logan. I would 
encourage your campus to be intentional about finding ways that 
you can bring visibility to the education that is happening offsite. 

Finally, I want to acknowledge that Dean Clifton-Soderstrom, who 
started the School of Restorative Arts, left North Park in the spring of 
2022. North Park recently hired a new Vice President for the Semi-
nary and is currently searching for a new Dean. Based on conver-
sations with many others in the field, I know this type of adminis-
trative turnover is not unusual. Changing leadership often bring a 
reassessment of institutional priorities. While we hope our School 
of Restorative Arts is firmly planted, we acknowledge that even as 
we prepared this presentation there are questions on our campus 
about what place it will occupy in the future. A question we are cur-
rently wrestling with in the library is how much political and finan-
cial capital we want to invest in this program. Will we champion the 
SRA even if future administrators are pushing different priorities 
or is our support connected to the level of enthusiasm of our cam-
pus leaders? We see the real need and potential impact of providing 
quality education to incarcerated students, but we also know that as 
a library our resources are increasingly stretched thin. This makes 
determining the appropriate level of commitment a challenge and 
I would encourage others in library leadership positions to think 
about what the best answer is for your library and your staff. 



Listen and Learn sessions  311

LIBRARY RESOURCES

Evan Kuehn
While the mission of the library as it supports incarcerated stu-
dents remains the same as its mission for those on the outside, many 
challenges – as well as opportunities – present themselves in these 
contexts. We have found that access to the facilities and access to 
students has been difficult at times because of a lack of consistency. 
Rules about what can be brought into the facility and what items 
get checked by security staff can change over time. Sometimes this 
works in our favor when the rules are less strict. Developments and 
transitions over time can make it difficult for us to prepare, however.

The physical space of our resource room is also limited. In Logan, 
we have access to a closet-sized space for books, and room space for 
one or two students to occupy at a time. In Statesville, the room is 
slightly larger, with shelves lining all of the walls, and seating space 
for more students. But in both cases, there really isn’t significant 
room to expand the collection that we have. Technology is limited as 
well; the students have some online access at desktops not associated 
with the SRA program, but this isn’t a solution for research purposes. 
They cannot communicate by email, and when tablets are available 
to students, their effectiveness varies. All papers submitted for SRA 
classes are written by hand, as are communications with the North 
Park campus requesting specific research materials.

Enforcement of collection policies has been uneven, especially 
as a result of disruptions created by the pandemic. When we began 
the program, we had a checkout system where students wrote down 
their name and information when they checked out each book. This 
fell by the wayside during a period of more frequent lockdowns from 
the pandemic. We continue to circulate our collection, but there is no 
way to keep track of who currently holds a book and when it will be 
returned. Another impediment to returning books occurs when stu-
dents are transferred to another facility. At these junctures, books are 
sometimes discarded rather than returned to the North Park Read-
ing Room when prison staff are not aware of who owns the book. 

Other libraries and educational institutions work within States-
ville as well, including Northwestern University and a GED prepara-
tion program. This can be a source of collaboration, but also presents 
challenges related to overlapping room usage.



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In order to build our collection, we have purchased new books from 
original grant money, and taken donations (usually from retiring fac-
ulty and pastors). We use the LC Classification system for the collec-
tions. SRA books are in our library catalog alongside other North Park 
books, with a separate location set for Statesville or Logan. We provide 
a copy of all required textbooks to each student, and these become a 
part of the collection. Textbooks are returned to the resource room at 
the end of each semester to be used for future cohorts. The collection 
also includes a small reference section with dictionaries and style 
guides. These reference books, as well as books on social justice, tend to 
be the hot commodities that leave the reading room and don’t return. 

The SRA library program would benefit from a needs assessment 
for the collection. We’ve heard from students that we have a good 
foundation in biblical studies, commentaries, church history, and 
theology, but when students reach upper-level classes in the pro-
gram (mostly focused on social justice, conflict management, and 
trauma), our collection needs further development. We would like 
to work with our seminary liaisons on a clearer approach to a yearly 
budget, acquisition, and processing protocols. 

We have also found that LC Classification is probably overly com-
plicated for such a small collection and more than we need. We are 
looking for ways that we can simplify cataloging, then, and also adding 
larger ownership markings so that we can distinguish our books from 
personal books, or books from the law library at the prion facilities.

Another idea that we discussed was rotating our collections in 
order to make the best use of our small space. The SRA curriculum 
is a cohort model where everyone is taking the same courses at the 
same time from semester to semester. We want to explore ways to 
store a large number of books that were used in one semester, and 
replace them for the next semester with books that will be more 
helpful for the courses that students are currently taking. Finally, 
we are looking into the possibility of print serial subscriptions for 
magazines and newspapers.

LIBRARY SERVICES

Evan Kuehn
So far, we have used staff and faculty from the North Park campus as 
intermediaries as we strive to provide library services for our inside 



Listen and Learn sessions  313

students. Students usually have classes two days a week, and this is 
when they have study hall time and access to the reading room for 
a few hours. Library staff can’t be present in person for two days a 
week at two different facilities, but North Park staff are present to 
supervise study hall. We use these staff to help us understand what is 
going on in the program. Staff also have request forms that students 
can fill out if they have any questions or needs. Until the summer 
of 2023 these forms were generic and used for all communication, 
but we have developed a research request form that is specific to li-
brary research needs. These are brought out, scanned, and emailed 
directly to Evan so that the request can be filled. When books are re-
quested that we own at Brandel Library, we can check them out to 
a designated SRA student account and send them in the next time a 
staff person is visiting the facility. We would like to develop a more 
regular courier system, both to make our interaction with students 
more frequent, and to reduce the burden on our other staff persons. 

One significant recent success for library services has been the de-
velopment of a library assistant position. SRA already employs writ-
ing assistants and teaching assistants. This spring, we were also able 
to hire two library assistants for the Statesville program. One of them 
will focus on circulation and organizing the collection, while the other 
will work as a reference assistant and help with research consultation 
for SRA students. We meet with these assistants once a week via Zoom 
to get updates, and they have already made great strides developing a 
checkout system for the collection, a suggestion box, and working with 
the law library to share collection space. These students are excited 
and feel empowered to take ownership of their reading room, and we 
are looking forward to where things are going in the coming months.

We have also started to develop a library newsletter, where we 
can include bite-sized information about library research and re-
views of scholarly works that would be helpful for the students in 
their classes. These newsletters can then function as LibGuides for 
students who do not have access to the library website.

Finally, and related to the challenge of technological limitations, 
we have discussed how we can provide access to pdf resources for 
inside students. We think that developing an offline database of Atla 
resources, similar to how JSTOR has offline collections available for 
prison programs (https://about.jstor.org/jstor-access-in-prison/), may 
be a game changer for library research inside prison facilities and 
other contexts where online access is limited. This is an opportunity 
that we would encourage Atla to explore further.

https://about.jstor.org/jstor-access-in-prison/


314  atLa 2023 ProCeedinGs

QUESTIONS TO ASK

Matt Ostercamp
Throughout our conversations with stakeholders in the School of Re-
storative Arts program, one of the most important pieces of advice 
we received was the necessity of having a foundation of trauma-
informed pedagogy. Every incarcerated person has been a victim 
of trauma in some way. Many people housed in these facilities have 
contributed to cycles of trauma as well. When we step into this sort 
of environment unprepared and uninformed, this can create signifi-
cant problems. Many seminaries have individuals who are trauma 
informed, but this is not often a programmatic priority for seminar-
ies. Within this general commitment to being responsive to trauma, 
we need to ask ourselves:

• Why are we engaging with these students?
• What is our role?
• What do we know? What don’t we know?
• What can we realistically promise?
• Who are the other stakeholders?
• Who is our support team?

SUPPORTING THE SRA PROGRAM AS AN ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF THE 
WRITING CENTER

Antonio Pizarro; introduction by Evan Kuehn
Tony Pizarro works at the North Park Writing Center. He was re-
leased from Statesville Correctional Center after a judge overturned 
his sentence. While being housed at Statesville, Tony applied for 
North Park’s Theological Seminary master’s degree program called 
“School of Restorative Arts.” Tony was accepted into the program 
and became one of the first writing advisors. Later, Tony became 
a peer mentor, and received several certifications for writing and 
grammar. He also facilitated workshops. Tony has since graduated 
with his Master of Arts in Christian Ministry and Restorative Arts. 
He is currently enrolled in a doctoral program and serve as Assistant 
Director of North Park Writing Center and Lecturer. 



Listen and Learn sessions  315

Supporting incarcerated students involves advocacy and giving 
voice to individuals who are normally silenced. The Writing Center 
assist through collaboration and providing resources that allow stu-
dents to amplify their voices through their writing and publication 
I have read and filled out the rubric for individuals who were ap-
plying to be a writing advisor. There is a newsletter called Feather 
Bricks that was created and written by incarcerated students. It has 
expanded to contributions from correctional staff and outside par-
ticipants. I have assisted with transcribing incarcerated students 
handwritten articles. Support has come in the form of letters of rec-
ommendations for some of the students based on their character and 
quality of work. Since I serve as the faculty advisor for the Black Stu-
dent Union, I collaborated with the Writing Center, Brandel Library, 
and the School of Restorative Arts to host an art exhibit displaying 
their artwork with students from campus. 

ADVICE FOR LIBRARIANS TO CONSIDER

Antonio Pizarro
Students incarcerated are still students. It is not your job or respon-
sibility to judge or condemn. Operate according to the purpose and 
goal of your presence. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing objectiv-
ity. In due time, you will learn about some of the injustices and choose 
how to combat them. When you think about incarcerated seminary 
students, think about the Desert Fathers. Most of the Desert Fathers 
have done their greatest work in isolation. It’s when they removed 
themselves from the populace that they had time to reflect and think. 
Introspection and reflection helped them to articulate a particular 
theology, method, and possibly identify the needs of the people. 

For starting a program, I would suggest looking at the models that al-
ready exist. North Park Brandel Library has a model. They built a library 
for seminary students within the prison from the ground up providing 
all the resources that was needed for research. The resource library 
was better stocked than the institutional library with an array of books. 
Whenever the resource library lacked a source, students were able to 
write what they were looking for and send it to the campus librarian. 
Eventually, the campus librarian would forward the materials sought 
to the incarcerated student. There is a lack of technology within the 
prisons. Therefore, the process is long and tedious; however, it works. 


