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EACH TERM A small group of Portland State students and a group of women residents at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility exchange ideas about corrections, imprisonment, and the criminal justice system.

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Capstone provides a dynamic learning environment, says faculty member Amy Spring, director of the program. "Students and inmates come from different life experiences and end up changing perceptions on both sides."

Last year, students and inmates worked together to build a recycling program for the prison—from proposal to implementation.

Chris Monahan, a student from that class, says he and others finished the class with a new outlook on the inmates, the criminal justice system, and society. Although the inmates enroll and do all the work involved with the class, they do not pay tuition or receive college credits. Instead they receive, according to Monahan, a feeling that someone still cares, that society has not forgotten about them, and that with education a common ground could be met to make a better society.