Scenes from the second LIFTED (Leveraging Inspiring Futures Through Educational Degrees) graduation from inside the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility. Photos by Steve Zylius
94 percent of UC Irvine in-prison bachelor’s program graduates earn honors
Among the University of California, Irvine’s 10,261 graduates from the class of 2025 is a unique cohort of 16 Anteaters who were awarded their bachelor’s degrees in sociology on June 18 at the second LIFTED (Leveraging Inspiring Futures Through Educational Degrees) graduation from inside the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility. Ten of the students also earned a minor in English.
Fifteen LIFTED graduates — 94 percent — earned distinctions of excellence. Three were recognized as Summa Cum Laude (with a grade point average in the top two percent of their graduating class); four as Magna Cum Laude (with a GPA in the next four percent) and 15 were inducted into Alpha Kappa Delta — the International Sociology Honor Society. Five students earned departmental honors and three were named recipients of the School of Social Sciences Order of Merit, recognizing academic excellence, original research, leadership activities, and service contributions.
“LIFTED graduations celebrate both the accomplishments of our fantastic students and of our state institutions,” says Keramet Reiter, LIFTED director and professor of criminology, law and society. “UC Irvine is the first top-10 public university in the United States to admit, matriculate, and graduate students with a bachelor’s degree from within prison. We do this in collaboration with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, who supports us in creating spaces where incarcerated people can experience new identities as students and college graduates!”
Speakers at the ceremony included UC Irvine Provost Hal Stern; violinist, social justice advocate and MacArthur Fellow (often called the “Genius Grant”) Vijay Gupta; as well as a pair of student speakers, Dontaye Henderson and Jesse Rinke. Both graduates emphasized themes of identity, equality, recovery and opportunity.
Henderson was struck by the “transformative power” the LIFTED program created: “It takes away limits, labels, doubts and fear, and creates hope.”
Directly addressing classmates during the ceremony, Henderson said: “I’m here today to tell you that you are enough,” noting “the unbreakable spirit” that brought them to this celebration of their achievements. “Here, you are shining before me, unyielding and determined. We emerge not as shadows defined by our pasts, we emerge as the light.”
Rinke says LIFTED “allows for people who are incarcerated to be more than the worst things they’ve done and show we’re capable of change. We want access to resources to reshape our lives and that’s what this is about, at a very high level.”
During his speech, Rinke discussed how education “invariably improves the lives of the people who have it – it chips away at inequality.” His speech closed with a call to action for his classmates: “We are an immutable light behind these walls. We can change the future of others. Let us give California our best.”
This year’s ceremony included several musical elements, featuring a violin performance by Gupta of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and a routine from participants of “Dance 193,” taught by Cyrian Reed, UC Irvine assistant professor of dance. Gabe Rosales, criminology, law and society doctoral candidate and co-founder of the Underground Scholars Initiative at UC Irvine, led a band of six musicians who provided music before, during, and after the ceremony.
“LIFTED is empowering students to build new futures – as they successfully petition the governor for sentence commutations, develop research projects, and apply to graduate school,” Reiter says. “LIFTED is a model public institutional partnership between a state prison and a flagship university, successfully expanding access to higher education – and to the many opportunities a University of California degree fosters.”
John Winkelman, who graduated with the first cohort of 23 LIFTED graduates last year and is one of six who have been released since the program’s launch, has been admitted to a graduate program at the University of San Diego.
One of the 2025 graduates, Derek Adams, penned an essay, featured in the event’s program, about the power of higher education. He wrote, in part:
“This moment represents a changing prison system, a changing society, and most importantly, changed individuals. Beautifully underpinning this moment is the recognition that individual change and systemic change must progress simultaneously. An individual will struggle to heal and transform in a system incompatible with that objective, and conversely, a system cannot evolve if the individuals comprising it refuse to do so. Fundamentally, today represents second chances, and signifies the unifying agenda of all parties to be, and do, better. Each member of this graduating class has received a second chance to find meaning and purpose through education, while society simultaneously receives the opportunity to distance itself from the troubling practice of simply warehousing broken human beings.”
LIFTED was created by UC Irvine steering committee members Reiter; Pavan Kadandale, associate professor of teaching in molecular biology and biochemistry; Valerie Jenness, Distinguished Professor of criminology, law and society; and Carroll Seron, professor emerita of criminology, law and society. Currently, Kadandale, David John Frank, professor and chair of sociology, and Annie McClanahan, associate professor of English serve as faculty co-directors with Reiter.
Through LIFTED, incarcerated individuals who earn an A.A. in sociology from Southwestern College are eligible for admission. All LIFTED students must meet the same admission requirements as other UC transfer students, and they must meet the same graduation requirements, as well, in order to receive their degrees.
— Heather Ashbach, Cara Capuano and Mimi Ko Cruz
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