While incarcerated for drug offenses at the Mountainview Youth Correctional Facility in Annandale, N.J., in February 2009, Walter Fortson met Donald Roden, a professor of history at Rutgers University. Roden, a frequent visitor to the correctional facility, was looking to recruit inmates for a program that would support them in pursuing a college degree. At the time, Fortson had no idea that crossing paths with Roden would take him from prison to Rutgers University and, ultimately, to Cambridge in England.
Excited by Fortson’s potential, Roden recruited him to participate in the Mountainview Program, which recruits students from community college programs within New Jersey’s state youth correctional facilities and offers them the academic and reentry support to obtain a bachelor’s degree. Through programs like MVP, higher education institutions in New Jersey are partnering with the New Jersey Department of Corrections and State Parole Board to create a model that broadens the educational prospects of individuals who are incarcerated while reducing the recidivism rates.
In order to be considered for the Mountainview Program, located on the New Brunswick campus of Rutgers University, applicants must apply to Rutgers University and have 12 college credits, obtained before or while incarcerated.
“Professor Roden prepared me for Rutgers by encouraging me and reminding me that I was capable of doing it,” says Fortson. “He’d always say, ‘You’ll be an asset to our program.’”
Roden ensured that Fortson had the academic and reentry support he needed during his time at Rutgers. Roden assisted with housing, tutoring, establishing relationships with Fortson’s parole officer and peer support.
“It was exceedingly helpful,” Fortson says. “Everything that I am today is because of those relationships, the efforts and support, bridging those gaps and making those connections. I personally know, had it not been for the Mountainview Program, Rutgers would have denied my application.”
Last year, Fortson sat on the advisory board that formed the New Jersey Scholarship and Transformative Education in Prisons (NJ-STEP) program. “The New Jersey stakeholders in education and corrections came together to form NJ-STEP because, ultimately, we all had the same goal,” he says. The goal of NJ-STEP is to connect every state correctional facility in New Jersey with a two- and four-year college.
