 |  | Zelda Roland is the Founding Director of the Yale Prison Education Initiative at Dwight Hall, which brings access to Yale classes and other campus programming to incarcerated students in Connecticut. A Yale alumna (BA `08, PhD `16), Zelda conceived of and created this program after working with incarcerated students enrolled in the Wesleyan Center for Prison Education at Cheshire Correctional Institution. Over the last eight years, she has worked to gain support for, organize, staff, and fund the program, which, with its inaugural courses in 2018, marked the first time any incarcerated student had ever earned Yale College credit for completed coursework. As of 2021, she also serves as the inaugural director of University of New Haven’s Prison Education Program and its partnership with YPEI, through which incarcerated students earn degrees in prison and receive support when released from confinement. In her position, Zelda coordinates YPEI and the University of New Haven's partnerships with the Connecticut Department of Corrections, Bureau of Prisons, and their facilities; relationships with other national and statewide prison education programs, criminal justice, and reentry organizations; an innovative Yale- and New Haven-based Fellowships program that provides college-in-prison alumni with professional development and mentorship opportunities; and a passionate and broad assembly of faculty, administrators, staff, and students who believe in the promise and power of transformative higher education access for incarcerated students.
Zelda is a Lecturer in Yale’s Education Studies Program, a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Communications at the University of New Haven, an affiliated faculty of the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School, and a fellow of Jonathan Edwards College.
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