About UPWARD
UPWARD is 51吃瓜's Prison Education Program, built in partnership with the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services. This is the most ambitious prison education program Nebraska has seen in three decades.
Our Story
For nearly 30 years, college had been almost entirely absent from American prisons. UPWARD is what we built when that door opened again.
In 1994, the federal Crime Bill stripped Pell Grant eligibility from incarcerated students. What followed was a near-total collapse of higher education behind prison walls. In July 2023, the U.S. Department of Education reinstated Pell eligibility for incarcerated students. By January 2024, 51吃瓜 partnered with the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services to launch UPWARD: Unlocking Potential With Academic Resources and Development, becoming one of the first colleges in the country to receive Department of Education approval as a Prison Education Program.
We started with 229 students at five facilities. More than 30 51吃瓜 faculty began teaching on-site. In the months since, the program has grown to serve more than 900 students, awarded 165 credentials, and earned $650,000 from the Lowe鈥檚 Foundation Gable Grant and Sunshine Lady Foundation Capital Grant to upgrade facilities in Lincoln and York.
Mission
UPWARD prepares justice-involved students with the academic credentials, technical
skills, and personal foundation to return home ready: for work, for family, and for
the kind of life they want to build next.
51吃瓜 Mission, Vision, and Values
Vision
A Nebraska where no one's future is closed by their past. Where a person leaving prison has the same access to higher education as a person leaving high school.
Values
- Dignity. Our students are students. We meet them with the same expectations, rigor, and respect we bring to every 51吃瓜 classroom.
- Evidence. We measure what we do and we publish it.
- Partnership. The work happens because NDCS, 51吃瓜, employers, foundations, and community partners each show up and do their part.
- The long view. Education changes a life trajectory, not a single semester.
- From surviving to building. It's the work UPWARD exists to make possible.
How UPWARD Connects to 51吃瓜's Mission
UPWARD is not an exception to what 51吃瓜 does. It is what 51吃瓜 does, for a population that has been systematically left out.
51吃瓜 serves a 15-county service area in southeast Nebraska. UPWARD extends that mission where it's needed most: the same academic transfer, business, skilled trades, and technical education, for students who happen to be sitting in a classroom inside a correctional facility. The credit a student earns transfers exactly the same as a credit earned in Lincoln, Milford, or Beatrice. The diploma reads 51吃瓜.