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Muhlenberg College’s ongoing efforts to educate incarcerated individuals recently received a boost indirectly from federal dollars awarded to the City of Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Allentown is expected to receive approximately $20 million to implement strategies to improve employment and growth prospects in three of its economically distressed neighborhoods.
The city is one of six awardees taking a share of the $184 million total Distressed Area Recompete Pilot Program investment, authorized under the Chips and Science Act. It will receive about $20 million to create 650 jobs in Franklin Park, Center City, and the Wards.
The Allentown Recompete Plan expects to bring together 38 local partners like Muhlenberg to achieve its objectives, including bringing the neighborhood communities to parity the city-wide average employment by 2030.
Muhlenberg’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program was awarded about $1 million over five years to expand the initiative.
The program, co-led by Muhlenberg psychology professor Dr. Kate Richmond and community engagement librarian Jess Denke, seeks to leverage education as a tool to end mass incarceration in part by bringing together traditionally enrolled Muhlenberg students and incarcerated individuals as classmates in a semester-long college course.
Notably, the college is using a recent $231,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education to offer course credit to incarcerated participants as a means to clear pathways to sustainable employment and postsecondary education. The city has also committed to aligning neighborhood planning and development to concentrate economic activity within the Recompete service area.