Herd Media
  • News,  Opinion

    “I can’t imagine a better place to be in prison”

    Lipscomb diploma

    Lipscomb’s LIFE program produces two empowered, prepared graduates Two Lipscomb students from Debra Johnson Rehabilitation Center have finished their coursework for their Associate’s Degree and are awaiting graduation. Molly and Evette, two students from the Lipscomb Initiative for Education, or the LIFE Program, have many mixed emotions about graduating. Looking back at the process of getting into the LIFE Program was not an easy one.  “It was a really big blessing because I had tried three times to get in,” Evette said. “The first time I got a write-up Lipscomb gave me something to strive for. I persevered and finally got in!”  “It’s taken eight years to finish this degree,”…

  • Archive,  Lumination Network

    Lipscomb’s LIFE Program offers hope to inmates

    Lumination Network mockup for archival pieces.

    Republished from Lumination Network, Jan. 30, 2014. Dr. Richard Goode is looking ahead to the next Lipscomb Initiative for Education graduation class while celebrating the accomplishment of the first ever graduating class. Goode is an associate history professor at Lipscomb and founder of the LIFE program, which offers credit classes in the Tennessee Prison for Women to a group of selected inmates. Participants in the LIFE program are not rushed through courses. Instead, they work as long as needed in order to achieve goals to build a better future. The program began in January of 2007, so for the past eight years, the first nine women who graduated had been…