Doctoral Candidate Wins Award for Paper on UK Prison Exchange Course

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 16, 2015) — Molly Malany Sayre, a doctoral candidate in the University of Kentucky College of Social Work, has been awarded the 2015 Teaching Social Problems Paper Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems (SSSP).

Sayre, of Cincinnati, Ohio, received the award for her paper focusing on an Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program course at UK, which comprises UK students, or "outside" students, and incarcerated individuals in the Blackburn Correctional Complex in Lexington, or "inside" students.

Sayre was a teaching assistant for Professor Michelle Staton-Tindall's Fall 2014 class. Offered by the College of Social Work, the UK course examined the use and abuse of substances and their relationship to crime through the analysis of sociological and clinical social work theories.

In her paper, Sayre explores the implications of the Inside-Out course for outside students’ reification and recognition of people who are incarcerated, and by extension, members of groups that typically receive social work services.

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program was developed in 1997 at Temple University and founded on the premise that incarcerated individuals and college students had a significant amount to learn from each other when studying together as peers in the same environment. The program is currently successfully operating in more than 300 prison institutions and college/university programs worldwide.

Sayre will receive a cash award of $100, a certificate of recognition, a one year membership to SSSP, and will present her paper at the 2015 SSSP Annual Meeting in August.  

MEDIA CONTACT: Whitney Harder, 859-323-2396, whitney.harder@uky.edu