MMC Celebrates New Graduates of its Prison Education Programs

Class of 2025 graduates at Bedford Hills

Though Jasmine, a freshman in MMC’s college program at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, wasn’t among the graduates preparing to walk across the gymnasium stage at their May 29 commencement, she was bursting with excitement as she waited for the ceremony to start.

For her and fellow students at Bedford Hills, New York State’s sole maximum security prison for women, commencement is one of the most eagerly awaited days of the year. It offers a rare opportunity, she said, to celebrate peers’ achievements, which may begin in the classroom but transcend well beyond it.

“You come to prison with the mindset that you’re a terrible person, but then you see people in the college program actually trying to better themselves, and it gives you hope,” Jasmine said. “Most people don’t think you’ll succeed in prison, so watching them graduate is a big deal.”

She would not be disappointed. This year’s graduating class at Bedford Hills was one of the largest in the program’s 28-year history, with 10 students receiving associate’s degrees and nine receiving bachelor’s degrees. Amid cheers and thunderous applause from families and friends, faculty and administrators, and officials from the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), the procession of graduates in caps and gowns was met with a sign as they entered the gym that read, “We are so proud of you.”

Senior class speaker Tiffanie I. implored graduates to take pride in themselves as well, as she reflected on the challenges of completing college while incarcerated; among other things, students lack access to the internet for research, relying instead on books within the prison’s library. Moreover, they are often at the mercy of circumstances beyond their control, like when a three-week strike by corrections officers at prisons across the state upended educational programming this spring.

“We’ve worked hard to reach this milestone, and we’ve succeeded,” Tiffanie said, noting the study groups and informal networks that students formed to help them stay focused and the support they received from faculty and the college program’s Director Aileen Baumgartner. Still, she added, “This milestone is a commencement, not an end. …Education has equipped us to pursue our dreams.”

MMC has awarded degrees at Bedford Hills since 1997; in 2019, the College began to award degrees at Taconic, a smaller medium-security facility for women, in partnership with the nonprofit Hudson Link for Higher Education. The two programs, which will continue after MMC’s planned merger with Northeastern University, have a strong track record of success, awarding more than 300 degrees to incarcerated students.

Indeed, as a testament to the extraordinary scholarly work performed in both programs, MMC’s 2025 Honors Day Colloquium highlighted research papers by seven students from Bedford Hills and Taconic, three of whom received awards for their projects.

Three graduates earned diplomas at Taconic’s 2025 commencement ceremony, held just hours after Bedford Hills’s. Administrators praised the passion students demonstrated in pursuing their studies, with one graduate completing their degree in just eight semesters —a remarkably fast pace in a correctional setting, where, for any number of reasons, finishing a degree can take much longer than it does on the outside.

In commencement remarks at both ceremonies, Interim President Peter Naccarato encouraged students to continue supporting and protecting one another and to keep their eyes open for inspiration they might find in unexpected places. To that end, he shared with students a mantra he had spotted on the back of an 18-wheeler while driving one day, which had inspired him: “Be Kind, Be Yourself, Be Careful.”

“Be kind,” Interim President Naccarato explained, was a reminder to let kindness be a source of strength and a model for change in a world too often consumed by animosity, cruelty, and inhumanity, while “Be yourself” was a call to authenticity in a society that often punishes difference. Acknowledging the challenges of living authentically, he advised students to lean on friends and allies who will support and love them for who they are.

Extolling the success of the college programs, DOCCS Commissioner Daniel F. Martuscello III emphasized that education breaks the cycles of incarceration and recidivism. Not only do mothers who receive degrees serve as important role models for their children, thereby changing the potential trajectories of their families, but the majority of graduates also find success post-release. In MMC’s prison education programs, the recidivism rate among released graduates is virtually zero, and many alums have gone on to pursue advanced degrees both on the outside and within the facility; a master’s degree program became available at Bedford Hills in 2022.

That includes the speaker who delivered this year’s Bedford Hills commencement address, Tami E. A 2023 graduate of the college program, she earned her first master’s degree in Ministry, Justice, and Carceral Hermeneutics at the facility in 2024 and is now working on a second in Business Administration with an emphasis in Leadership. She’s also proposing a course of study for a doctoral program that she’s hoping will be approved.

Moreover, she has begun mentoring graduate students to help ease the way for those interested in advanced degrees and, with the help of faculty, is establishing a graduate student resource center in the facility’s Learning Center.

Noting that it had taken her more than 15 years to earn her bachelor’s after first enrolling in the Bedford Hills College Program in 2002, Tami said that when she was told she’d been chosen as the 2025 commencement speaker, she thought to herself, “Why me?”

“I realized that for so long, I was accustomed to thinking I was unworthy of such honors,” she said. However, she added, thanks to the power of education, she stood there at the podium “as someone who had accepted her worth.”

“Now I say with confidence, ‘Why not me,’ and I’ll take it a step further and say, ‘Why not you too.’ …Believe in yourself and accept your worth.”

View photos from the ceremonies below!