Written by: Tiffany Westry
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The UAB Office of Service Learning and Undergraduate Research will host a screening of the WBRC FOX6 News special report “The Prison’s Professors.” The documentary, which aired in December 2015, explores the history of UAB’s Donaldson Lecture Series.
The documentary will be shown Thursday, April 7, at 6 p.m. in the UAB Hill Student Center Alumni Theater. The event is free and open to the public. Attendees are encouraged to bring a new or used paperback book. All books collected will be donated to Donaldson Correctional Facility.
A panel discussion about education in Alabama’s prison system will follow the screening. Panelists include: WBRC FOX6 News anchor Beth Shelburne, writer and producer of the documentary; Jefferson S. Dunn, commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections; UAB Department of Justice Sciences chair Jeffery Walker, Ph.D., as moderator; Alison Chapman, Ph.D., chair of the UAB Department of English; Connie Kohler, professor emerita of the UAB School of Public Health; and Martha Earwood, assistant professor in the Department of Justice Sciences.
The UAB-Donaldson Lecture Series is an innovative collaboration between UAB faculty and staff and staff members from the Alabama Department of Corrections at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility. Donaldson is a maximum-security men’s prison in rural Jefferson County that largely houses inmates with life sentences or those classified as violent repeat offenders. UAB-affiliated faculty and staff members give talks at the prison on the first and third Tuesdays of the month from September through May. The partnership wrapped up its 27th year in May 2015.