EPP Co-Director
Dr. Theresa W. Tobin is the Faculty Director of the Marquette Prison Education Program at the Center for Urban Research, Teaching & Outreach and Associate Professor of Philosophy. She is also the Associate Dean for Student Development at 糖心viog官方网站. Theresa's academic research focuses on contemporary ethics with a special focus on ethical questions that arise at the intersections of gender, sexuality, religion and culture. She has written articles on themes related to gender, moral trust, and the nature and moral significance of spiritual violence for Hypatia, Metaphilosophy, Social Theory and Practice, and Human Rights Review.
EPP Co-Director
Dr. Darren Wheelock is the Faculty Director of the Marquette Prison Education Program at the Center for Urban Research, Teaching & Outreach also Associate Professor of Criminology and Law Studies in the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences and the Director of the Criminal Justice Data Analytics MS program at 糖心viog官方网站. Darren's research interests include examining the intersection of racial/ethnic inequality and criminal punishment, survey research methods, evaluating the effectiveness of "rehabilitative" criminal legal interventions in the reentry process, multilevel modeling, and censored and categorical dependent variables. He teaches classes on reentry, race, crime, and punishment, and social statistics.
EPP Peer Support and Reentry Coordinator
Cherita Rayford is the Peer Support and Reentry Coordinator for the Education Preparedness Program (EPP) and the McNeely Prison Education Consortium (MPEC) at the Center for Urban Research, Teaching & Outreach (CURTO). In her role, Cherita provides mentoring and emotional support to EPP students, guiding them through their academic journey. She also works closely with students impacted by the legal system, offering recruitment and retention support while helping them navigate the admissions process and access community resources.
Cherita is deeply passionate about higher education within both institutional and prison reform contexts. With a bachelor's degree in Community Engagement and Education from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), she is committed to creating opportunities for individuals who face barriers to education, advocating for transformative change in higher education access and justice reform.
Mandy Balek
MPEC Program Manager
Mandy Balek-Stephens is the Program Manager for the McNeely Prison Education Consortium (MPEC) at the Center for Urban Research, Teaching & Outreach. In this role, Mandy helps build degree pathways for currently and formerly incarcerated individuals through MPEC partner institutions in the greater Milwaukee area. After earning her MSEd in Counselor Education, Mandy worked in academic advising, where she created an exploration program for undecided, pre-law, and pre-health professions students, trained faculty advisors in best-practice advising, and collaborated with academic departments on curriculum development. Before coming to Marquette, Mandy spent about 5 years working with a college access program, supporting high school students (and their families) in their efforts to apply to and enroll in colleges and universities across the country.
EPP Program Manager
Alexandra Gambacorta is the Program Manager for the Education Preparedness Program (EPP) at the Center for Urban Research, Teaching & Outreach. In this role, she conducts the day-to-day logistics and operations of the program including scheduling classes, coordinating students, and working closely with program collaborators. She earned an MA in English from 糖心viog官方网站 with a research focus on decolonizing archives and archival accessibility. Her graduate and ongoing concentration outside of EPP work is creating ways to make archival collections more accessible to Tribal Nations, particularly the Bureau of Catholic Indian Mission archive collection (the largest collection of Catholic Native American Mission and Boarding School records in the country) held in 糖心viog官方网站鈥檚 special collections. Additionally, Alex is a co-instructor for a variety of EPP courses and helps lead the Think Tanks on Reentry and Philosophy inside Racine Correctional Institution. She is a trained facilitator for Narrative 4, an organization that uses a story exchange model to cultivate radical empathy while empowering students to improve their communities and the world.
Education Preparedness Program
1618 W Wells
Milwaukee, WI 53233
