{"id":20289,"date":"2025-10-22T23:39:03","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T06:39:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/?p=20289"},"modified":"2025-10-23T07:52:53","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T14:52:53","slug":"formerly-incarcerated-students-will-share-their-community-college-transfer-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/?p=20289","title":{"rendered":"Formerly incarcerated students will share their community college transfer stories"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>CORRECTION: A previous version of this story provided an incorrect time and incorrectly stated Rosa Martinez&#8217;s job title.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Formerly incarcerated students will speak about their struggles in the justice system and experiences of transitioning from community college to university at a transfer event panel on Thursday, hosted by LBCC\u2019s Justice Scholars Program.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThrough the experiences of our graduates and other formerly incarcerated students, we hope they\u2019re inspired. Each panelist has their own unique story, and we want students to see they are not alone as they walk this journey through higher education,\u201d said Rosa Martinez, Justice Scholars program specialist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The panel will be open for anyone to attend and will be held from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Liberal Arts Campus in Building W, Room 201, with <a href=\"https:\/\/forms.office.com\/Pages\/ResponsePage.aspx?id=reYxgPt7mkCSzRY2Die9Zan1w0j8yQhDqdm-8MMRsHNUMFlaS1VGV1hHRUI1TTgxRUFIR1c2SkZETS4u\">attendees able to RSVP<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After the student panel, the event will have a transfer fair until 2 p.m., where reentry organizations will be present to support formerly incarcerated students as they transition back into society after prison.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A program that will be present is Project Rebound, which aims to help formerly incarcerated students to apply to and transfer to Cal States, assisting with applications, questions about the campuses and to point students to resources at their prospective campus.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Other reentry programs will be there to help with employment, housing, addiction, guilt and shame, and coping with family separation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Justice Scholars Program serves formerly incarcerated, system-involved, and system-impacted students, supporting them from application to graduation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cEveryone\u2019s different, but with (JSP), I\u2019m not different. I can do this, I can succeed. Whatever resources they can provide, whether it\u2019s a cup of coffee in the morning to put some pep in your step, a snack, or a safe place to sit down and study, do homework, or just someone to talk to, they\u2019re there ,\u201d said Jason Hagan, a first-semester student.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hagan spent half of his life in prison. Being in and out of trouble and still on parole, coming back to school was \u201cone of the most positive things\u201d he\u2019s done in his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many rising scholars who have made that first step to return to school have had similar experiences, feeling scared and unsure if they belong. One student even expressed that it was more intimidating walking on campus than walking in a prison yard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI was an addict for 30 years, from juvenile to adulthood. I got sober, but I was still struggling. I was having negative thoughts, and I said, \u2018Let me go back to school,\u2019 and that\u2019s what I did. But it was hard at first. I came with a completely different vocabulary, oftentimes people would report me, saying, \u2018This guy\u2019s conversations are not conducive to a college campus.\u2019 But then I met people like Rosa Martinez, who showed me a different way, how to better conduct myself in an environment I was never exposed to,\u201d said Brian Keith Burten, an LBCC student who works for JSP.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Efrain Lopez, an LBCC alumni who transferred to Cal State Long Beach will be speaking at the event, and he shared his struggles entering education after incarceration.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Coming out of prison, he knew nothing about college or the process of signing up for classes and financial aid and felt uncomfortable talking to people who didn\u2019t understand his struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBeing able to talk to people like Sara and Rosa, who understood me, that was a significant part of my educational journey,\u201d said Lopez. \u201cThere were so many times I felt like I bothered people. Other programs I asked for help would direct me to their website. I\u2019d think, \u2018Wait a minute, I\u2019m asking these questions because I don\u2019t know how to navigate these websites.\u2019 They just didn\u2019t understand that I wasn\u2019t as tech-savvy as others.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A mundane task like logging into a computer may be simple for the average student, but for those who just served a 10-year sentence, it\u2019s a whole new world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Terms like \u201cstudent portals\u201d and \u201conline courses\u201d are unfamiliar to students returning to school after incarceration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCollege is way different than it was about 13 years ago. \u2026 When I was in school 10 years ago, I was struggling, and they didn\u2019t have places to take showers or safe places to sleep in my car. Now there are programs and counselors who will sit with you one-on-one and assist you as you transition from life on the streets,\u201d said Annette Hernandez, a returning student and friend of Burten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Participants will be able to hear more in-depth about the experiences and struggles of formerly incarcerated transfer students at the panel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CORRECTION: A previous version of this story provided an incorrect time and incorrectly stated Rosa Martinez&#8217;s job title. Formerly incarcerated students will speak about their struggles in the justice system [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":185,"featured_media":20290,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[882,2246,4137,6272,6271,1261,1262,2244,74,29,68,10,1314,5806,5831,6443,6273,518,1815,772],"class_list":["post-20289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-college","tag-formerly-incarcerated","tag-gomez","tag-jessica","tag-jessica-rodriguez","tag-justice-scholars","tag-justice-scholars-center","tag-justice-scholars-program","tag-lac","tag-lbcc","tag-long-beach-city-college","tag-news","tag-panel","tag-rafael","tag-rafael-gomez","tag-reentry","tag-rodriguez","tag-transfer","tag-transfer-fair","tag-university"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Skgy-5hf","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lbccviking.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/News_20251021_Beyondlbccstudentpanel_RGomez_3952-e1761201604370.jpg?fit=2340%2C1422&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/185"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20289"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20293,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20289\/revisions\/20293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbccviking.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}