Last month, 35 students who participated in Project Rebound at Cal State Fullerton graduated — a number higher than any other year since the program began on the campus in 2016.
Project Rebound helps people who come out of prison earn college degrees and take their next steps toward a career or further education.
The program was begun in 1967 in San Francisco by John Irwin, a formerly incarcerated man who’d served five years for robbing a gas station. He earned college credits in Soledad prison, and after his release, he achieved a doctorate at UC Berkeley. Irwin began Project Rebound to help people coming out of prison matriculate to San Francisco State University.
“Most people question, do formerly incarcerated people have what it takes to succeed and excel at this level?” said J.C. Cavitt, interim executive director of Project Rebound at Cal State Fullerton.
The answer is yes, he said, and pointed to several indicators. Project Rebound students have a higher retention rate than that of other students throughout the CSU system, and at CSUF they have a higher GPA than other students.
“In our campus in particular, we were actually outshining our counterparts, the traditional students on campus, GPA-wise, which was very interesting,” he said.
Very few Project Rebound students ever return to prison. “Our recidivism rate to this day still remains below one,” said Cavitt. “I think definitely has folks’ attention when you compare it to and contrast it to the state’s recidivism rate.”
That rate was about 42% in 2019, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Project Rebound expanded to nine Cal State University campuses in 2016, including Cal State Fullerton, and today the program operates in 19 of the 23 CSU campuses.
“The Fullerton campus did a lot of advocacy work, reaching out to community partners and philanthropic donors so that we can offer more robust services to the students, recognizing that many formerly incarcerated students come with unique challenges and needs as they navigate higher ed,” Cavitt said.
He’s proud of the dedication shown by Project Rebound students, particularly at graduation time. “I have the opportunity to watch our students grow and transform, face adversity and somehow have the grit and the tenacity to continue to overcome obstacle after obstacle and barrier after barrier,” he said. “And one of the things I think I’m most proud of is people are not stopping at just a bachelor’s degree.”
One 2024 graduate, Stephanie Jeffcoat, a political science major who first learned about Project Rebound through an outreach event at her church, Second Baptist in Santa Ana, intends to continue on to law school, with a focus on dependency law.
“Academic advising tailored to my unique needs and circumstances, financial assistance for textbooks and other educational materials, and emotional support through counseling and peer support groups,” she said, naming the support she received from Project Rebound while at Cal State Fullerton. “These services not only eased my academic journey but also enriched my personal growth and resilience,” she said.
Project Rebound provides support such as helping students fill out financial aid forms and job applications, create a resume and write cover letters. It also provides guidance for scholarship opportunities. Students can qualify for a $500-per-semester stipend to cover books and supplies, meal support and a parking permit. Some housing is also available.
Mentorship is an important source of support for the students, with mentors coming from the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute on campus.
“We pair our incoming students with retired professionals to help them with professional development, but also give them some inside learning on a major or a career that they’re interested in,” Cavitt explained. “We also provide peer-to-peer mentoring. Our incoming students every semester get paired with a senior-standing Project Rebound scholar, and it’s kind of the buddy system. They help navigate them through getting to classes, how to have conversations with your faculty, how to upload stuff to the computer.
“That’s been a huge gap for many of our students — they’re so far behind in technology, and sometimes navigating that can be extremely frustrating for them.”
Cavitt, himself a formerly incarcerated person, graduated from Cal State Fullerton in 2019 with a bachelor’s degree in sociology and went on to get a master’s in social work. He vividly remembers the sense of community and nonjudgmental support he received from many people in Project Rebound, especially Romarilyn Ralston, the executive director at the time. Cavitt is on track to receive a doctorate in marriage and family therapy next spring.
Like Cavitt, many Project Rebound students continue their education after graduation. Of the approximately 60 students who’ve graduated since the program began at Cal State Fullerton, “almost 25% of them have gone on to post-secondary, either master’s programs, EDD, or PhD programs,” Cavitt said.
