Danville Area Community College is winning praise from some people you might not expect – some inmates at the Danville Correctional Center. DACC President Stephen Nacco says the college decided to continue teaching some courses at the prison, even though it wasn’t sure it would ever get paid through its contract with the State of Illinois. ‘’It would have been easy to walk away, and several community colleges across the state – as they saw we were going into a second year without a budget – they walked away from the prison. Here, the idea was – we have students who are really one semester, many of them one or two semesters from graduation, so they’ve invested a lot of time,’’ said President Nacco. ‘’And they’re inmates, but they’re also our students if it’s a DACC class.’’
President Nacco believes the inmates now have a better chance at life. ‘’They now have a better chance of not going back to a prison and becoming productive members of society, with college degrees,’’ said Nacco. ‘’These inmates are saying ‘thank-you for believing in us’ and ‘thank-you for not quitting on us’. Well, you didn’t quit, so why should we quit is our answer to that. They didn’t quit, and now they’re college graduates – 41 of them.’’
President Nacco, Executive Vice President Dave Kietzmann, Dean Bruce Rape, and David Harris – the Department of Corrections Education Coordinator – were all on hand to congratulate the new graduates. Says Dean Rape, ‘’It was heartwarming to hear from the graduates and to feel their excitement.’’
