About Project Rebound

Mission

To support the higher education and successful reintegration of the formerly incarcerated through the mentorship and living example of other formerly incarcerated students, graduates, faculty, and staff. Project Rebound constructs a life-affirming alternative to the revolving door policies of mass incarceration by making higher education more accessible and supportive of formerly incarcerated students so that they can acquire the knowledge and skills of a university education, enhance their capacity for civic engagement and community leadership, secure meaningful and gratifying employment, empower themselves and their families, and ultimately make stronger, safer communities.

Vision

We envision a just and equitable world in which all people, including those with an incarceration experience, have access to high-quality higher education and comprehensive student support services that foster achievement, transformation, empowerment, social responsibility, and flourishing.

Project Rebound History

In 1967, John Irwin, a formerly incarcerated professor at San Francisco State University, created Project Rebound as a way to matriculate people into university directly from the criminal justice system. Since the program’s inception, hundreds of formerly incarcerated people have obtained bachelor’s degrees and postgraduate degrees. In 2016, with the support of the Opportunity Institute and the CSU Chancellor, Project Rebound expanded beyond San Francisco State into 8 more CSU campus programs. These 8 campuses created the CSU Project Rebound Consortium. In 2019, California made an ongoing investment of $3.3 million in the CSU Project Rebound Consortium to grow and further expand this successful program across the state. By 2022 there were 15 CSU campuses in the Consortium (more information on those 15 programs can be found on the Chancellor's Office Project Rebound page). In 2023, 4 more CSU campuses, including Chico State, started Project Rebound programs, bringing the total number of CSUs with a Project Rebound to 19.

Project Rebound Guiding Values

All Project Rebounds adhere to 5 key guiding values:

1. The Intrinsic Value of Persons. We believe that every person has inherent value and holds the power of possibility and transformation within them.
2. Equitable Access to Education. We believe that access to meaningful, high-quality, face-to-face higher education is fundamental to breaking intergenerational cycles of poverty, abuse, addiction, unemployment, and confinement.
3. Formerly Incarcerated Leadership. We believe that the integration, education, and leadership of formerly incarcerated people are essential to the work of creating solutions to the social crisis of mass incarceration.
4. Education as Public Safety. We believe that meaningful, high-quality higher education ultimately makes stronger, safer communities; we believe that public resources are better invested in education and other opportunities for transformation than prisons and punishment.
5. Civic Engagement. We believe that community engagement is at once a right, a responsibility, and a means of empowerment; we aim to inspire all Rebound Scholars to be informed and engaged civic agents.