From One Campus to Another: Georgetown Graduate Helps Incarcerated Students Get Georgetown Degrees

Samantha Simonsen joined PJI as a Georgetown graduate in January 2025. Now, she’s helping incarcerated students get their Georgetown degrees.

As the administrative coordinator for prison education, Simonsen works directly with PJI’s Bachelor of Liberal Arts (BLA) program at the Patuxent Institution and Prison Scholars Program at the D.C. Jail. The BLA program, administered jointly by the Georgetown College of Arts & Sciences and Georgetown Prisons and Justice Initiative, offers bachelor’s degrees in cultural humanities and interdisciplinary social science for incarcerated students at the Patuxent Institution in Maryland.

Originally from San Diego, California, Simonsen moved to Washington, D.C., in 2019 to study at Georgetown. She graduated in 2023 with a major in history and a minor in justice and peace studies. While at Georgetown, she served on the board of Georgetown ACLU and participated in cocurricular theater. 

Simonsen said her introduction to the criminal legal system began with a philosophy class she took her junior year entitled Crime and Punishment. 

“That was one of the classes I took in college that was the most transformative… and one of the classes where I felt like I came away with the most questions and the most frustrations at seeing how tremendously flawed our system was and how complicated it was going to be to solve some of those problems,” Simonsen said.

Now, in her role, Simonsen is actively working to improve higher education in carceral spaces. Because there is no access to technology inside the prison and jail, Simonsen helps field students’ research requests and provides printed materials and supplies for the semester. She also helps support the BLA program’s lecture series, which invites guest speakers and professors to work with and teach students in a variety of fields.

Simonsen said she loves working alongside PJI’s prison education team because of its collaborative and supportive environment.

“I feel lucky to have a supportive team that I think works well together and is really collaborative and driven by shared purpose, values, and goals.”

Simonsen said the most rewarding part of her job is getting to know the students.

“I have been so honored and particularly touched to have been trusted with people’s life stories and their experiences, and so those moments have really stuck with me.”

She added that getting an accredited college degree while incarcerated is a feat that should be celebrated.

“The BLA students’ circumstances are very different from traditional college students, and they are doing their learning in an extremely difficult place which, unlike a traditional college campus, does not make education its primary focus. And yet, our students aren’t just succeeding, they’re going above and beyond. They are an unusually thoughtful and driven group of people.”

After her own experience at Georgetown, Simonsen wanted to share that same joy with the students.

“I went to Georgetown. I got my undergrad at Georgetown. So I and our students, who are Georgetown students, have that in common. That education was really wonderful and transformative for me and is one of the great blessings and joys of my life, and so getting to help provide that and offer that to other people and to see what a profound impact it has in our students’ lives is really rewarding.”

Written by Julia Butler