Velocity - Magazine - Page 5
FROM THE INSIDE OUT
By Jennifer Snyder
Dean Amy Doty spent 10 years in a Nebraska prison and has
spent the years since teaching the system to look at people
who land there the way she wishes someone had looked at
her: not as the worst day of their life, but as the rest of it.
first graduate of the program. Whittaker
found a person in Doty who believed in
her and challenged her to change the
way she lives the rest of her life.
“Amy Doty is the most amazing
“I understand in a very real way how
this may be the first environment
easily a life can be defined by trauma,
in a long time where they are being
adversity, poor decisions, and systems
recognized for their potential instead of
that often see people only at their worst
controlled for their past.”
moment,” said Doty. “I also understand
the power of someone refusing to
reduce a person to that moment.”
Doty’s path from incarceration
One of the other outcomes Doty is
hopeful about is a change in public
perception about incarcerated
individuals. She is confident this
to Dean of UPWARD is about what
will happen once the public sees the
becomes possible when someone
positive impact education has on the
invests in you before you fully invest
re-entry process.
in yourself. Being able to take college
classes while incarcerated changed her
life trajectory.
“Education did not erase my past,
but it changed my relationship to it,”
Doty explained. “It helped me move
from surviving to building. It changed
person,” said Whittaker. “She told me
at the very beginning she was going to
help me get through this. I told her all
she had to do was believe in me and I
would get it done.”
As for Doty, she is going to
continue to walk-the-walk and talkthe-talk as she leads SCC’s purposeful
work of transforming the lives of
incarcerated individuals.
“
When you invest in people like me,
more often than not, we show up
ready to give back in impactful ways.
how I saw myself. It allowed me to
”
step into leadership, into service, and
into a life shaped by purpose instead
of limitation.”
Doty’s own experience confirms
“I wish the public understood
“Education changed my life by
what the research suggests, which
that these are not abstract issues or
giving me a way to rebuild from the
is that education is one of the most
categories of people,” Doty said. “They
inside out,” said Doty. “Most
effective tools for improving post-
are human beings with intelligence,
importantly, it helped me believe my
release outcomes. The RAND meta-
talent, pain, potential, and often
story did not have to end when
analysis (Davis et al., 2014) shows
extraordinary resilience. Many of our
incarceration began. When you invest
participation in any kind of educational
students have survived significant
in people like me, more often than
program can reduce an individual’s
trauma, instability, addiction, poverty,
not, we show up ready to give back in
chance of recidivism by 43%.
family disruption, and systems that
impactful ways.”
“When someone succeeds in college
while incarcerated, it is not just
about passing a course or earning
failed them long before they ever
entered a correctional facility.”
In just three years, Doty is making
a credential,” Doty said. “It is about
an impact on the lives of the SCC
proving to themselves they can think
students in the Nebraska Department of
critically, stay committed, solve
Correctional Services facilities. One of
problems, and grow. For many students,
those students is Jessica Whittaker, the
June 2026
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