From homelessness and poverty to setting down the path to a degree, the University of Wisconsin’s Odyssey Project provides free teaching to adults facing financial difficulties to take the first steps into higher education.
Jean Feraca, a philosophy and civic engagement professor, said the program began after when she hosted Earl Shorris on her Wisconsin Public Radio program. Shorris established the Clemente Course, a course for low income adults in New York back in 1995, Feraca said.
After hosting Shorris, Feraca said she contacted Emily Auerbach and they worked together to create a similar program at UW.
Auerbach, the founder and director of the Odyssey Project, said this project hit close to home. She said her parents faced similar challenges to those in the program but were able to overcome financial obstacles to receive an education.
“I didn’t want just a class and then say goodbye,” Auerbach said. “I wanted the whole deal — a life-changing educational journey that would give people a chance to break out of poverty the way my mother did.”
According to its website, the Odyssey Project provides people with the opportunity to pursue the higher education they would not otherwise be able to achieve. It is a one-year program that provides humanities classes to the students, the website said.
The Odyssey Project is in its 10th year and has 30 students currently enrolled. About 250 people have already gone through the program, Marshall Cook, a faculty member in the Odyssey Project, said.
Cook, who is also the vocabulary coach for the project, said his involvement has been the highlight of his experience as an educator.
“I always come away from class uplifted, enlightened and inspired,” Cook said. “No one who goes through the project comes out the same.”
Members of the project still face challenges, Afro-American studies professor Craig Werner said. Many students may be struggling with jobs, family, problems with health care and many other issues associated with living in poverty, he said.
The barriers both inside and outside the classroom place hurdles in the students’ way, but educators in the program work hard to accommodate students facing these issues, Auerbach said.
“I don’t think that someone that is gifted and motivated should have to stop [their education] due to a lack of money,” she said.
Although the Odyssey Project is intended to be a jump-start course, the program helps students achieve their degrees by raising funds for scholarships to help graduates from the one-year program continue their education, Auerbach said.
She added the program also provides UW with more diversity and strengthens the university community by having low-income students mixed with the rest of the student body, she said.
Having students from low income backgrounds in major programs across campus provides the rest of the student body with different points of view, Auerbach said.
Werner said the project is the best thing UW does.
“Even with the challenges many of the students [in the Odyssey Program] face, they continue to work heroically,” Werner said. “Students in Odyssey are absolutely committed and the classrooms are just amazing. The energy and intensity in class happens almost all the time.”
