{"id":492,"date":"2023-11-17T12:42:29","date_gmt":"2023-11-17T17:42:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/?p=492"},"modified":"2025-03-18T10:31:25","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T14:31:25","slug":"id-love-to-see-bu-become-a-national-leader-in-college-in-prison-programming-and-collegiate-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/2023\/11\/17\/id-love-to-see-bu-become-a-national-leader-in-college-in-prison-programming-and-collegiate-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I\u2019d Love to See BU Become a National Leader in College-in-Prison Programming and Collegiate Recovery\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

In third\u00a0grade,\u00a0Noel Vest<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>took a test to get into his school\u2019s\u00a0gifted program, but fell short of qualifying. That setback shattered\u00a0Vest\u2019s confidence and self-esteem, and his ambitious attitude dissolved into personal and academic apathy throughout the rest of his childhood.<\/p>\n

What eight-year-old\u00a0Vest didn\u2019t know\u00a0at the time was that\u00a0he would\u00a0go on to develop many gifts, including a mastery of\u00a0statistical methods and empirical evidence and a deeply personal understanding of\u00a0mental illnesses\u00a0and\u00a0substance use disorders, and\u00a0how these conditions disproportionately affect\u00a0incarcerated people and college students. Perhaps most emphatically,\u00a0he developed a desire to destigmatize these issues\u00a0and draw from his own history of substance use and prior incarceration to advocate for better educational and economic opportunities for current and formerly incarcerated individuals.<\/p>\n

Vest\u2019s past\u00a0struggles and journey to overcome them now guide much of his research as an assistant professor of\u00a0<\/span>community health sciences<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>at the School of Public Health, where he studies how substance use disorders\u00a0and mental health challenges intersect among a variety of populations. He\u00a0also studies how to improve care\u00a0and support services for people in substance use\u00a0recovery, and his research extends to recidivism,\u00a0prison reentry\u00a0interventions, and systemic, discriminatory issues\u00a0that have long plagued the US criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne quote that holds so much meaning to me is \u2018those closest\u00a0to the problem are those closest to the solution\u2014but they are\u00a0also\u00a0furthest from the power and the resources,\u2019\u201d Vest says,\u00a0citing sentiments by Glenn Martin, founder of\u00a0GEMTrainers<\/a>, a strategic thought partner to leaders driving social justice change. \u201cIf I had one goal to accomplish in this lifetime, it would be to motivate and inspire individuals in prison to explore opportunities in higher education. The experience for me has been extremely transformative in ways I had never imagined.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vest is senior author of a new conceptual paper that encapsulates these thoughts, presenting the benefits of substance use treatment and recovery studies that include researchers with\u00a0a lived experience of substance use and incarceration. The\u00a0<\/span>Implementation Research and Practice<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/em>paper argues that researchers who have themselves struggled with drug or\u00a0alcohol misuse are uniquely positioned to design and conduct these studies\u00a0and recommend interventions with the insight, accuracy, and sensitivity that is best gleaned from personal experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany implementation science studies involve community input but that is where inclusion often ends,\u201d Vest says. \u201cWe must also seek to include researchers who understand the experience of their study subjects and can build trust within these communities, identify\u00a0appropriate study questions, and design interventions that are realistic and sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vest also coauthored a new study\u00a0in the journal\u00a0Alcohol<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>(his first collaboration with an SPH faculty member, senior author\u00a0Rachel Sayko Adams<\/a>) in which he lent his expertise in latent class analysis to examine comorbidities and healthcare utilization among veterans experiencing alcohol misuse.<\/p>\n

Vest\u2019s own experience with substance misuse began after a breakup in his late teens. What started as a coping mechanism turned into a severe 14-year dependence on methamphetamine and alcohol, which then ballooned into\u00a0multiple drug, fraud, and identity theft offenses that he committed to financially\u00a0sustain this dependence.\u00a0In the early 2000s,\u00a0Vest was sentenced to 5-20 years in prison; he ended up serving a total of 7 years in\u00a0a\u00a0state prison in Las Vegas, Nev., from 2002 to 2009.<\/p>\n

An opportunity for growth<\/h4>\n

This time in prison brought opportunities for growth, reflection, and healing\u2014Vest\u00a0joined an\u00a0Alcoholics Anonymous group and other self-help programs, which helped him\u00a0achieve sobriety and gain a renewed sense of purpose. He also enrolled in college classes through the\u00a0College of Southern Nevada\u2019s college-in-prison program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI needed inspiration and a reason to believe I wasn\u2019t as dumb as I thought I was all through elementary and high school,\u201d he recalls. \u201cIt was exactly what I needed at the time that I needed it.\u201d<\/p>\n

These courses reignited the motivation and optimism Vest had lost years ago, and laid the foundation for his aspirations in higher education over the next decade. As soon as he was released from prison, Vest enrolled in community college in Washington state, earning an associate\u2019s degree in chemical dependency counseling before transferring to\u00a0Washington State University where he received a bachelor\u2019s degree in psychology. After an initial stint as a drug and alcohol counselor, he realized that his brain was much more aligned with technical thinking, and he heeded the advice of his mentor, Dr. Sarah Tragesser, to pursue graduate school. Five years later, he earned a PhD in experimental psychology at WSU,\u00a0and he arrived at SPH in the summer of 2022 from Stanford University,\u00a0where he was\u00a0a postdoctoral scholar in\u00a0the Systems Neuroscience and Pain Lab. Next semester, he will teach the course Substance Use among Diverse Populations (MC783<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Vest is keenly\u00a0aware of how fortunate he was to have access to educational and professional opportunities during\u00a0and after he served time. Few incarcerated individuals have the same options. Despite the fact that\u00a0nearly 70 percent<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>of incarcerated adults in federal and state prisons express interest in taking college courses\u2014and\u00a0overwhelming data<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>show that these educational opportunities reduce recidivism\u2014less than half of prisons (and only one-third of state prisons) offer college courses. The vast majority of incarcerated people earn only a GED or high school equivalency while completing their sentence, as prisons tend to prioritize workforce development over higher education.<\/p>\n

Discriminatory criminal history question<\/h4>\n

These numbers are why Vest is working avidly to change state-level policies that contribute to these inequities, starting with one of the most consequential barriers of all: the criminal history question on college applications. Since 2018, he has been a prominent advocate of\u00a0\u201cBan the Box\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>legislation that grew from a national movement fighting for the removal of this question from applications in employment, housing, occupational licensing, and higher education. Advocates argue that removing the requirement to disclose arrest and conviction histories from job and other applications\u2014or at least delaying them until later in the hiring\/acceptance process\u2014provides a fair chance for formerly incarcerated people to enter these spaces. Vest successfully testified and helped author the\u00a0Fair Chance to Education Act in\u00a0Washington in 2018<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0California in 2020<\/a>, which effectively banned colleges from inquiring\u00a0about criminal history on their applications\u00a0(with certain exceptions).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question itself is discriminatory,\u201d says Vest, who has his sights set on Massachusetts legislation next. \u201cThere\u2019s absolutely no research to show that colleges that have the criminal history box are safer than colleges that don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is evidence, however, to suggest that the mere presence of the criminal history question on college applications discourages applicants with a criminal background from completing the application. A\u00a0New York-based study<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>in 2015 compared the number of college applicants who clicked on this criminal history box on college applications with the number of applicants who actually finished and submitted the application. It found that two-thirds of the people who had a criminal record didn\u2019t go on to complete the application.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe crazy thing about this finding is that, of the people who did complete the\u00a0application, only 10 percent were not\u00a0accepted,\u201d Vest says. \u201cSo potentially 50 percent of the people who didn\u2019t go on to finish the\u00a0application\u00a0very well could have gotten into the school.\u201d<\/p>\n

Embracing sobriety in college<\/h4>\n

Collegiate recovery programs<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>(CRPs) are another focus of Vest\u2019s work, as he aims to fill a major dearth in research on the effectiveness of these programs in providing support, programming, and resources to\u00a0students with a history of drug and alcohol use. Despite the fact that CRPs have expanded by 500 percent over the last several years,\u00a0only one<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>National Institute of Health-funded study to date has evaluated these programs, Vest says.<\/p>\n

But that will change over the next five years, thanks to a\u00a0K01 award<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>that he received last year from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to investigate CRPs\u00a0across the country and develop an implementation toolkit for university staff and communities to ensure that they are meeting students\u2019 needs. Vest is currently in the data collection phase of the project and has traveled to colleges large and small, including Texas Tech; Penn State; University of California, Santa Barbara; and Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minn., to gauge students\u2019 perspectives and learn the challenges or limitations within these programs\u2014often a lack of funding or awareness that the CRPs exist.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know what it\u2019s like trying to stay sober on a college campus,\u201d Vest says. \u201cIt was difficult for me at\u00a0age\u00a035, so I know it\u2019s even harder for younger people to stay substance-free.\u201d<\/p>\n

BU offers a\u00a0CRP through Student Health Services<\/a>, and he hopes to expand its programming and reach in the future.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d love to see BU become a national leader in college-in-prison programming and collegiate recovery over the next 10 years,\u201d Vest says. He is in the final stages of a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind analysis of the level of criminal history involvement among college students in recovery. \u201cI\u2019d love to see the university offer master\u2019s and PhD-level courses to students inside of prisons, and also to students making the transition from prison to the general community.\u201d<\/p>\n

By Jillian McKoy. Originally published by BUSPH<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In third\u00a0grade,\u00a0Noel Vest\u00a0took a test to get into his school\u2019s\u00a0gifted program, but fell short of qualifying. That setback shattered\u00a0Vest\u2019s confidence and self-esteem, and his ambitious attitude dissolved into personal and academic apathy throughout the rest of his childhood. What eight-year-old\u00a0Vest didn\u2019t know\u00a0at the time was that\u00a0he would\u00a0go on to develop many gifts, including a mastery […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24655,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[8],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24655"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":681,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions\/681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.bu.edu\/vest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}