Through a new agreement between UVA and the Virginia Department of Corrections, incarcerated students taking courses in a range of business topics through Resilience Education, a 501c3 educational organization, can earn course credit from the UVA School of Continuing and Professional Studies. Read the full story on the Darden Report.
This new agreement marks a new growth point for Resilience Education, which was co-founded by Professor Greg Fairchild and Tierney Fairchild (MBA ’94). Originally launched as the Darden Prison Entrepreneurship Initiative in 2011, the program has continued to grow beyond its initial offering of a single certificate to several business foundation courses including, “Entrepreneurship,” “Foundations in Business” and “Financial Capability.”
All case study materials are taught by Darden students and faculty leads, using the same Socratic business case method used in the Darden classroom. Upon completion of courses, incarcerated students earn a Darden certificate, and, now, UVA credit for the coursework.
In the 2022–23 academic year, 47 Darden MBA students are teaching in the program. In total, more than 300 Darden MBA students have been involved as instructors and more than 750 Darden certificates have been awarded to incarcerated students since the program’s founding.
Charlottesville local news outlet NBC-29 also recently released a story about Resilience Education. In the interview, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Resilience Education Tierney Fairchild shared, “These course credits will provide the students with the opportunity to continue their education post-release, add to their college credits, allow them to increase their employment opportunities and help the students flourish post-release.”
“The students wanted not just entrepreneurship, but business foundational skills and personal finance skills, so we created a set of courses that have certificates coming from the Darden School of Business and Resilience Education,” Fairchild noted.
