Teaching Portfolio: T. Andrew Caswell
T. Andrew Caswell, PhD
Assistant Professor
Gannon University
Department of Psychology and Counseling
109 University Square
MS 23
Erie, PA 16541
caswell002@gannon.edu
Phone: 814-871-5418
I am the co-coordinator of the New Destiny Think Tank (Links to an external site.), launched in August 2017 at the State Correctional Institution at Albion (Links to an external site.). I started teaching PSYC 280 Inside Out: Reducing Prejudice in August 2018. I am trained as a social psychologist and my research has focused on the social construction of masculinity and the emotions underlying sexual prejudice. I became interested in the criminal justice system when I encountered formerly incarcerated men and women at an adult education program where I volunteered as a math tutor in the GED program. I quickly realized the depth of my own ignorance and started to pursue opportunities to educate and challenge myself.
I originally planned to teach a course on the psychology of gender or the psychology of masculinity, but the prison staff in our think tank told me that they were trying to find ways to reduce intergroup tensions at the facility. I changed the focus of my course to prejudice reduction and tasked my students with developing a prejudice reduction program that could be implemented at SCI-Albion. We began the semester by talking about stereotypes and prejudice and why human beings like to put people into categories. We then discussed different theories of prejudice and targets of prejudice. At the request of the inside students, I included sections on the stigma of incarceration and sex offender stigma. Finally, at the end of the semester, the students spent three weeks in small, mixed groups working on their projects. The first class yielded four different projects targeting mental illness stigma, tensions between staff and those who are incarcerated, conflict between model incarcerated people and those who are non-compliant, and tensions between those incarcerated who are from different geographical locations (e.g. Pittsburgh vs. Philadelphia). The superintendent was happy with the projects and asked me to submit written summaries to forward to the central office.