Background

At some point during my young adult years I picked up a book that turned out to be an ethnography by an Anthropologist. Little did I know at that time,  I would enter into the Anthropology Degree Program at IUPUI. During my tenure as an undergraduate, a fellow student and I completed a year long research project on prisoner reentry. We discovered the lack of research that has been performed on this topic, the need for this type of research and why it should be a vital part of Anthropology.

Upon graduation I pursued the contacts we had made during our research. Pace, Inc is a 501c3 non-profit organization that specializes in assisting ex-offenders with the transition from incarceration to the community. I began to volunteer at Pace while I performed the dreaded "recent graduate" job search to no avail. In late September of 2010, I received a call from the Pace staff with an open position they wanted to interview me for. At 29 years old, I accepted my first salary position doing exactly what I had become rather obsessed about doing during my "rite of passage" into true responsible adulthood! I now work at a men's work release facility for Pace, Inc. My responsibilities include providing job and life skills, resume assistance, computer skills and case management services to incoming residents at the facility.

I often get asked the question, "What is Anthropology? Isn't it digging up bones?" Well, let me just say that as anthropology students we grappled with that question over and over until we were able to understand enough about what it really means to be an anthropologist to give a somewhat decent explanation. Now that I am working in the reentry field, I also have to explain how my career has anything to do with anthropology. If you're reading this you might be asking the same thing so let's start with a decent definition of Anthropology...