Dr. Erin L. Castro is a member of IHEP’s Higher Education in Prison (HEP) Advisory Council, a select group of HEP practitioners, researchers, and advocates committed to developing a common set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to assess the quality and impact of postsecondary education in prison, promote robust standards of practice, and improve student outcomes.

Erin is an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Utah, and Director and Co-Founder of the University of Utah Prison Education Project. She directs the Research Collaborative on Higher Education in Prison, an evidence-based approach to expand the field of quality higher education in prison.

Erin received her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, with a Graduate Minor in Gender Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received her Doctorate in Education Policy, Organization & Leadership from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, researching educational pilot programs through the lens of Critical Race Theory.

Her current research traces nationwide postsecondary education in prisons throughout the U.S. and analyzes prison-university partnerships and she recently received the University of Utah’s Early Career Teaching Award.