KPU presents Surrey Pretrial Services with Community Impact Award
The award recognizes a unique partnership that brings together KPU students and incarcerated learners
Pictured from left to right: correctional officer Lu Ding; correctional officer Amrit Sandhu; Assistant Deputy Warden Anita Varan; Dean of Arts Shelley Boyd; Lead Advisor, Work Integrated Learning Larissa Petrillo; Vice-President of External Affairs Randall Heidt; creative writing instructor Nicola Harwood; criminology instructor Chris Thomson; Inside Out Prison Exchange student. (Submitted)
Kwantlen Polytechnic University honoured Surrey Pretrial Services with its 2025 Community Impact Award earlier this summer semester.
The high-security prison has been a partner in KPU’s Inside-Out Prison Exchange program, which brings students from the university together with incarcerated students at the Surrey Pretrial Services Centre.
Offered at the university since 2011, the program was spearheaded by former faculty member Wade Deisman, who used to also be KPU’s associate dean of the Faculty of Arts .
Faculty of Arts Dean Shelley Boyd nominated Surrey Pretrial for the award. The university presented the honour, along with a painting created by KPU alum Alison Curtis, at Community Day on May 24 at the Richmond campus.
“It’s really a transformative experience — the Inside-Out course, and having that partnership with Surrey Pretrial, … [is] an unforgettable learning opportunity,” Boyd says.
She says the partnership and commitment from the centre as well as the support of Assistant Deputy Warden Anita Varan is special and helps the program move forward.
“[Students] come together basically as a community of learning for a semester,” Boyd says. “It very much breaks down barriers and enables people to connect and learn and understand each other in quite profound ways and changes lives.”
The nomination process entails reaching out to faculty who have taught the course to write some letters of support, as well as former students for their testimonials about the impact the program had on them.
Boyd says paying tribute to the centre and its staff through the award was a pleasure.
The partnership with the centre has had a great impact on the community in Surrey, she adds, creating opportunities for students to make a profound difference through education.
“You always look for those light-bulb moments in a classroom where people are sparked — their curiosity, their excitement, their interest — and that it has opened their horizons, both in terms of who they are and the world,” Boyd says.
“The faculty who taught it have said it’s been some of the most impactful courses they’ve ever taught in their multi-decade career.”
She says the award speaks to KPU’s mission and values as a polytechnic university and that the partnership helps bring positive change and transformative action to the school community.
“[This] is such a special and unique partnership and one that you don’t actually see in many places — it’s one we’re just really proud of and very grateful for,” Boyd says.
“I think [the program] is instilling hope and the possibility of learning and stretching oneself in good ways for the future.”
For more information about the program, visit www.kpu.ca/insideout.
