Zelda Roland, Ph.D.

Zelda Roland
Prison Project Director
Visiting Assistant Professor

Communication, Film, and Media Studies Department
College of Arts and Sciences
Education

Ph.D, Yale University
B.A., Yale University

About Zelda

Dr. S. Zelda Roland, Ph.D., serves as the Director of the University of New HavenÐÓ°ÉÔ­°æ™s Prison Education Program, overseeing the University's college-in-prison programming and partnership with the Yale Prison Education Initiative at Dwight Hall, where she has served as Founding Director since 2016.

A Yale alumna (B.A. '08, Ph.D. '16), Dr. Roland conceived of and created YPEI after first working with students enrolled in Wesleyan UniversityÐÓ°ÉÔ­°æ™s Center for Prison Education at Cheshire Correctional Institution. She coordinates YPEI and UNH's educational partnerships with the Connecticut Department of Corrections and its facilities, relationships with other national and statewide prison education programs and criminal justice organizations, and a passionate and broad assembly of faculty, staff, and students on both campuses who believe in the promise and power of higher education access for incarcerated students.

She is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of New Haven, an affiliated faculty of the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law at Yale Law School, and a Lecturer in YaleÐÓ°ÉÔ­°æ™s Education Studies Program.

News and In the Media

In the Media

Zelda Roland, director of the Prison Education Program, comments on the second graduation of incarcerated students from a prison education program offered through a partnership between Yale University and the University of New Haven.

In the Media

Zelda Roland, director of the Prison Education Program, discusses the origins and success of the University of New HavenÐÓ°ÉÔ­°æ™s Prison Education Program.

In the Media

Zelda Roland, director of the Prison Education Program, and Marcus Harvin ÐÓ°ÉÔ­°æ™22 discuss the cohort's mission and first graduation ceremony at the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution, where Interim President Sheahon Zenger conferred degrees in July.

In the Media

Patrick Gourley, associate professor of economics and business analytics; Michael Rossi, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; and Zelda Roland, Prison Project Director, commented on the success of the University of New HavenÐÓ°ÉÔ­°æ™s and Yale UniversityÐÓ°ÉÔ­°æ™s Prison Education program and its impact on incarcerated students and the professors who are teaching in the program.