Emma Harrison

Emma Harrison, a member of the Honors College from Morgantown, will graduate with a degree in political science and multidisciplinary studies (Africana, leadership, and women’s and gender). She an ambassador for the Honors College and a former member of the Student Government Association and Model United Nations, and a two-time competitor in the Dancing with Our Mountaineer Stars. 

She has maintained a 4.0 while immersed in rigorous coursework, extracurricular activities, internships, community service and a series of travel abroad trips. 

Harrison is an ardent advocate for prison reform who has been devoted to prison education and exoneration of the wrongly convicted people since she started her internship in 2016 with the West Virginia Innocence Project at the WVU College of Law. Her experience with the WVIP has led her to a life-long career path dedicated to helping incarcerated people and their families in her home state. 

The following year she enrolled in the WVU Department of Sociology and Anthropology Inside-Out Prison Exchange class, a program that brings college students together with incarcerated men and women to study as peers—humanizing the incarcerated and their issues. She later joined the class through the WVU Department of English and has served several times as a student and teaching assistant at the Federal Correctional Institution Morgantown and FCI Hazelton. 

Here, she discovered the need and desire that incarcerated men had for technology, education and books. 

She has also volunteered her time as an instructor at FCI Morgantown and the United States Penitentiary Hazelton as a Think Tank member, a group of incarcerated, non-incarcerated and faculty who meet regularly inside the Federal Correctional Institution Hazelton to develop projects that facilitate learning and build community across profound social differences. 

And she is actively involved with the Appalachian Prison Book Project, where she helps to fulfill requests for specific books from imprisoned persons across the region. 

Most recently, she has embarked on research with the West Virginia Department of Education Office of Diversion and Transitional Programs to study the impact of education and vocational programs on prison recidivism. The findings of the study substantiate her belief that prison education significantly reduces recidivism, thereby increasing public safety and saving taxpayers money. 

Harrison is a Truman Scholar, Newman Civic Fellow, Rhodes Scholarship finalist and has presented on prison reform at TedxWVU. 

As a Truman Scholar, Harrison will move to Washington, D.C., in May to complete the Summer Institute Internship Program, where she will work at the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. 

She has been accepted to the University of Cambridge.