Wiltse honored with an international award for justice-oriented experiential education
For justice-inspired, life-changing community engagement work, Nazareth University Professor Ed Wiltse, Ph.D., is the 2025 winner of the Anna Julia Cooper Excellence in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice in Experiential Education Award. The Society for Experiential Education (SEE) honored Wiltse with the international award at its annual worldwide conference in Niagara Falls, Canada, in September.
Wiltse, a professor in English and Communication at Nazareth for 27 years, is Nazareth’s faculty scholar for community-engaged learning. He supports faculty and students as they form meaningful partnerships with communities. He mentors colleagues, consults on the development of new community-based courses, and helps build the institutional structures needed to support equitable, reciprocal, and justice-oriented learning experiences.
His long-standing and nationally recognized work directing the Jail Project — an initiative that facilitates college-level dialogue between Nazareth students and incarcerated learners at the Monroe County Jail during a class where they read a series of crime and detective fiction together — has influenced Nazareth’s campus culture.
Darrick Sides first met his mentor inside the Groveland Correctional Facility in 2019 when he was chosen to participate in a pre-college course taught by Wiltse, where inmates learn alongside Nazareth students.
“I have my degree thanks to Ed. He sparked a curiosity in me to learn something new with each story, chapter, and lesson,” said Sides. “I learned during the class that challenges and barriers to higher education only exist in the mind, not in the classroom, because education doesn’t discriminate against students willing to learn.”
When Sides was released from prison in 2022, it was Wiltse who helped him secure a financial aid package to attend college on an actual campus. Sides graduated from the University of Rochester in 2025.
Wiltse also collaborated with Genesee Community College to design and launch the Nazareth/Genesee Education Justice Collaboration, a new associate degree program at Orleans Correctional Facility. Wiltse led the New York State approval process for the new program, worked with GCC and Orleans staff to create program guidelines, and recruited and coached faculty for the program's first four semesters.
“Through these projects and his additional teaching in college-in-prison programs across New York state, Ed has shown what it means to center justice in education,” said Emily Carpenter, Nazareth’s associate vice president for experiential impact, who nominated Wiltse for the award. “He invites students and faculty to imagine classrooms without walls, where learning is shared, power is interrogated, and dignity is affirmed.”
Wiltse has also advanced community engagement on campus by advocating for the inclusion of a new community-engaged research track at Nazareth’s annual Creative Activity and Research Showcase (CARS), ensuring that students presenting work rooted in equity and community partnership are recognized and celebrated.
Contact
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Nazareth University is an inclusive community of inspired learners, educators, and changemakers who for 100 years have been driven by a bold commitment to action, empathy, equity, and leading innovation for the common good. Impact experiences are at the heart of a Nazareth education, preparing each student to discover within themselves the potential to cultivate positive change in their life's work, in any career field, and in a world that is constantly evolving and infinitely interconnected.
Our broad academic offerings present a range of study options typical of larger universities, yet achieved in our supportive campus culture. Nearly 2,100 undergrad and 600 graduate students enroll in degree and certificate programs and engage in collaborative, transformative learning experiences, preparing for the professions and society of today and tomorrow. In a learning community that purposefully integrates liberal arts and professional programs, Nazareth University graduates are able to launch a lifetime of impactful leadership in communities and workplaces near and far.
Wiltse (left) received the 2025 Anna Julia Cooper Excellence in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice in Experiential Education award at the international SEE conference in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.