Caleb Alalem

Schannae Lucas, chair of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department, was recognized for the 2026 President’s Award for Teaching Excellence during Honors Convocation.

Schannae Lucas, chair of the Criminology and Criminal Justice Department, received the 2026 President’s Award for Teaching Excellence during the Honors Convocation on Tuesday, April 28 in Samuelson Chapel. 

Lucas was recognized by President John Nunes for her work spearheading California Lutheran University’s Inside Out Prison Exchange Program, which allows traditional college students and incarcerated students to be in the same learning environment. Lucas said the purpose is to help both groups see one another with more humanity.

“This is liberal arts education in one of its truest and the most necessary forms” Nunes said in his congratulatory speech. “Students don’t just study justice, but they are formed by the encounter with human complexity.”

Before coming to Cal Lutheran in 2008, Lucas said she did not always envision a career in criminal justice. 

Lucas’ undergraduate career began as an astrophysics major at University of California, Irvine, before she realized the field was not the right fit for her. She said she eventually switched her major after she attended a mock trial event where a man formerly incarcerated for first-degree murder shared his story.

“That was a true sign of living redemption,” Lucas said. “I believe in rehabilitation and believing that people can change their behavior.”

In 2016, Lucas said she attended a conference at Ohio State University where a panel of students described their experience participating in the Inside Out program at their school, including one student who revealed he had been released from incarceration two years prior and had since transferred to the university.

Lucas said she was later trained to run the Inside Out program at Graterford State Prison in Pennsylvania, now called Phoenix Rising Prison. She launched Cal Lutheran’s program in 2018 at Todd Road Jail in Santa Paula and said the university’s openness to the idea made it possible.

Miya Avila, a junior criminal justice major who took the Inside Out course last spring, said the experience was transformative and challenged assumptions she didn’t even know she had.

“In standard college classes, you don’t really interact with the people around you. You’re just, kind of, kept to yourselves trying to get through that hour and a half or whatever,” Avilia said. “But for this [class], we were all making eye contact. We were locked in the whole entire time.”

Avila said she went on to take two additional courses with Lucas and spent the past academic year conducting research alongside her. She said Lucas makes a point of meeting every student where they were, both inside and outside the correctional facility.

“She approached every student with a high level of care and really acknowledged where they were and understood their struggles,” Avila said. “[She] really emphasized to them that their past doesn’t really determine who they can be.”

Lucas said her work is also rooted in her identity as a person of faith and her upbringing in a large family. She said her mother is one of 16 siblings and her father one of 12.

“It’s been an honor. This is work I do and I love. It’s part of my passion [and] part of my mission in life,” Lucas said. “It’s nice to be recognized for it on a larger scale. An absolute blessing.”

In addition to Inside Out, Lucas said she teaches a Contemporary Corrections course where she and her students visit three tours of different correctional facilities including a full day at a federal prison, a day reporting center and a local jail. She said her Family Violence and Introduction to Criminal Justice classes also provide experiential learning. 

“Dr. Lucas refuses to let her students remain distant observers in her introduction to criminal justice course,” Nunes said. “Students visit the Ventura County Jail. They sit with law enforcement officers, prosecutors, district attorneys and community applicants.”

Lucas said Cal Lutheran’s small school environment helps make those experiences possible because the students are willing to take on unique opportunities.

“I think the students that come here are hungry to find their path and to have unique experiences,” Lucas said. “The university is really big on experiential learning. They want to learn by doing.” 

Lucas said she is working to grow the Inside Out program beyond criminology courses. A philosophy course taught by Sarah W. Heath Center for Equality and Justice Director Ashli Anda is planned for spring 2027, and Lucas said she hopes to eventually have Inside Out sections in English, philosophy and other disciplines.

“Her teaching is the affinity of what a Lutheran liberal arts education has to offer, the integration of vigorous choir, with ethical formation, an intellectual vision with human encounter,” Nunes said.