The mission of UC Merced’s Underground Scholars Initiative (USI) is to provide support, services and leadership for formerly incarcerated and/or system impacted scholars and their families. We strive to foster and nurture skills and dispositions that contribute to academic and personal success in order to empower scholars to make self-sustaining progress towards degree attainment and ensure professional success after graduation.

Through intentional collaborations and partnerships, USI will facilitate coordinated support services that empower scholars to transition into the culture of higher education by providing community, peer counseling, scholarship information, financial aid advising, career planning and other academic resources.

USI will provide advocacy in the UC Merced campus community on behalf of previously or currently incarcerated scholars and families impacted by incarceration. We will advocate to establish a consortium of campus partners to acknowledge and address theeffects of incarceration, especially those effects that create social, emotional, and logistical obstacles that can interfere with a scholar’s pursuit of higher education

USI will also work in collaboration with community-based and/or political entities to advocate for local, state, and national policies that benefit currently and formerly incarcerated scholars to become intentionally intrusive and shift away from the school-to-prison pipeline through recruitment, retention, and advocacy