Everyday People
Dirk Van Velzen: Making the grade behind bars—and making sure others get the same chance.

AGE: 33

HOMETOWN: Bothell, Wash.

CURRENT RESIDENCT: The Florence Correctional Center in Florence Ariz., where Van Velzen is serving the second year of a 10-year sentence for burglaries committed in Washington state. He also served five years in the California corrections system for other crimes. He is scheduled for release in 2015.

FROM A DISTANCE: Van Velzen is one of about 50 inmates across the country who are taking classes through Penn State’s World Campus. Since 2003, he has been studying for a degree in business from Penn State, as well as taking nondegree classes from the University of Colorado. He recently received Penn State’s President Sparks Award for sophomores, with a cumulative 4.0 GPA.

ON THE RECORD: As a teenager, Van Velzen was on track to become an Eagle Scout and wanted to start his own construction company, until his mother was killed in a traffic accident. “Her death is not an excuse in any way for what I did, but my perspective shifted after it happened,” he says. “I stopped believing in my future, and I started living only in the present. No delayed gratification.” After a series of juvenile arrests, Van Velzen tried to get on the straight and narrow by joining the Marines. While waiting to ship out to boot camp, he picked up his first adult conviction—this one for stealing a ski jacket. By the late 1990s, he had dropped out of three colleges and started burglarizing businesses. Van Velzen was arrested after his story was featured on a 1999 episode of America’s Most Wanted.

FROM THE STATE PEN TO PENN STATE: “During my first year in prison, I did a lot of time in the hole [solitary confinement],” says Van Velzen. “I was reading a novel a day until it occurred to me that I could be reading and learning something.” He started taking courses through the University of Colorado and eventually heard about Penn State’s World Campus. Now he takes anywhere from two to eight classes at a time, combining credits from both institutions. “I don’t have access to the Internet, to a real library, to anything that is a normal part of being a student today. But I do have plenty of time to study.” He relies on his father to send school supplies and textbooks and to dig up special materials for research projects.

PASSING THE TEST: Once, when Van Velzen was taking an exam, a riot erupted in the prison. A can of tear gas rolled into the classroom; Van Velzen finished the test anyway. “Tear gas isn’t as bad as it sounds,” he says. “Pepper spray is much worse.”

FUND-RAISING BEHIND BARS: Van Velzen started the Prison Scholar Fund in 2004 to raise money for his own education, selling calendars of artwork by his fellow prisoners at the Web site prisonscholar.org. When his father stepped in to help with his college costs, Van Velzen decided to redirect the fund to help other inmates. “Without scholarships, a lot of inmates aren’t going to be able to use their time in prison to get an education and crate a better life.”

LIFE ON THE OUTSIDE: “When I get out, I know right where I’m headed—to an MBA program,” says Van Velzen. “If they’ll take me.”

C. A. Carlson, The Penn Stater, September / October 2006, 15.