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Dr. Martina Saltamacchia | Distinguished Associate Professor, History
Dr. Martina Saltamacchia, typically teaches incarcerated people at the Omaha Correctional Center (OCC) every other year. This year, she completed a 40+ hour online training on the Inside-Out Pegagogy, becoming a certified Inside-Out instructor with the ability to implement this pedagogy to all the courses she regularly teaches at OCC.
Although education is recognized as a fundamental human right for everyone, it remains largely elusive for incarcerated people. The Inside-Out Exchange Program is an educational program with an innovative pedagogical approach tailored to facilitate dialogue across difference by bringing together campus-based students with incarcerated students for a semester-long course held in prison. Their praxis is grounded in the belief that our society is strengthened when higher education and learning is made widely accessible and, at the same time, when it allows participants to encounter each other as equals, often across profound social barriers.
Dr. Saltamacchia was extremely grateful for the experience. "In this intensive training, being tutored by formerly incarcerated individuals and collaborating with enthusiastic educators from around the country was a truly humbling experience. The stories, the hope, and the shared reflections renewed my passion for education within the criminal justice system, reaffirming its transformative power."
Dr. Saltamacchia serves on the Goldstein Center Executive Committee, as the Director of UNO Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the History Graduate Program Chair.
