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The University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) will once again welcome hundreds of visitors to the campus this summer for a unique series of conferences, all advancing ACE’s mission to sustain, strengthen, and transform Catholic schools.

The conferences, some of which are currently accepting registrants, constitute a growing part of the busy summer to be enjoyed by ACE participants. Hundreds of those participants will receive skills and personal formation to earn master’s degrees as K-12 Catholic school teachers and leaders.

Various units of ACE, which have multiplied during 19 years in response to the needs of children in under-resourced Catholic schools, host conferences that address today’s urgent issues. These include galvanizing top-notch teachers and school leaders; encouraging parental choice policies and informed financial strategies for Catholic school sustainability; promoting athletic coaching that ministers to young people; and introducing parents and South Bend-area educators to the summertime wellspring of Notre Dame’s commitment to K-12 schooling.

These conferences are coming up in 2012:

ACE Teaching Fellows Annual Conference (June 5-10). Participants in the Melody Family ACE Teaching Fellowship program convene to assess and catalyze their growth as master teachers, educational leaders, and generators of problem-solving research. Several benefactor-supported fellowships support highly promising educators who wish to continue their careers in Catholic classrooms while pursuing advanced knowledge and skills. Fellows cultivate these leadership assets along with their mentors during the conference. Read more about the ACE Teaching Fellows Annual Conference.

Advocates for Parental Choice Symposium (June 15-20). This intensive formation experience gives participants a first-hand experience of people and places on the cutting edge in implementing school choice policies. Catholic school supporters will receive skills, insights, and working relationships to equip them as advocates in the parental choice movement. Major speakers and visits to Wisconsin and Florida will increase these future leaders’ understanding of the legal, social, constitutional, political, and moral dimensions of parental choice.

Hope in Action: Transforming Haiti Through Catholic Education (June 19-20). A select group of Church, education, philanthropic, and international developmental leaders will gather to probe how a stronger Catholic education system can transform Haiti's education sector and advance the nation's social and economic development. Forum hosts and partners will introduce innovative pathways for quality Catholic education in Haiti. Partners in this international leadership forum include Catholic Relief Services, the Congregation of Holy Cross, the Haitian Episcopal Commission for Catholic Education, as well as three units of the University—the Alliance for Catholic Education, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Learn more about ACE in Haiti.

Play Like a Champion Today Sports Leadership Conference (June 22-24). This annual conference, titled “Champion Character in Sports” for 2012, emphasizes developing the whole person through sports. Guest speakers offer professional development for coaches and athletic administrators at both the youth and high school levels. Hosted by ACE’s Play Like a Champion Today® experts in sports as ministry, the conference gathers representatives of parochial leagues around the country to network and share best practices. Register for the Play Like a Champion Today Sports Leadership Conference.

Superintendents Strategic Leadership Conference (June 24-27). ACE Consulting will host its annual Superintendents Strategic Leadership Conference, inviting educational leaders from dioceses across the country. This year's conference is titled "Together in Mission: Creating a Culture of Hope." Expert speakers and in-depth conversations will explore key issues faced by school leaders. Learn more about the Superintendents Strategic Leadership Conference.

Principals Academy (June 26-29). A four-day enrichment experience for Catholic school principal will focus on identifying and shaping a school’s culture to benefit leadership and learning. The values of a school, expressed actively and nurtured in a culture, provide a framework in which teachers can reduce students’ achievement gaps and leaders can promote continuous improvement in a school. This academy, hosted by ACE Consulting, will help principals develop action plans to improve and utilize their school culture. Register here for the Principals Academy.

Equitable Services Institute (July 8-12). Students in Catholic schools across the country are not getting federally funded services to which they’re entitled; the Equitable Services Institute assists diocesan superintendents, principals, and other educational leaders to solve this problem. Attendees will receive updated information about complex federal funding policies plus practical roadmaps for the process of consultations by which educators obtain equitable shares for their students from Title 1, Title 2, and Title 3 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Learn more about, and register for, the Equitable Services Institute.

School Pastors Institute (July 17-20). Pastors whose parishes include schools are invited to this annual institute to learn to manage and leverage better the distinctive relationship between a parish and its school. The Institute develops many skills and perspectives that a pastor will need in overseeing a parish school, its people, and its finances. It provides insights for valuable reflection on the value of Catholic schools to the children and parents of a parish and to the future of the Church as a whole. 

ACE Parent Retreat (July 25-27). Parents whose sons or daughters have just finished their first year in ACE Teaching Fellows often have many questions about these first-year teachers’ experiences. ACE Advocates hosts a special retreat for these parents at Notre Dame to get their questions answered and to see the broader context of the journey their ACE teachers are taking. The retreat also allows these parents of the ACE 18 cohort to hear presentations, worship together, and swap stories. Learn more about the ACE Parent Retreat.

Mary Ann Remick Leadership Conference (July 13). This conference, a capstone event for those earning their master’s degrees in educational administration through the Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program (RLP), is a unique and informal venue for South Bend-area educators to discuss current research with ACE leaders and experts from across the country. The RLP participants present the action research they have conducted to help address key day-to-day issues facing Catholic schools, and local educational leaders attending free-of-charge may exchange useful ideas. Read about last year’s Remick Leadership Conference and read about the value of action research.

Christian Dallavis, director of the Notre Dame ACE Academies initiative, has been honored for best dissertation by the Catholic Education special interest group (SIG) of theAmerican Educational Research Association (AERA).

The SIG, which brings together scholars from around the world who conduct research in the field of Catholic education, bestowed the award on Dallavis as the group gathered at the AERA annual conference, held April 13-17, 2012, in Vancouver, Canada.

Dallavis's dissertation, titled "Extending theories of culturally responsive pedagogy: An ethnographic examination of Catholic schooling in an immigrant community in Chicago," explored the capacity for Catholic schools to be culturally responsive to their students as ethnicity in a community changed over time.

He studied a particular Chicago-area Catholic school during two time periods—its early days after its founding in 1903 to serve the local Polish immigrant community and its recent days serving a community that has become virtually all Hispanic.

His ethnographic and historical research showed that the key tenets of what scholars now call "culturally responsive pedagogy" were present in the school during its early days. "Polish culture, literature, language, and history were at the heart of the school, right alongside American history and literature, English, and religion," Dallavis commented in a recent interview. But contemporary teachers don't emphasize the home culture of their students in the classroom in the same ways today.

This shift is symptomatic of a broader trend in American classrooms in recent years, as the minority composition of student bodies has increased dramatically but the teaching force has not. Dallavis said his study "identifies missed opportunities" for teachers and principals in Catholic schools to enrich cultural connections with students, because a growing body of research suggests that culturally responsive teaching is an effective approach to improving minority student achievement. Dallavis contends that faith-based schools have a unique opportunity to be culturally responsive, because faith is a critical part of the home culture for families who choose Catholic schools.

"Many Catholic schools were extraordinarily culturally responsive to the immigrant communities from Europe that founded the schools a century ago. Today, Catholic schools ought to look to that legacy to prepare teachers and principals to be culturally responsive to today's children in similar ways," Dallavis said, summarizing the take-away points from the dissertation. The research was part of his graduate work at the University of Michigan, where he earned a joint Ph.D. in English and Education.

The study received the SIG's inaugural dissertation award; the SIG was authorized by the AERA only in 2010, an act affirming the validity of Catholic education as a field of scholarly research. The SIG is chaired by Shane Martin, professor and dean of the Loyola Marymount University School of Education.

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Plenty of fans came to Notre Dame on the weekend of April 20-22 for a preview of next fall's Fighting Irish football season, but the annual Blue-Gold Game was hardly the only campus event introducing a mix of friends to a future of opportunity and teamwork.

This was the weekend of the traditional April Retreat hosted by ACE Teaching Fellows, the signature teacher-formation initiative of Notre Dame's Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE). Some 87 members of the recently selected ACE 19 cohort came to taste what it will be like to be an ACE teacher for the next two years.

"It's really the start of the whole ACE experience," says Chuck Lamphier, director of ACE Advocates, who remembers his own attendance at an April Retreat when he was a new member of ACE 10. The schedule of events is traditionally a dynamic mix of the three pillars of ACE formation—professional service, spiritual growth, and community life.

A highlight of the retreat focused on the ACE community that each new teacher will join in the diocese where he or she has been assigned to serve in a local Catholic school. Fellow members of ACE 19 who have been assigned to the same community, soon to be sharing a house and offering each other moral support in their formation, are introduced to each other.

The bonds of fellowship established at the retreat will extend through the two years of the ACE Teaching Fellows experience—and often for the rest of the community members' lives.

Additional important relationships were initiated over the weekend because participants also included superintendents and other leaders from the dioceses where the new ACE teachers will serve. No fewer than 46 diocesan and school administrators came to campus from all around the country to meet the ACE teachers they will be hosting and overseeing.

Tom Doyle, senior director of the ACE Teaching Fellows M.Ed. degree program, gave the ACE 19 newcomers an overview of the academic rigors set to start this summer.

Many of these ACErs are poised to receive their undergraduate degrees from the University of Notre Dame or Saint Mary's College this spring, just before they start their first ACE summer. But the cohort consists of graduates from over 40 different colleges and universities, including Dartmouth, Duke, Fordham, Gonzaga, Harvard, Marquette, and the Congregation of Holy Cross institutions St. Edward's University and King's College.

"Some ACE 19 members are entering their two-year commitment to ACE Teaching Fellows after a year or more of post-graduate international service," adds Sarah Greene, associate director in the ACE Teaching Fellows pastoral team. "Two came to the April retreat shortly after returning from post-graduate service-teaching in Japan and Korea, respectively. One is finishing a year of service in a medical clinic in Costa Rica, and one served with the Peace Corps in Benin. We also welcome two new ACE 19s from Ireland."

The April Retreat, which also offered opportunities for Mass and other prayer, ended on Sunday in time for many of the participants to head back to their usual Monday workload in various dioceses and schools. Whether they resided far away or elsewhere on campus, they closed their weekends better connected to ACE's past, present, and future.

Catholic elementary school principals, speaking out in a major nationwide survey, report experiencing acute challenges and frustrations in the operation of their schools, and they identify financial management, marketing, Catholic identity, enrollment management, and long-range planning as their schools’ top five areas of need.

The study, just completed by the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) and its Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program, is a rare, comprehensive glimpse of these principals’ views on what they need to do their jobs better and how they describe the state of Catholic education today.

"It is difficult to read the responses of Catholic school principals in this study and not sense both their commitment to this ministry and the overwhelming responsibilities that are associated with it,” say the authors of “Leadership Speaks: A National Survey of Catholic Primary School Principals.” They paint a picture of principals as faith-filled individuals confronting unusually challenging expectations, worthy of new forms of support, such as their own national association.

The study has not yet been published, but the authors—Rev. Ronald Nuzzi, senior director of the Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program, along with two members of the Remick Leadership Program faculty, Anthony Holter and James Frabutt—presented an overview of their work during the National Catholic Educational Association annual convention held April 11-13 in Boston.

A total of 1,685 Catholic school principals representing all areas of the country and all types of school locations and organizational structures, participated in the survey during 2010, answering nearly three dozen questions.

When invited to give open-ended answers, the participants narrowed down the five top areas of need to the two they called most important—enrollment management and financial management—which together often capture the most basic goal of survival, keeping a school open.

Based on the data obtained, “the Church seems to have hired well, attracting mission-driven and loyal individuals to the overarching goals of Catholic education,” according to the study. But these principals live daily with what has been called “the tyranny of the urgent,” hungering for more support—“emotional as well as financial.”

“A Catholic school principal has job expectations that go beyond what can be found in secular educational literature,” the authors note, pointing out that the work of a chief executive officer and a chief operating officer is combined with the school’s overarching religious purpose: “the sanctification of all its stakeholders.”

The study provides enormous amounts of data describing today’s Catholic school principals and outlining their views, and the authors conclude with four recommendations:

· Develop “new models of governance for Catholic elementary schools” that shift the panoply of principal responsibilities “into a more manageable and realistic position description.”

· “Develop a program of ongoing professional development and renewal for principals” that address their needs, both professional and personal.

· Organize a national association of Catholic school principals as a means “to give voice to their leadership concerns at every level and to promote advocacy for Catholic schools at the national level.”

· “Convene multiple groups of national and international stakeholders to advance the understanding of Catholic schools as instruments of the new evangelization.”