News

Kids who love science—and those who want to get to know it better—have a great opportunity for hands-on learning and fun in a Catholic school setting this summer.

The Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend and the University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) are once again teaming up to offer the “Catholic Schools Summer Science Educational Program” for 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade students.

Parents can choose from a June session, focused on forensics and early engineering concepts, and a July session, focused on ecology and life science. Both will be held at Christ the King School in South Bend and will utilize the lab facilities daily.

A student can attend one or both, with each three-week session costing $80.

Register by May 7 and save $10 off the cost of each session. There is a registration fee of $25 per child. Visit http://ace.nd.edu/summercamp/ to learn more and download a form for registration by mail.

Session one spans Mondays through Fridays June 10-28. Session two spans Mondays through Fridays July 1-24, with July 4-5 off. The sessions meet daily from 8 am to 11 am.

The Alliance for Catholic Education forms college graduates to be teachers serving in Catholic schools around the country. Teachers in formation, studying at Notre Dame during the summer as part of the highly selective ACE Teaching Fellows program, serve alongside current Catholic school teachers to lead the Science Educational Program experiences, sharing their own affinity for science. This yields an optimal learning opportunity, with frequent individual instruction.

This is the seventh year ACE teachers are offering the science program and a separate Catholic Schools Summer Camp Educational Program for students entering grades 2 through 8—also co-hosted by the Diocese and based at several area Catholic schools. Information on these camp opportunities is at the same online address. You can also contact Caitlin Cameron of ACE at 574-631-9332.

Play Like a Champion Today ®, an initiative of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE), will host a symposium focused on protecting children from the tragedy of abuse.

In particular, the one-day symposium titled “Championing Children through Collegiate Sport Camps” will help college athletic departments plan responsibly to ensure every child’s full safety during the summer sport camps run by these departments.

“Camp coach counselors must be well prepared to protect the children entrusted to them,” says Clark Power, a Notre Dame psychology professor and founding co-director of Play Like a Champion Today. “Based on years of experience and extensive research, this symposium will help coaches understand what they need to do to respect all participants and create the most nurturing sport environment possible.”

Play Like a Champion Today focuses on character education through sport, offering a range of services that include workshops for coaches and parents of kids in K-12 athletics programs.

The symposium will take place April 26 on the Notre Dame campus, and online registration is requested by April 19. Experts from the legal profession, social work, developmental psychology, and coaching education will explore the moral, legal, and psychological issues. For more details on the subjects and schedule, see the full story at the Play Like a Champion Today website.

Rev. Ronald Nuzzi, Ph.D., senior director of ACE's Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program, has received the C. Albert Koob, OPraem, Merit Award, with which the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) honors an individual who has made extraordinary contributions to Catholic education in the United States.

The NCEA presented the 2013 Koob Award to Father Nuzzi during the group’s annual convention, attended by 8,000 Catholic educators April 2-4 in Houston.

“I am honored and humbled by this gracious award from my good friends and colleagues at the NCEA,” said Father Nuzzi in a statement. “I am especially grateful for the many faith-filled colleagues with whom I share this important ministry, here at Notre Dame and across the country.”

Father Nuzzi made reference to his work in the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE), where he has served since 2002 as the founding director of the formation initiative preparing the next generation of principals and other leaders for Catholic schools. The Remick Leadership Program has become the largest program of its kind in the country.

"It is a blessing beyond measure for me to contribute to the success, perseverance, and development of Catholic school leaders in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Ireland,” Father Nuzzi said. “There is much work to be done, a new generation to reach, a new evangelization to proclaim. I hope that all of our efforts—those led by Notre Dame, ACE, the NCEA, and other Catholic institutions—may continue to bring life to Catholic schools and especially to those teachers and leaders who are so dedicated to the future and to our children.”

Later this year, Father Nuzzi will lead a new ACE initiative assisting Catholic schools as they assess and renew their Catholic identity in the spirit of the New Evangelization. ACE will seek a new director for the Remick Leadership Program, in which Father Nuzzi will continue as a faculty member.

As Father Nuzzi commented in a video posted April 2 by the NCEA, his perspectives on Catholic education have been shaped by his own service in parish and diocesan schools and at Notre Dame, as well as scholarly work at Saint Louis University and the University of Dayton.

He cited the inspiration he draws from the Catholic school teachers and leaders being formed in ACE—their “great commitment to the faith, a serious commitment to Catholic education, a quest and hunger for social justice.” Their energy, he said, gives him “great hope for the future.”

Father Nuzzi, a priest of the Diocese of Youngstown, Ohio, has a distinguished academic background. He has authored or edited a number of books, including two published in recent months: Striving for Balance, Steadfast in Faith: The Notre Dame Study of U.S. Catholic Elementary School Principals and Building Assets: The Strategic Use of Closed Catholic Schools. Both were co-authored by ACE faculty members Dr. Jim Frabutt and Dr. Anthony Holter. The same team produced No Greater Work: Meditations on Church Documents for Educators in 2010 and Faith, Finances, and the Future: The Notre Dame Study of U.S. Pastors in 2008.

Books including the two-volume encyclopedia Catholic Schools in the United States and Handbook of Research on Catholic Education were edited by Father Nuzzi along with Thomas C. Hunt and Eillis A. Joseph.

The Year of Faith is a celebration of our calling to follow Christ and how we can come to know Jesus in our commitment to the ACE community and Catholic Schools. Our prayer is that we can learn to find Jesus in the ordinary and routine things of our lives.

We have just completed the week called the Octave of Easter, which gives us the opportunity to discover the variety of ways the Risen Lord was present to the disciples and the early Christian Community. The Resurrection is so special, we are invited to linger and spend time pondering what all of this means in our lives.

Take a moment and reflect on Acts 3: 1- 10. This is the story of Peter and John going to the Temple for prayer and their encounter with a crippled man who is begging by the gate of the temple. The man asks for alms, and Peter responds to him with these words:

“I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk.”

I love this reading because it shows us how the Resurrection transformed Peter and John and inspired them to share Christ’s love. Easter is a reminder to us to see where love enters into our lives. Observe acts of love and notice the perspectives of people loving God and their neighbor as themselves.

Here are two ways that I have recently seen love.

There is a picture taken on Easter Sunday of Pope Francis embracing a boy who has cerebral palsy. The boy’s mother said that, after the Holy Father blessed her son, a woman nearby said to her, “Your son’s vocation is to show us how to love.”

You may have seen the pictures of the basketball player who broke his leg in a basketball game. His teammate leaned over him, let him know he was not alone and prayed with him. He said later, “I didn’t know what to say or do, and the only thing I could do was let Kevin know I loved him and that he was not alone.”

Teachers walk into a classroom every day and do not know if what they are doing matters for their students. If they remember they are called to be Christ the Teacher, teachers’ vocation is to love their students. Teachers may not know what to say or do; but like Peter and John, they can give Christ to students.

You can let them know that their life has value and that they are loved. Teachers give Christ’s love by showing up every day and taking an interest in each student. They are willing to listen and learn the unique story of their students. You need to know that you have been invited by Jesus to be Christ the Teacher and this can make a huge difference in the lives of students as well as your own.

Remember, you have been given the gift of the love of God, and you are called to give it away.

The number of four-year-olds in early-childhood education programs in the United States has skyrocketed from about 127,000 in the 1960s to 2.7 million today, says Dr. Jim Frabutt, a member of the faculty in ACE’s Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program. Catholic schools are sharing in that trend and in the emerging opportunities, he adds.

Frabutt, who discussed his research on the topic in a presentation last week to the National Catholic Educational Association’s annual convention, says pre-kindergarten programs are “a real growth area in Catholic education.” He spoke on the Son Rise Morning Show, giving a national Catholic radio network audience a glimpse at the NCEA presentation he gave with Rachel Waldron, a graduate of the Remick Leadership Program.

“This is a wonderful opportunity for family evangelization,” Frabutt told Morning Show anchor Brian Patrick on Friday, April 5. He said research on Catholic preschool programs in 15 arch/dioceses, including interviews with diocesan superintendents, uncovered not only growth in the programs, but nearly unanimous hope that this would help Catholic schools reach out to parents of these young children in the spirit of the New Evangelization.

At the same time, the opportunity to connect these children and their parents to Catholic schools and the Church spotlights the need to further “professionalize” the teaching and operation of the pre-K programs, Frabutt added. As with all Catholic schooling, the programs must serve the development of the whole child, including cognitive, emotional, social, and moral growth.

Regarding pre-school education, he said, “we need to invest in the people who are delivering it and the skill with which we’re doing so.”

Frabutt is the author of a new book—Beyond Academics: Supporting the Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Health of Students in Catholic Schools—on Catholic schools’ attention to development of the whole child.       

The NCEA presentation by Frabutt and Waldron was titled “Educating the Youngest Hearts and Minds: The Landscape of Catholic Preschool Education.”