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In response to the needs of the New Evangelization, the Alliance for Catholic Education is seeking to reinvigorate the Catholic identity of Catholic schools around the nation with ACE RISE (Renewing Identity, Strengthening Evangelization), an innovative, blended learning faith-formation initiative geared toward those who work in the heart of Catholic schools. To that end, ACE RISE has launched a new online platform designed with the busy teacher, principal, or coach in mind.

Through this new platform, ACE RISE encourages educators to consider ways to strengthen important aspects of school life, including culture, liturgy, academics, athletics, moral development, and faith formation, in a fun and exciting online learning environment.

"It's the blended learning aspect of the program that I think is key," director of ACE RISE Rev. Ronald Nuzzi, Ph.D., said. "The online courses are welcomed by teachers as convenient and we couple them with a wonderful summer conference and a few workshops in their home dioceses. Teachers feel valued, respected, appreciated, and challenged."

Catholic school faculties are using ACE RISE as a professional development activity and as a faith formation experience, often dedicating a part of regular faculty meetings to discussion about what they are learning online.

"I've been most impressed with the dedication of the principals and teachers," Fr. Nuzzi said. "They are highly committed to the New Evangelization and see their schools as the best place to help spread a new fire of faith throughout the entire church."

In addition to the online component, ACE RISE works with dioceses and individual schools, providing customized reports and assessments for schools geared to help strengthen their Catholic identity.

"We've become much more intentional about our school's four core values—faith, learning, loving, and serving—and about our school theme, 'We Are One,'" Mike Debri, principal of All Saints Academy in the Diocese of Grand Rapids and ACE RISE participant, said. "We've entered into discussions and programs about what it means to have a Catholic culture in our buildings and to connect it to our core values and mission. Now, the students are conscious of our core values even in our elective courses."

Nuzzi said he has been encouraged by the success of the pilot program, but knows that to really make a difference, students need to be engaged as well.

"We have been blessed in our pilot phase with the incredible of support of diocesan superintendents, deeply faith filled leaders who see their ministry as one of faith-sharing with the principals. Calling principals together across a diocese and challenging them to be intentional and thoughtful about their own faith formation is no easy task. Translating their growth and learning into school policies and strategies that impact students' lives is even more daunting, but our goal is to renew Catholic identity and to strengthening evangelization at the student level."

Somewhere in the Maryland wilderness fourteen years ago, while hiking with a friend to traverse the 2,167-mile Appalachian Trail, Dr. Scott Carlin experienced what he calls his ACE epiphany.

This wasn't a sudden call to a vocation in education. Carlin had developed a love of tutoring others while still a high school student in Michigan. He earned teacher certification as a member of Notre Dame's class of 1997 and later worked as a substitute in classrooms in Phoenix. However, Carlin said he lacked a passion for full-time teaching. Then, in 2000, this avid hiker's trailside moments of reflection, informed by praise he had heard for ACE Teaching Fellows, prompted a life-changing realization.

"It hit me that I needed to go through the ACE experience," Carlin said.

He soon applied and was accepted, starting the M.Ed. curriculum in 2001 and quickly realizing that the people around him—his fellow ACE teachers and the faculty, joined together by the pillars of community and spiritual growth—opened new vistas for his life as an educator.

"Working, living with discipline and perseverance, and experiencing that high caliber of intellect and character and individuality and creativity all in one place for two years—it can't help but change the way you see the world and make you better," Carlin said.

His journey became a more self-confident climb, with the master's degree proving to be only the beginning.

Several bold steps following his ACE graduation in 2003 took him to Michigan State University to earn a Ph.D. in Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy, and then back to Notre Dame to join the academic services staff for student athletes. Along the way, inspired by his love for the Appalachian Trail, Carlin attracted donors to a Hike for Higher Education Scholarship Fund he helped establish. The fund assists college-bound students at his hometown public high school in Buchanan, Michigan, and they are still informed by his ACE experience.

"The pillars of ACE—with their qualities of spirit and solidarity—play into our selection criteria for the scholarship," Carlin said.

Carlin's wife Stacey teaches at Buchanan High School, and the couple recently gave birth to their third child (two others are 6 and 4 years, respectively). But besides all these ventures, Carlin has left the Notre Dame position and has been investing for several years in an entrepreneurial expression of his teaching vocation. He sees his firm, Michiana Test Prep and College Consulting, meeting high school students' needs and affirming the mission of ACE while helping to launch promising young people on their own successful life journeys.

Michiana Test Prep and College Consulting aims to give high-quality preparation for college entrance exams—the College Board's Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the ACT readiness test—to students in Michigan and Indiana who otherwise might lack access to professional preparation due to distance or affordability, Carlin said. The instruction takes many forms, from private sessions to limited-size courses to intensive presentations for large portions of a school's junior class. He's worked with students from at least three dozen Michigan schools and a dozen Indiana schools. Students with special financial needs receive scholarships to trim the fees.

He also provides counseling for students preparing their college applications, plus professional development for teachers so they can integrate college test preparation into the curriculum of their regular courses. (Students' average ACT performances serve as a metric for assessing Michigan schools.) Carlin's latest initiative, now in the pilot stage, produces a live webinar so students can remotely attend his test prep course, watch him make notations, and ask him questions—all at an even greater savings in travel time and course costs.

"I'm not forgetting my ACE roots," Carlin said. He enjoys the feeling of having made a difference in students' lives.

"It was great going to their Facebook page and reading that their class's composite score had jumped for the latest test," Carlin said. "The best part is when somebody gets an admission letter from a college they really wanted to get into and their score helped them get in. [But] it's not about the score. It's about what door these scores can help to unlock."

In this day and age, growing up with ten brothers and sisters is certainly uncommon. When two of those children—twins, in fact—become teachers, it becomes more rare still.

But when that vocation leads to a call to the priesthood for both, it’s the making of something incredible.

One might think that Brendan and Brogan Ryan, growing up as twins in a family of thirteen, would have had their fill of community by the time they graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2008. Instead, they chose to serve as teachers as a part of the Alliance for Catholic Education, where they’d be living with other teachers in communities around the United States.

“ACE required a total commitment,” Brendan said. “We moved to a new place, with new people, to work very hard for very little money at something we could not really prepare for, but we persevered because we were serving a purpose that was bigger than we were. This translates to life in the seminary—there are a lot of unknowns and ups and downs, but I believe that I am here because of something that is external to me, and that call is what I fall back on.”

Brendan spent a year after ACE teaching at a Bishop Hartley High School in Columbus, and then chose to enter the seminary to become a priest in the Congregation of Holy Cross. Brogan became an accountant for two years after serving as a teacher before hearing his call, and following his brother to Holy Cross.

“My time in ACE furthered my discernment of religious life,” Brogan Ryan said. “I found that community life really supported me in my teaching and that's one of the things that drew me to Holy Cross—community life that supports ministry. Praying together as a community also pushed me to grow in my own spiritual life and added a depth to relationships with community members.”

Brendan said that living in community in ACE just reaffirmed his desire for a strong, committed community life moving forward.

“I was already thinking about religious life when I began ACE, so in many ways, it furthered my consideration of religious formation,” Ryan said. “Living with others in community for a common mission was not just something I tolerated for two years, but something I came to appreciate greatly and was looking for after ACE.”

For those ACE graduates now in religious formation and particularly for the Ryans, teaching not only helped them realize their call, but also continues to give them the strength they need in difficult times.

“I learned in ACE that the benefit of community goes beyond eating and praying together. My community members were the ones who were there to celebrate good days and be present after bad days. They were the ones who showed up to watch my baseball team play and the ones who carpooled even when it would be easier to drive separately—its a whole constellation of little things that makes community life special.”

Senior year of high school can be a challenging time for students, especially when deadlines approach for applying to college. To aid in this process for one school in Boston, members of the Boston Advocates for Catholic Education (BACE) volunteered their time to make the college application process just a little bit easier.

BACE, a region of the ACE Advocates initiative comprised of graduates and friends of the Alliance for Catholic Education, recently hosted an Essay Night at Cristo Rey Boston High School in partnership with the Catholic Schools Foundation (CSF). They met with twenty seniors at Cristo Rey to help them write and edit their college application essays.

"The idea was that the BACE volunteers wanted to directly serve students in Catholic schools," Liz Fennell, an ACE 12 graduate and member of BACE, said. "We thought that working with the students on their college essays would give them a set of fresh eyes on this important part of their college application process."

Before Fennell moved back to her hometown of Boston, BACE had established Essay Night at a different Catholic high school. Three years ago, Fennell approached CSF to co-sponsor the event, and the two organizations together decided to move Essay Night to Cristo Rey Boston.

According to Mike Mansfield and Teresa Battaglia, college counselors at Cristo Rey Boston, students reported that Essay Night encouraged and reenergized them in to finish their college essays. One even described the help given by the BACE members as phenomenal.

The students are not the only ones who experience the blessings of Essay Night, however, Fennell said.

"Essay Night is one of BACE members' favorite events. As volunteers, we get to work directly with the high school seniors. It is a gift to listen to their stories and work with them to get their message across to the reader. Every year, both students and volunteers are grateful for the experience. These students have incredible stories and will be assets to the college campuses they call home next year."

If you are interested in beginning an Essay Night at a Catholic school in your area, contact Liz at BostonLovesCatholicSchools@gmail.com for helpful details and suggestions.

Excellence in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is critical for our nation’s continued social and economic well being and security. In order to foster growth in these disciplines, the University of Notre Dame’s Center for STEM Education is launching the Trustey Family STEM Teaching Fellows Program.

Study after study has shown that, more than any other factor within the control of schools, instructional practice best predicts successful student achievement. In addition, while teaching practice remains the single most important factor in a child’s academic development, maintaining a qualified and effective teaching force remains challenging. National studies indicate that nearly half of new teachers leave the profession within their first five years. A disproportionate number of these teachers focus their teaching on the STEM disciplines and often leave the profession for more lucrative financial opportunities in the private sector.

Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives plans to develop targeted strategies to address this dual challenge. First, the Trustey Family STEM Teaching Fellows program will develop strategies to recruit ambitious early career STEM educators to participate in an innovative and comprehensive professional formation program to enhance their teaching skills. Second, over time, the program aims to develop a national corps of professional educators who are committed to long-term and continuing and rigorous formation in instructional leadership in STEM disciplines.

“The importance of the STEM disciplines for the future of our children and our country cannot be overstated, and the Trustey Family STEM Teaching Fellows program is enabling Notre Dame to work toward dramatically increasing the quality of instruction for tens of thousands of students,” Rev. Timothy R. Scully, Hackett Family Director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives, said.

“We know that nothing impacts student learning more than great teaching, and there is no more important area in which we can help the youth of our country than in providing them a rigorous and engaging STEM learning experience,” Director of Notre Dame’s Center for STEM Education Dr. Matt Kloser said. “This program is committed to measuring the impact of its efforts, improving the program based on data, and keeping teachers engaged in a supportive and mission-driven network of STEM teachers.”

The Trustey Family STEM Teaching Fellows program will help the Institute continue to develop hundreds of STEM educators who will serve a critical and growing need in elementary and secondary schools across the country, with a particular focus on Catholic schools.

This program will help early-career teachers of STEM disciplines in K-12 Catholic schools improve their instructional practice and leadership through a three-year professional development opportunity. The program looks forward to serving teachers from Catholic schools and especially graduates of the ACE Teaching Fellows program.

The Trustey Family STEM Teaching Fellows program is the most recent initiative of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for STEM Education, which, through research and the translation of research into practice, seeks to increase student interest and learning in the STEM disciplines.

For more information: Dr. Matt Kloser,