From L to R: Michael Motyl, Donna Pressley, Tim Pressley, Veronica Alonzo
The University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) program has presented its 2009 Michael Pressley Award for Excellence in Catholic Education to Veronica Alonzo and Michael Motyl. The award is bestowed upon graduates of the ACE program who have shown a devoted commitment and made significant contributions to the ministry of Catholic Education in honor of Dr. Michael Pressley, the inaugural academic director of ACE, a prodigious and world-renowned scholar, who lost his battle with cancer in 2006. The recipients of the award are nominated by their peers and reflect Dr. Pressley’s dedication to service and scholarship for the benefit of children and Catholic schools across the nation.
Originally a South Bend, Indiana native, Veronica Alonzo’s ACE experience brought her to Dallas, Texas, where she has remained a Catholic educator ever since. Currently, Veronica fills a multitude of roles at Bishop Dunne High School, both as a classroom teacher and an integral member of the school community. She completed her doctorate in Educational Leadership in 2008, and this summer, she participated in the ACE Fellowship’s inaugural Advocates for Parental Choice Symposium, seeking new ways to advocate for the children affected by the national parental choice debate.
In the words of her nominator, a former ACE teacher mentored by Veronica at Bishop Dunne, “It would not do justice to her dedication…to say that Veronica Alonzo is merely living out the three pillars of ACE; rather, to say that she has tested their boundaries and challenged their definitions would only begin to describe the myriad ways in which Veronica has contributed to the development of Catholic education since her graduation.”
Like Veronica, Michael Motyl is a devoted Catholic educator who has shown a special dedication to Catholic schools in Texas. After two years teaching through ACE in the Diocese of Brownsville, Mike stayed at his ACE school for an additional year before returning home to Massachusetts. There, he spent four more years as a Catholic school teacher, and he joined the fifth cohort of the Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program, through which he received his MA in Educational Administration this summer. But despite the familiarity of his home in the Northeast, Mike chose to return to the Rio Grande Valley and the students he had served while in ACE. In the fall of 2008, he returned to Brownsville, Texas, as principal of Guadalupe Regional Middle School, a part of the Nativity/San Miguel network as well as a current ACE school. In his nominations, classmates admired his willingness to leave the comforts of home to return to where God was calling him, saying “his passion for Catholic education transcends the school setting and exudes the model set before us by Christ.”
