One of the longest traditions in the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) was convened for the nineteenth time on Nov. 30, 2012. Members of the two current cohorts in ACE Service through Teaching gathered over the weekend at a retreat center outside Austin, Texas, for the annual ACE Advent Retreat.

About 170 teachers serving in 26 dioceses marked the half-way point in the school year with a three-day experience of prayer, personal reflection, community-building, and fun. They entered the Advent season together as their Sunday liturgy began the new liturgical year and opened up a season of expectancy.

The ACE 18 and ACE 19 cohorts were joined by numerous faculty and staff members who support them throughout the year. Current teachers in the Alliance were also joined in spirit by alumni for whom the retreat has generated many good memories in the past. This annual gathering is a milestone for everyone formed as a Catholic school educator in ACE Service through Teaching.

"Any ACEr, thinking back to their time in formation, would happily recall the December Retreat, now explicitly the ACE Advent Retreat," says Chuck Lamphier, director of ACE Advocates for Catholic Schools. The tradition goes back to the Alliance's first cohort, formed in 1994, he says. It is inseparable from the character of this initiative to serve children—and the movement that has grown from it—because "ACE is so based on relationship, on knowing each other."

The annual tradition starts on Friday with a focus on reuniting—a renewal of friendships that grew during the summer of ACE courses at the University of Notre Dame. Alongside the individual get-togethers, people celebrate that they are part of a broad ACE community. Events of the day alert people to the latest news of the ACE movement and nurture everyone's professional and spiritual growth.

Much of Saturday is devoted to a mix of recollecting, preparing for the future, and embracing the formation journey within the Alliance for Catholic Education family. Teachers' discussions look back at the experiences of the first semester, look ahead to career planning for life after ACE, and address the challenges of community life.

ACE teachers live in intentional faith communities in houses near the schools where they serve. Community and spirituality complement professional service as pillars of ACE, and all three are affirmed during the three days.

Teachers gather again Sunday morning for Mass, celebrating the Advent spirit of welcome for Jesus in their hearts, in their classrooms, and in the Christmas season.

Then, the retreatants must start getting back to their local communities—in Florida and California, in Texas and Tennessee, and many places in-between—in time to welcome schoolchildren back on Monday morning.

The Austin area has been the site for these retreats since 2004, largely because it is within reasonable driving distance of many ACE partner dioceses. Whatever means of transportation they use to attend the retreat, participants' expenses are paid for by ACE because it is such an important part of every teacher's formation.

The ACE Advent Retreat of 2012 again offered testimony to the diverse experiences and pastoral care that make ACE a unique, supportive preparation for teachers and a providentially gifted instrument for sustaining and strengthening Catholic schools. Like Advent itself, it's a time for looking ahead with hope.

The Diocese of Stockton, CA, has launched a partnership with the University of Notre Dame to help ensure a long and strong future for Catholic schools.

The Most Rev. Stephen E. Blaire, bishop of the diocese, announced that Notre Dame's Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) will engage its ACE Consulting team in an in-depth assessment of 12 schools, starting this month.

See coverage of the announcement in The Modesto Bee and The Lodi News-Sentinel.)

The strategic assessments to be conducted by ACE for each school are designed to provide an objective, external, diagnostic analysis of the school in specific domains while providing appropriate recommendations to bolster the overall effectiveness of each school.

The specific domains to be included in the assessment are:
• Catholic identity
• Academic Excellence
• Ownership/Governance/Administration
• Institutional Advancement
• Enrollment, Demographics and Educational landscape
• Financial/Business Operations
• Access to Federal Grants

"The Catholic schools in our diocese are an important resource, as their continued success can help our community break the cycles of poverty, violence and social injustice. ACE Consulting will help us discern how to enroll more students in better schools... schools that can offer both a values based and a rigorous academic education," Bishop Blaire said.

Classroom learning is vitally important, but a Catholic school can teach other important lessons by its very existence and the people whom it brings together, says Anne Hale, a parent in Petersburg, Va. Her daughter, Hannah, a seventh grader in St. Joseph School there, has learned "the power of people who believe in something" from the story of the inner-city school's survival. And now the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) is reinforcing the message of hope, with enrollment on the rise and exciting plans for the future taking shape.

Hannah has had three ACE teachers since St. Joseph started its partnership with the ACE Service through Teaching initiative in 2010. Her mom sees these young educators sharing the more experienced teachers' "passion for what they do" and welcoming the students into a life-giving community of cooperation and generosity.

"The school's fight to stay open and to thrive has been an incredible legacy to leave to the children," Anne says. "I see that spirit in Notre Dame. I see it in the football team, and it flows through the ACE teachers, too. It's been a wonderful partnership for the school."

Notre Dame students approach their residence hall rectors with all sorts of questions. If they're wondering about a possible career in teaching, and especially if they happen to live in O'Neill Hall, their rector Ed Mack is an ideal source of answers.

Because he spent 33 years as a Catholic high school teacher before arriving to head the O'Neill staff ten years ago, and because he wants Notre Dame students to be well supported as they pursue a profession he loves, Mack's answers about teaching always point toward the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE).

He says he often has chances to "plant a seed" about ACE in his conversations with first-year students, perhaps because they're considering teaching among their future options or their parents are teachers.

"I tell them, if you're thinking about teaching, ACE is a super, Catholic mission-oriented way to get your master's degree and teaching experience through Notre Dame," says Mack. His "street cred" as an educator—still today, he's an adjunct professor across the street at Holy Cross College—combines with his empathy toward individuals as a rector who's "plugged into the lives" of residents in the dorm.

He winds up having more detailed conversations with seniors who may be considering different pathways into the teaching profession, and he can acknowledge to them that the first couple of years in the classroom will be challenging.

"I always tell them about the enormous support system you get through ACE—not only in the summers when you're studying here on campus, but the visits to your school and to your ACE community home [by ACE faculty and staff] during the school year," Mack says.

"You're living in a community of people your age, with similar ambitions, hopes and dreams, decency and integrity. Plus there's a support system not only from Notre Dame, but also in the school where you're teaching—from your mentor teacher and your principal."

These aspects of ACE Service through Teaching make a difference, he says. They clearly carry some weight with the students: About a dozen alumni of O'Neill Hall have applied and successfully completed the formation program.

Mack derives such joy from seeing excellent, caring people pursue the vocation of teaching that he regularly serves on the ACE interview teams who meet with applicants every February. He doesn't leave campus to interview the many applicants graduating from colleges across the country, and he doesn't participate in the interviews of students from O'Neill.

Nevertheless, the connections to young people through the call to teaching can span time and distance in remarkable ways. Mack in particular remembers Brad Cake, whom he taught in high school—in his Freshman Honors English class in 2000-2001. Brad did not attend Notre Dame as an undergraduate but suddenly appeared in the summer of 2008, having successfully applied to ACE.

"It was a pleasure to have him here for the two summers." Brad stayed in Austin, where he taught as an ACEr. He's married to a young woman he met while teaching in Austin, and he has continued a career in Catholic school teaching. Mack stays in touch with both Brad and his parents, with memories that hark back to his own days as a high school teacher. "ACE just has a way of interweaving in people's lives," he observes.

As a teacher at heart, Mack is glad that extraordinary young people are coming into ACE and entering the profession: "I'm always so impressed by the quality of the people" from across campus and across the country. He's not the only rector helping to interview applicants, and he's certainly not the only rector helping to point the men and women of their dorms toward ACE.

Indeed, ACE is grateful to Mack and to all the rectors whose wide-ranging discussions with Notre Dame students occasionally involve this vocational choice. It's a comfortable conversation about the values and virtues of this home away from home, he explains. "The best thing about ACE is that it's at Notre Dame."

A new service offered by ACE Consulting aims to help Catholic schools capture the opportunities and confront the challenges that can arise when states pass parental choice laws.

These laws typically allow children to attend Catholic schools or other alternatives to local public schools, using vouchers or tax credit scholarships to pay for tuition. Such financial assistance can lead to quickly rising enrollments at some Catholic schools—good news that also raises significant issues about pedagogy, management, and sustainability for these schools.

ACE Consulting has expanded its suite of services to support school leadership in maximizing participation in states that have passed legislation in support of School Choice Scholarship Programs and ensuring high-quality education for all students. The program is a publicly funded scholarship program offering eligible Hoosier families the opportunity to send their children to the school of their choice.

ACE Consulting has developed a diagnostic assessment that addresses a range of impact areas. These include the school's mission and culture; governance; financial management; enrollment management and financing; and academic programming. The objective is to provide participating schools with an action plan to develop fiscal, operational, and instructional competencies to support the highest-quality education to as many children as possible.

This new diagnostic service was pilot tested in five schools during the spring semester of 2012 in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana. Less than a year before, the state government had implemented the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program. ACE Consulting assessed the impacts of this program by surveying information from various stakeholders—parents, pastors, principals, school board members, and teachers. Consultants also conducted classroom observations, focus groups, and demographic reviews.

The results from the 2011 passage of Indiana's Choice Scholarship Program show that schools' wise implementation of such a program is as important as a state's enactment of the law. Not only did Indiana parents relish the newfound autonomy over their child's education, but their decisions reflected a latent demand for Catholic education. Nearly 4,000 students statewide enrolled in the program, more than 2,550 of whom registered with Catholic schools.

At the end of the process this summer, the ACE Consulting team provided a diagnostic review of each school's current status and strategic recommendations to optimize the use of the Choice Scholarship Program going forward.

In the coming months, ACE Consulting will be available to work with the schools, all in the greater South Bend area, to help implement the strategies recommended in each case.

ACE Consulting is poised to use the diagnostic assessment in other dioceses and anticipates that this service may be desired in other states as parental choice laws are passed and Catholic schools respond to the opportunities and challenges of leveraging such legislation.

With more than 25 parental choice programs nationwide—and many more on the horizon—this initiative within ACE is a timely effort to couple two central goals: improving school quality while expanding access to educational alternatives, especially for at-risk families.

ACE Consulting will expand this initiative this fall, providing the diagnostic assessment tools to schools in the Indianapolis and Milwaukee areas, with a view toward extending this work to other locations in the future.

Three inner-city Catholic schools in Tucson have welcomed back students with a particular sense of change and hope in the air, entering a third year of unusual innovations and investments that pay off for the children and the city.

The three elementary schools—St. John the Evangelist, St. Ambrose, and Santa Cruz—were designated in 2010 as Notre Dame ACE Academies, representing an in-depth partnership with the University of Notre Dame and its Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE).

That partnership has ushered in state-of-the-art reading and math programs, along with support services to help faculty members adopt the various innovations for the maximum benefit of each student. School culture has become more focused on Catholic identity, featuring a drive for personal excellence that proclaims "College and Heaven" as each child's primary goals. More families in the largely Hispanic and low-income neighborhoods have lined up to enroll their children, and scholarship availability for enrollments has jumped, thanks to Arizona's parental choice tax credit program and resultant contributions from both corporations and individuals.

Four dioceses are the newest partners in an Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) initiative that empowers teachers for teamwork that will shape the future of instruction at their schools.

The ACE Collaborative for Academic Excellence (ACAE) began conducting workshops this summer with Catholic school leaders and teacher teams in the Dioceses of Camden and Paterson in New Jersey; the Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi; and the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia.

The ACAE, based at the University of Notre Dame, continues to work with educators in the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, the Diocese of Reno, and the Diocese of Tucson. The collaborations are a sustained professional development program, providing a framework to strengthen curriculum, instruction, and assessment in Catholic schools.

The Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) at Notre Dame capped its annual "ACE Summer" of formation programs and conferences with a "missioning" Mass on July 27, sending forth more than 200 teachers and leaders to Catholic schools across the United States.

The Most Rev. Joseph P. McFadden, bishop of the Diocese of Harrisburg and a prominent voice on education within the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, presided at the Mass in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart to honor the "vocation" and "calling" of service in Catholic elementary and secondary schools.

"Your participation in the ACE program is a great blessing for the Church," he said in his homily. "As the chairman of the Bishops' Committee on Catholic Education, I thank you for your willingness to enter into this most important and essential work of the Church."

The University of Notre Dame bestowed 104 graduate degrees Saturday, July 14, upon a next generation of Catholic school teachers and leaders who completed their periods of formation with the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE).

ACE's annual Commencement exercises, held at the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, drew encouragement from keynote speaker Dr. Teresa Sullivan, President of the University of Virginia, who praised the graduates' "ethic of service." A good teacher-student relationship is the basis for transforming lives, she said, regardless of how much technology or pedagogical theory might change.

"What will remain is the essential thing—the eager student working under the careful guidance of a dedicated teacher," said Sullivan, whose research as a sociologist has probed educational opportunities for inner-city students among other subjects.

A total of 81 graduates from ACE's Service through Teaching program, who had pursued their studies while teaching in Catholic K-12 schools in underserved areas around the country, capped their two-year formation by receiving the Master of Education (M. Ed. degree).

Twenty-three graduates from ACE's Mary Ann Remick Leadership Program (RLP), whose 26 months of formation prepared them to be principals and other leaders in Catholic education, received the M.A. degree in educational administration.

ACE 17 Student Commencement Address
Given in the Monogram Room, Edmund P. Joyce Center
University of Notre Dame
July 13, 2012

On behalf of the graduating class of ACE 17, I want to thank all of you for being here tonight. Thank you to the ACE M.Ed faculty, pastoral staff, and all who make ACE what it is for their for their guidance and wisdom these past two years. Thank you also to all of the friends and family members who have travelled to be with us this weekend, and for their support and encouragement over the course of our ACE experience.

And on a personal note, I want to thank my fellow ACErs — my fellow masters, my allies in Catholic education, my dear friends, my brothers and sisters for giving me — a lowly Spartan — the opportunity to speak for a few minutes tonight on their behalf and to represent Our Lady's University in this capacity. I say with all sincerity that this is the honor of my life.

I'm a little bit intimidated to be up here right now. Fr. Scully and Doc are tough acts to follow and to "piggy-back" off them, and even attempt to "unpack" their remarks is a high task indeed. Many of you are perhaps expecting me to briefly and succinctly encapsulate the ACE experience. Grandma Rita in the back perhaps might be wondering what it's like to be an ACE teacher, or perhaps Cousin Herschell wants to know about the academic rigors of the M.Ed, and Aunt Esther might just want some more clarification on why her sweet niece or nephew was sent to Plaquemine, Louisiana in the first place, or even where or what a Plaquemine is.

My attempts to do this have, quite frankly, terrified me for the past few weeks, and I've come to the conclusion that —alas! — it can't be done. For those who have completed ACE, no explanation is necessary and for those who have not, no amount of explanation will suffice. The story of ACE as a whole is too big for one man to explain. It is, alas, not my story to tell.

But this burden nevertheless left me afraid. Afraid, much like the apostles were in the reading we just heard. Scripture says a strong wind was blowing, and the apostles of Christ were frightened. And when Christ appears, walking on water, what does he say but, "Do not be afraid"?

"Do not be afraid" — says the unsinkable man.

At first, this reading did nothing to allay my fears. If I'm afraid to sink, why should I listen to Jesus, as he is buoying on top of the sea?

But when the apostles stop being afraid, when they recognize what is happening — their Lord defying the laws of nature and physics — they let him into the boat...and they are amazed. They forget their fear, and they just live in awe of what they just saw.

I think, as ACErs, we can all relate to being afraid at one point or another. And maybe, when we strip away the pomp and circumstance of this weekend, we might get afraid again. Speaking for myself, I have been afraid numerous times as an ACEr but, upon reflection, I realized that this fear quickly melted and become something very different.

The first time I was ever afraid in ACE was, of course, Day One at Most Pure Heart of Mary. After going through my classroom procedures, I was left with a class full of students, and a 55 minutes lesson plan that was completed in about 35 minutes. I was absolutely terrified. So of course I had the students ask me anything they wanted to kill the time.

One student raised his hand and asked "Midda Faw, is you a real teacher?"

I said, "Yes."

And that was the first lie I ever told my students.

Another student, sensing my fear, asked a follow up: "So where'd you teach before this?"

"Mishawaka, Indiana," I said. Not a lie.

But one student, the most curious and thoughtful of them all, said — "MISH-A-WAKA, Indiana?! So you be like, teaching in tee-pees?!"

This kid, bless his heart, either thought I was teaching in India, or teaching Natrive American Indians, or something I really don't understand. He was a little confused but I applauded his critical thinking skills. And in an instant, my fear disappeared, and I became amazed.

From that day forward, my students called me by the affectionate "Midda Faw" — which I love — and more or less believed that I was a real, qualified, teacher. Which I gradually became.

The only other time I can really remember being that scared was in my second year, when I was a basketball coach for the 5th and 6th grade boys basketball team. I — and a look at me the past two years at ACEstore would tell you this — suck at basketball. To use people-first language, I am a person that does life sucking at basketball. So to coach young kids in this game, even with a highly qualified fellow ACE teacher and all-around baller, Alec, still terrified me.

Now the coaching position for the team had been very transient in the past and a few years back a man — a very well meaning man, but nevertheless a man with just a bit of a dyslexic tendency, was in charge. He took it upon himself to brand all the new equipment himself and label it.

Our school and team mascot was the lions. So imagine our surprise when we saw that the balls, bags, and other assorted equipment we inherited all said "LOINS" on them.

This is funny, but exacerbated by the fact that the name of our school was "Most Pure Heart of Mary." So, our equipment would have you believe that we were the "Most Pure Heart of Mary Loins." Or just, "Heart of Mary Loins." The first thing I was afraid of was that our uniforms would bear this dreadful typo, but, thankfully they did not.

The second thing I was terrified of — and I think any coach out there would agree — was losing our first game. I was OK if we lost a game, or a few games, but I just didn't want to lose the first game. Parents can be very unforgiving.

I was pretty much worthless on the bench and Alec did most of the sideline coaching. But as soon as the game started, my fear once again disappeared. These students, whose other areas of their lives were by most accounts very messy — messy home lives, messy school lives, messy social lives — became stars on the court. And I had nothing to do with it. When they played well, they really shined. And I was amazed.

To briefly go back to the Scripture reading, many of us might recall that there's a slightly different version in Matthew's gospel. The apostles are still in the boat, the wind's still blowing, and Jesus is still walking on the sea. They're still, obviously, terrified. But one guy, Peter, has the audacity to try out the very amazing thing that Jesus is doing. He ain't afraid. So he steps out, onto the sea, and it works. Peter walks on water too.

For a moment.

He looks around, notices the storm and, like a brick, begins to sink. He calls out to Christ, who offers him his hand, and catches him. Like Peter, I too have tried to walk on water, thinking I could do it, only to sink promptly thereafter.

For example: Once, I was in our upstairs hallway and my housemate Kelly was walking toward me. She mentioned she would be late for dinner, because she recently started coaching volleyball. I, like a good community member, wanted to support he and share my excitement for her, so I started to mime a little invisible volleyball in the hallway. I jumped up, attempting to smack an invisible ball (and get this, I actually yelled "ACE!" as I did it) and punched right through the glass covering the light bulb. My hand and wrists were sliced, and I howled all the way down to the kitchen, where we eat, to tend myself.

While Kelly cleaned up the blood, Colleen, my other housemate, hearing me cry out, came to the rescue, calmed me down, and tended my wound. What I did not know, was Colleen is extremely squeamish around blood. So while I sat happily being aided by two nurses, Colleen was doing everything she could not to vomit. When she was done, Colleen offered me her hand, her help, when I started sinking, and for that, I am amazed.

No ACE talk would be complete without a reflection on all four — excuse me, three — pillars, so I have just one more story.

I was teaching the sacraments in religion this past year and we were talking about the Eucharist — that is, the sacrament that Catholics recognize as the real presence — body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. I explained this to my students, and saw their faces kind of contort — first in confusion, then in understanding, then in shock. Many of my students, non-Catholic, didn't understand how people could really think this. And then Shauntai, in the back, asked a question I'll never forget:

"So, Midda Faw, if you think that Jesus is REALLY the bread, then why you not be amazed, like, ALL THE TIME?!"

And I didn't have an answer for her. Still don't.

And I think, maybe, that's why I was so afraid of this talk. Not just because I have to get up in front of 500 people. I taught middle school, I can handle 500 people. But because you all amaze me so much, and I don't want to disappoint.

My mother, when she finished the parent retreat last year and met so many of the ACE 17 class, couldn't stop gushing. "Oh Dan, they are like, the best group of people. They are just so smart, and so nice, and so attractive...!"

And I can't disagree with her. If you disagree with her, she's right there and she'll fight with you over it. These people, my classmates, who I get the honor to address, are the greatest group of people I have had the pleasure of knowing.

And I wondered for a long time why this was. What makes the ACE class so great? It's more than just being nice, or smart, or good-looking (which we all are). And at the risk of sounding like a Gather hymnal, I figured it out.

You all remind me of Christ. All the times when I have been amazed by this program and the experiences of it, I have seen Christ. I'm going to be super ACEy for a second and quote Gerard Manly Hopkins. He writes,

for Christ plays in ten thousand places

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his,

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

I admire, I respect, and I love ACE 17. Because they remind me of Jesus, they introduce and reintroduce me to Jesus, and they show me what he's all about.

When I get a hug from Andrea Krebs, it's like getting a hug from God. When James Cahill dances or when Nick Cuomo wobbles at the Backer, I feel Christ's joy. When Kyle Pounder laughs — I hear Christ laugh. When Mary Lefere and Patrick Kirkland smile, that's Christ's smile. I see the face of Christ in the Face of ACE — Tim Malecek, and in the faces of all of you. And when I listen to the sound of hoping, the singing of Stephen McNamara and Patrick Kincaid, I hear the very voice of Christ.

I see him in all of you, and in all of the good that we've done.

It's easy to be afraid, especially in times like this. We are moving to new places, and schools. We have new vocations, new spouses, new fiancees, new roommates, new careers.

But when I think back to all of you all, and how I have seen Christ in you and in all of the work and the pain and the struggle and the joy and the good, the real and lasting good that we've done — together: I am not afraid.

I am amazed.

And, like Shauntai's question, I really don't know why I wasn't amazed the whole time. I should have been. And now, looking at all of you, finishing this difficult and beautiful experience, I know I will continue to be amazed for a very long time.

Thank you again for selecting me for this honor, and for keeping me afloat these two years. I couldn't have done it without you, and I love you all very much. May Christ, through his Mother, Notre Dame, bless us for the rest of our lives.

Amen.

Leaders from the education, development, corporate, and church sectors came together at Notre Dame's campus on June 19-20 to consider bold plans to help build Haiti's future by investing in Catholic education, the largest cohesive network of educational services in Haiti.

Haiti's Catholic school system spans the impoverished nation with over 2,300 schools across 10 dioceses. Recognized for their superior quality, Catholic schools represent 15% of all Haitian schools and constitute "the most organized education system in the country," said Luke King, Haiti country representative for Catholic Relief Services (CRS).

Conference participants united behind the idea that Catholic education can play a leading role in revitalizing the educational system of Haiti. Rev. Timothy Scully, CSC, director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives at the University of Notre Dame expressed this conviction: "Catholic education is the most important vehicle for formation in the faith, formation of character, and formation of the intellect that is available to us in this country and abroad," he said. Fr. Scully also expressed Notre Dame's unwavering commitment to Catholic education in Haiti. Referring to the "talented Holy Cross community in Haiti," which runs about 20 schools in Haiti and is also the sponsoring religious order of Notre Dame, Fr. Scully said "we will be there as long as they will be there, which is forever."

National experts and local practitioners in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) teaching gathered at Notre Dame on June 12 to envision using those disciplines to create "a generation of optimistic problem-solvers."

Distinguished panels led an audience of about 160 educators in discussions focused on science and math, with a University vice president citing the importance of this dialogue as a capstone to the Notre Dame Forum series on "reimagining" K-12 schooling.

"It's essential that we reclaim STEM education for all of our students, whatever their interests and career aspirations may be," said Dr. Christine Maziar, who is also senior associate provost. She said the STEM disciplines can undergird United States leadership in innovation, provide tools for analyzing the world, and give students confidence in addressing today's challenges.

The most effective way to improve the nation's current teaching of science is "an investment in the professional capital of the educational system"—through attracting and retaining excellent teachers—said panelist Jonathan Osborne, Shiriam Family Professor of Science Education at Stanford University.

Three outstanding educators committed to sustain, strengthen, and transform Catholic schools have been selected to receive the 2012 Michael Pressley Awards from the Alliance for Catholic Education's ACE Advocates for Catholic Schools.

The seventh annual Michael Pressley Awards for Excellence in Catholic Education will go to Molly Carlin and Kyle Pietrantonio, who are both outstanding school leaders in the Atlanta area. The second annual Michael Pressley Award for a Promising Scholar in the Education Field will go to Michael Faggella-Luby, a newly tenured associate professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut.