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Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE)
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana
In 1993, the University of Notre Dame developed the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) Program, an innovative and nationally recognized teacher education program that leads to a Masters degree in Education (M.Ed.) and an initial teaching license. ACE has developed a highly effective teacher-training model founded upon three pillars: professional teaching, community, and spiritual and moral development.
ACE recruits, educates, places, and supports talented college graduates in approximately 100 under-resourced Catholic schools in fourteen states throughout the southern half of the United States and in its home diocese of South Bend, IN. The University of Notre Dame recruits recent college graduates with bachelor's degrees in fields such as mathematics, biology, engineering, finance, accounting, science, and liberal arts. Many individuals enter the ACE program with the expectation that their experience in education will be a two-year journey of personal and professional development, and that their graduation from the program will offer an opportunity to continue pursuing a career in their field of undergraduate study. Some of these graduates do, in fact, make the transition from teaching into the specialized field of their choice, however, the majority of ACE graduates continue careers in education, and in Catholic education in particular. Today more than 300 of the 554 ACE graduates remain as teachers in Catholic schools and 176 current ACE participants serve in rural and urban schools across the south and southwest.
In 1999, Notre Dame began replicating the ACE model and also invited other programs that, like ACE, wished to sustain and support Catholic schools by preparing faith-based teachers, to join a consortium. Today, the University Consortium for Catholic Education has thirteen member universities placing more than 400 teachers each year in under-resourced Catholic schools across the nation.
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