UPCOMING EVENTS
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Adoption Workshops
Virtual seminars
ACE 101: ACE Info Sept 24 10 am
ACE 102-P: Prof. Development Info Oct 7 1pm
ACE 102-M: Management of Change Oct 21 9am
Register>>
October 23, 2010
ACE Community of Practice
Cabrillo College
(Aptos, CA)
Read more >>
January 10-14, 2011
Faculty Experiential Learning Institute (FELI)
Cabrillo College (Aptos, CA)
Read more >>
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FAST FACTS
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As of September, 2010
ACE Partner Colleges offering ACE courses: 8
ACE cohorts held at all colleges since ACE began: 74
ACE students to date: approximately 1,850
ACE FELI graduates: 384
Students taught annually by those FELI graduates:
approximately 52,000
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ACE PARTNER COLLEGES
ACE courses are currently available at the following community colleges:
California
Berkeley City College (Berkeley, CA)
Cabrillo College (Aptos, CA)
Chabot College (Hayward, CA) *beginning spring 2011*
Hartnell College (Salinas, CA)
Las Positas College (Livermore, CA)
Los Medanos College (Pittsburg, CA)
Illinois
Truman College (Chicago, IL) [Foundation Course Only]
Pennsylvania
Delaware County Community College (Media, PA)
Virginia
Southwest Virginia Community College (Richlands, VA)
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 Order Curriculum Kits for
the Spring Semester by October 15th
ACE Coordinators: It's not too soon to think about
SPRING. To ensure you receive your
ACE Curriculum Kits (and refills) in time for the Spring Semester,
your order should be received by the ACE Center by Friday, October 15,
2010. Order Forms and Price Lists will be sent to ACE Coordinators by September 24th.
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Talk of the Nation
August 24, 2010
Typical College Student No Longer So Typical
Listen to the Story
College classrooms were once filled primarily by
eager students straight out of high school. But the vast majority of
today's college students work, have a family, are enrolled only part
time, or a combination of all three. This new breed of college student
is reshaping the face of higher education in America.
Guests
Kathryn McCormick, student, Valencia Community College, Florida
Kevin Carey, policy director, Education Sector
Brandon Krapf, student, American University, Washington, D.C.
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Quick Links
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Our Mission
To give underprepared
community college students the opportunity to better their lives by helping
them develop the academic qualifications, professional skills, and personal
attributes necessary to succeed.
To "bridge" students
into regular community college courses via one full-time, semester-long
transformative learning environment focused on academics and self-efficacy.
To increase the number
of students who emerge from community college prepared for a knowledge-work
professional career with a future.
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FOR FUN
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Back to the Future and the Beloit Mindset List  Welcome to the Beloit College Mindset List for the entering college class of 2014 Beloit, Wis. - Born when Ross Perot was warning about a giant
sucking sound and Bill Clinton was apologizing for pain in his marriage,
members of this fall's entering college class of 2014 have emerged as a
post-email generation for whom the digital world is routine and
technology is just too slow. Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List.
It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of
students entering college this fall.
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Greetings!
Our fall ACE Newsletter
celebrates the expansion of ACE programs in California, Pennsylvania, and
Virginia.
Join us as we welcome our three
newest ACE Partner Colleges that are introducing ACE cohorts for the first
time. Be sure to read the interviews with the visionary leaders at these
colleges who have brought ACE programs to their schools. Their words are inspiring and connect us with
the spark that lights up in people who are involved with ACE. Also in this issue, you'll find important
updates from the ACE Center about new support for ACE faculty, our
longitudinal study that looks at student and faculty outcomes, and our strategic
planning work that will help us reach more students in more communities. Finally, we bring you the words of an ACE student,
sharing how ACE has made a difference in her life.
It is stories from the ACE
community that drive our commitment and passion for our work. Please share your stories with us to
appear in a future ACE Newsletter!
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FEATURED NEWS
ACE Expansion
SWCC First Foundation Course | Three community
colleges are launching ACE cohorts for the first time this fall. This expansion is exciting for all of us at
the ACE Center, as well as for our ACE College Partners at Delaware County Community College (DCCC) in Media,
Pennsylvania;
Southwest Virginia Community College (SWCC) in Richlands,
Virginia, and at Los Medanos College (LMC) in
Pittsburg, California.
ACE programs are being
adopted by colleges with diverse demographics and geographic areas. For example, DCCC is focusing their ACE program at their campus outside of
Philadelphia, with a predominantly African-American community. SWCC serves rural Appalachian coal-mining communities
where students may walk several miles to catch a 6:30 am bus to the
college. And LMC draws on the
multi-cultural diversity for which the San Francisco Bay Area is famous.
ACE director Diego
Navarro said, "I am happy to extend a special welcome to our new ACE Partner Colleges. The faculty and staff at each of these
community colleges have been outstanding partners and all have brought new
qualities that are helping ACE to improve our effectiveness. The leaders of these colleges have each
brought a deep knowledge of higher education, sincere interest in successful
developmental learning programs, and their commitment to meeting the unique needs
of their local communities."
Diego shared his joy in
working with these new colleagues: "This summer I was involved in ACE's
professional development training, the Faculty Experiential Learning Institute (FELI) held at SWCC and at DCCC. In addition to the immense pleasure I had meeting with the faculty and
staff of these colleges, I also learned a lot about their institutions and the
sort of students and communities they serve. This has been invaluable, helping the ACE Center understand what it
takes to implement ACE curriculum outside of California."
"We've also enjoyed having faculty and staff
of Los Medanos College at our previous FELI trainings. LMC is helping us evaluate their approach of combining acceleration of
English and Math in one cohort. We look
forward to learning about their results."
This
expansion is raising the bar for the ACE Center. To meet the needs of staff and faculty at
colleges in distant locales, we are making rapid improvements to our virtual
delivery of workshops and training services. We are also developing our
Community of Practice capabilities to support College Partners outside of
California.
We
wish our new College Partners success with their ACE programs this first
semester and look forward to a continuing partnership for many years to come.
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Foundation Course at DCCC.
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View ACE student photos
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ACE CENTER LEADER REPORTS
Diego Navarro, ACE
Center Founder and Executive Director
I am happy to report that the ACE Center is
making tremendous progress on important initiatives that will shape our future
for years to come.
Strategic Planning
Strategic planning has been underway since May to map out ways to build ACE's
capacity over the next 3 years, in order to scale programs nationally over the
next decade. We expect to complete this work by the end of October.
Senior staff of the ACE Center have been working with the consulting
firm, FSG Social Impact Advisors ,to define the approaches, personnel, and
funding that will be needed to build the infrastructure to achieve ambitious
national growth. Read more >>>
Jim Knickerbocker, Ph.D., ACE Center Director of College Partnerships I'm excited to welcome
three new colleges to the ACE family this semester: DCCC, LMC, SWCC. I
also want to honor the many efforts of our existing ACE colleges to increase or
maintain their ACE cohorts, which in this economic climate is itself an
accomplishment! We now have EIGHT colleges offering ACE courses. Reaching StudentsIn addition to the ACE
Bridge Semester, we also reach students by providing FELI (Faculty Experiential
Learning Institute) training events to college faculty, administrators, and
staff. We have anecdotal evidence that
FELI-trained instructors see improved student outcomes. If we assume that 90% of the 384 people who
have attended a FELI workshop are currently teaching, and that they teach an
average of 150 students per year, the net result is that ACE-trained
instructors are reaching approximately 52,000 students a year! We recently
began an evaluation study to quantify student benefits-so look for results
early next year. Read more >>>
Beth Nelson, ACE Center Program ManagerInfrastructureThe ACE Center events
team has had a busy summer managing 17 events hosted here at Cabrillo College,
and by our Partner Colleges. We continue
to develop our event processes to ensure that all events run smoothly. In addition to in-person events, we are also
building our capacity to support and conduct virtual workshops and trainings
using online video conferencing and instructional tools. Scheduling is a demanding
job for most colleges, and the particularities of ACE programs add complexity
to community college scheduling protocols. The ACE Center is developing materials and guidelines to help with the
scheduling of ACE cohorts. Look for a workshop presenting these materials soon.
A favorite regional
event, held twice annually, is our Community of Practice (CoP) gathering. Our fall CoP will be held at Cabrillo College
on October 23rd. It's a great opportunity to learn more about ACE and connect
with other ACE instructors. We hope to see you there! Peter Fullenwider, ACE Center Curriculum
The Academy for College
Excellence website now has a Curriculum Support page under the Faculty
tab. Visit this page for critical notifications
regarding curriculum, including text errors and duplications issues.
Antonio M. Alarcón, Program Coordinator andNatalia Córdoba-Velásquez, Recruitment & Research CoordinatorRecruitmentAs the recruitment team
for Cabrillo College, we have had the pleasure
of sharing our hands-on experiences while developing new materials to support
the processes of recruitment, intake, and enrollment at other ACE Colleges. It
is great for us to interact with them, learn about their cultures, and hear
about their different ways of approaching recruitment efforts. We honor those of you who
are tasked with providing students with their first glimpse of ACE
programs. In just a brief phone call or
interview, you are awakening the imagination and setting in motion the
students' opportunity to transform their lives in one semester.  We have so far tested a
Recruitment Kit with three colleges and have received valuable feedback. The Recruitment Kit and workshop are in the
final stages of production. At Cabrillo College we are pleased to celebrate the start of the Fall
semester with 7 cohorts. We thank the ACE staff who have supported our
recruitment efforts. Many ACE colleges have started their Foundation Courses
and two more will start at the end of this month. Congratulations to you all!
Peter Bartlett, ACE Community Organizer
 ACE Fall Community of Practice OCT. 23, 2010 8:30 a.m to 5:00 p.m. Cabrillo College Mark your calendar and register earlyWe are excited to invite
members of the ACE Community to come together on the 23rd of October at
Cabrillo College in Soquel, California for the Fall Community of Practice (CoP). This is an opportunity for the ACE community
to come together to exchange ideas and learn from one another. It offers a
process through which ACE instructors and implementers can share their
innovations around every aspect of the program; from recruiting students, to
teaching, or institutionalizing ACE at a college. The goals are to build
community and share knowledge, and to capture great ideas to further strengthen
this program and better help our students. The Bay Area Regional CoP
occurs twice a year, open to anyone in the entire ACE Community. We are in the
process of organizing local chapters at DCCC and SWCC. If you have ideas for the
agenda or would like to work with the planning team for the Fall CoP, please
contact Peter Bartlett, ACE Community Organizer, 434 409-2540 or peterb@my-ace.org. |
INTERVIEWS WITH OUR PARTNER COLLEGES
The
ACE Center is pleased to share these excerpts of inspiring words from leaders at three
colleges across the United States that introduced ACE cohorts for the first
time this fall. Please click Read more>> below each passage to read the full interviews.
 Ginny (Virginia) Carter, Ed.D.
Provost, Delaware County Community College (DCCC)
Pennsylvania
What is the most compelling aspect of ACE to
you? How do you believe the ACE curriculum will suit the needs of your
students?
Having
students actively engaged in group work around social justice themes is very
important. This was a major attraction
and resonated with us as something in which students would have a real
interest.
We
understand "at-risk" not just in terms of test scores. It includes whether education was a priority
or not in the students' lives or if education has been mired in fear concepts
and the unknown, making it difficult for students to become successful
learners.
The ACE
semester addresses these issues and learning needs of our students early on. The integrated semester offers students a
process for changing the way they think about college, their expectations, and
how to succeed. The up-front focus of
the ACE schedule provides a reorienting for students that they don't get by
jumping into five different classes all at once, starting on week one. ACE is a building process. As students progress to the particulars of
different disciplines, they have both the confidence and skills they need to
succeed.
Read More >>
Phyllis Roberts
Vice President, Institutional Advancement, Southwest Virginia Community
College (SWCC)
Virginia
What
inspires you in your work?
I am inspired by change and people who
dedicate their lives to bringing about transformation. I read somewhere that
transformational change at its core longs to destroy you and if you are willing
to pay the price, it will destroy every part of you. It is messy and
painful and costs you everything, and pulls all of your junk out and lays it on
the table for all to see. But in the end, it is our surrender,
transparency, and dependency on each other that will bring us back to
life. I can't think of a better way to describe the ACE program! I
appreciate Diego Navarro's vision and dedication to transform developmental
education in America. Read More >>
 Tue Rust
ACE
Coordinator, Los Medanos College (LMC)
California
What
advice can you offer to your colleagues at other community colleges who are
considering adopting the ACE curriculum?
I highly recommend people go to the Community of Practice. The ideas generated in that forum are fantastic. For instance, we looked
at the cultural relevancy in terms of pedagogy, recognizing that components of
the program change, depending upon the community. Tools like the
Conversation Meter differ for different communities; cultural and individual
expression in sincerity and authenticity differ. It's not the same style
for every group.
My best advice for teachers is to get course
outlines approved by the curriculum committee first, starting the summer before
the fall of first cohorts. I also suggest you set it up as a real course vs. an
experimental one from the get-go. ACE already has data to show that it
works, so you don't need to go through the experimental phase in your school.
We already have 15-page outlines with the detail that helps put it across to
the curriculum committee. But it is still modifiable, so the ACE process
is scalable and can be done anywhere.
Read More >>
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STUDENT PERSPECTIVES
Interview with an ACE Student:
Deseri Contreras
 Although I
felt that I needed a college education, I had been apprehensive about
adding school to my already busy schedule. What caught my attention
about the ACE program was that it offered to teach me techniques to
learn faster and also to balance my personal life. It also promised that
I would discover my learning style as well as those of others, a skill
that I have always wanted to have, especially throughout my years as an
office manager. I thought for a moment that the program might not offer
the professional training that is required within the business world,
but I was happy to find that ACE is an award-winning, nationally
recognized program that utilizes the same training which is taught
within very
accomplished companies.
Being new on a college campus can be overwhelming, so I was very
excited to hear that within the ACE program I would learn how to create
teams and learn how to build study skills independently as well as
within a group. ACE has made spending time getting
to know other students a priority, and recognizes that the friendships
you form will be a lasting support throughout your academic experience.
Taking the Summer Math Intensive course was a break-through in my
academic experience. I had struggled with math throughout my former school
years. I believe that my previous struggle with math had actually kept
me from furthering my education for over 25 years. The course helped me to think about numbers in a
completely different way. It allowed me to leave my old thoughts and
habits about math behind, and it gave me a renewed and positive
relationship with math.
The staff at Cabrillo who have developed the ACE
format have figured out a way to disintegrate bad educational
experiences and to re-build them in a way that inspires effective
learning. They have discovered that when the mind is not bogged down
with the subject matter itself, but is allowed to partake of social
collaboration, that it is free to absorb and work with the lesson at
hand.
What the ACE program has to offer is much more than I could have ask for.
Thank you,
Deseri Contreras
We welcome your submissions! Please send submissions, questions
or comments to Halle Evans at halle@my-ace.org.
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CONGRATULATIONS
Foundation Course Practicants Summer 2010 hosted by Cabrillo College
Foundation Course Practicants
Summer 2010 hosted by Hartnell CollegeRepresenting Hartnell College
Eric Moberg Paula Haro Steven Triano Faculty Experiential Learning Institute (FELI) Practicants
Summer 2010 hosted by Cabrillo College
Representing Cabrillo College
Geneffa Jonker
Stephanie Davis
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Editorial Staff
Jim Knickerbocker, Newsletter Director |
Laurie Rubin, Content Editor  |
Halle Evans, Production Assistant  |
We welcome your submissions! Please send submissions, questions
or comments to Halle Evans at halle@my-ace.org.
To receive more information about the ACE Program
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