4 Notre Dame grad students to teach in diocesan schools

Four University of Notre Dame graduate students will be coming to diocesan schools this fall to complete their formation as teachers as part of a nationwide program sponsored by Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE).

They are Tyler Van Andel, who will be teaching third grade at Columbus All Saints Academy; Maximilian Feist, 10th- and 11th-grade English at Columbus Bishop Hartley High School; Emily Williams, fifth grade, Columbus Holy Spirit School; and Olivia Christel, fourth grade, Columbus St. James the Less School.

All four, part of the ACE teaching fellowship program, will arrive in the city in late July and will live in the former Columbus St. Philip Church rectory during the next two school years.

They are pursuing Master’s degrees in education from Notre Dame and say they plan a career as teachers in Catholic schools at the conclusion of their degree work.

Throughout their time in Columbus, they will work closely with a teacher in each school who will serve in a non-evaluative way as a mentor, with the school’s principal acting as a formal observer. They also will be visited during the year by Notre Dame faculty members and by a chaplain from the university assigned to the ACE program.

“Teachers from our diocese have been taking ACE summer courses at Notre Dame for many years. It’s a big deal to have the teaching fellows program in Columbus because it’s very much in demand throughout the country and can’t serve all the dioceses that want it,” said Dr. Adam Dufault, diocesan school superintendent.

“A team from ACE visited schools here in January and met Bishop (Earl) Fernandes and me and others in the diocesan schools office before agreeing to come here. ACE is known for having well-trained, highly motivated students who are dedicated to Catholic education and eager to work with Catholic school students.

“Significantly, once they’ve completed their work, they’ve tended to stay in the dioceses where they were assigned, so it’s a great way of cultivating young Catholic educators, especially at higher-need campuses where we need great teachers.”

“Adam got in touch with us last year expressing his interest in having ACE teachers in Columbus,” said Dr. John Staud, an English professor at Notre Dame and executive director of ACE. “We were close to full, in terms of the number of dioceses the program can serve, but things lined up well with Columbus.

“We already worked with dioceses in Cleveland, Detroit and Indianapolis that were geographically close, the bishop wanted us to come, you have schools that are the type we want the program to serve, and you had good leadership in the schools office dedicated to solid Catholic formation of teachers.”

ACE, founded in 1993, has served more than 250,000 students nationwide. The teaching fellows program works with 157 schools in 38 dioceses.

“Notre Dame had closed down its department for teacher education in the mid-1970s and didn’t do anything formally related to Catholic schools for many years,” said Staud, a Notre Dame graduate who has been director of ACE almost since the program’s inception.

“Some faculty members in the early 1990s got together and saw the need to provide faith-filled, talented teachers for Catholic schools in the south, where there were few Catholics and where the need was greatest to replace the religious sisters and lay brothers who used to form the majority of the teaching staff for those schools.

“ACE began for southern dioceses, then as the program grew, it began adding dioceses in fast-growing areas including Texas, California and Arizona. In the last 10 years, we’ve gotten into the east and Midwest, including Indianapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland, New York, Washington, Philadelphia and now Columbus.

“ACE, part of Notre Dame’s Institute for Educational Initiatives, offers an umbrella of initiatives for forming Catholic educators and leaders, particularly in underserved areas. The teaching fellows program is our flagship initiative.”

Chris Kowalski, who as principal at Bishop Hartley will be hosting an ACE teacher, was part of the ACE program in 2005 and 2006, teaching middle-school and high-school mathematics in Oklahoma. It’s where he met his wife, Monica, who spent her years as an ACE teaching fellow in Jackson, Mississippi.

She remains a faculty member at Notre Dame, teaching summer courses there in developmental psychology and elementary education and living in Columbus during the school year, when she travels to schools in Ohio and Kentucky to work with ACE teaching fellows.

“ACE was a wonderful experience in terms of how it helped me form my spirituality while learning good teaching practices,” Kowalski said. “I had wanted to be a Catholic educator since going to Catholic schools in Erie, Pennsylvania, and the University of Dayton. ACE has helped me live out that vocation in Oklahoma, Cincinnati and Columbus while strengthening and sustaining Catholic schools.”

Kowalski is in his fifth year as principal at Hartley, where he’s been an administrator for 10 years and on the staff for 18. Besides being principal, he’s the school’s girls soccer coach.

“I know of the impact of the ACE program elsewhere and how important it is to have teacher preparation that combines educating minds and forming souls, so I’m happy to see ACE in the diocese and to help with the training,” said Constance Borro, a former teacher at Columbus St. Catharine of Siena School who will be in her first year as principal at Holy Spirit.

“I haven’t met Emily Williams, who has been assigned here, but it’s clear from what I’ve learned about her that she has a heart for children and is eager for spiritual and professional growth. Her teachers say she’s a great leader in the classroom and as a community volunteer.”

All Saints Academy principal Laura Miller learned of ACE through the late Yvonne Schwab, a former principal at St. James the Less who took part in several ACE conferences. Besides hosting an ACE fellow, Miller is part of an ACE program on engaging the Latino community, which is meeting at Notre Dame later this summer and will be in Arizona in February.

“ACE is ideal for schools such as ours with a large Latino community,” she said. “It’s wonderful to know we have a young man who’s guaranteed to be here to teach third-graders for the next two years and will be living nearby and becoming familiar with the community when not in the classroom.”

That teacher is Van Andel, who received a bachelor of science degree in international relations at Georgetown University before coming to Notre Dame.

“Georgetown doesn’t have a significant educational program,” he said. “I discerned while there that I wanted to teach in a Catholic school.

“I had friends in ACE who inspired me to investigate the program, and I became enthusiastic about how it has people living together in community, working in large cities and with Catholic schools.

“I said I’d be willing to teach at any level and wanted to treat students as people, no matter their age. I was assigned to work with third-graders at St. Adalbert School in South Bend, Indiana, as part of my preparation and am attending classes at Notre Dame before the ACE cohort comes to Columbus in late July.

“I’m from Detroit and looking forward to coming to Columbus, especially because I have a brother there already. He’s a (University of) Michigan graduate, but don’t hold that against him because he’s worked in operations management at Ohio State (University) for the last couple of years, so I know a little about the city.”

The diocese’s Columbus Catholic giving platform includes information for anyone wishing to donate to ACE activities. For details, go to Notre Dame ACE Program – The Catholic Diocese of Columbus’ Giving Website – Columbus, OH.