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Our Story
A Desire to Serve
The idea for the Academy for College Excellence (ACE) was born in 1999 as founder Diego James Navarro sought to leave the high-tech industry for a more personally rewarding career. He wanted to return to his roots as a community organizer, and help people transcend poverty through education.
The Beginning
In 2002, Diego interviewed 125 experts in the country who worked with young adults, and reviewed 36 curricula. He used research and process design methods he’d learned while a researcher at Hewlett-Packard labs to assess the needs of underprepared youth and to design a program that would transform them into successful community college students. He held five pilots with nine of the curricula to determine the elements that would make the program most effective. With each pilot the curricula was reviewed and improved based on student feedback. This research took over a year and a half. Each pilot included different elements of the two-week intensive that begins the ACE semester (the Foundation Course).
Working with an outstanding team of faculty including Sue Nerton, Marcy Alancraig, Deborah Shulman and Regina DeCosse, Diego refined and combined program elements to develop a specialized curriculum from which the first student cohort was taught in the fall of 2003 at the Cabrillo College center in Watsonville, California. Diego decided to call it the Digital Bridge Academy (DBA), since the idea was to help students bridge the digital divide as a solution to poverty. The target student population was underprepared Latino students in a rural, agricultural community. Cabrillo College continued to run one cohort per semester at its Watsonville Center through spring 2008.
First Partnerships
In fall 2006, three other northern California community colleges ran student cohorts: Las Positas College (Livermore, CA), College of Alameda (Alameda, CA) and Merritt College (Oakland, CA). These partnerships proved that the program curriculum was effective with urban students from diverse backgrounds. Las Positas College continues to run one ACE cohort every fall semester, with a focus on learning disabled students.
Expansion
In fall 2008, Cabrillo College increased the number of cohorts at its Watsonville Center to two, and expanded the program to its main campus in Aptos, California. During this same semester, Hartnell College (Salinas, CA) and Berkeley City College (Berkeley, CA) began the ACE program at their colleges.
Since this time ACE at Cabrillo College has grown to six cohorts per semester, with projected expansion continuing to 10 cohorts per semester in the fall 2010. Likewise, Hartnell College has rapidly expanded to seven cohorts in spring 2010, with another 7 planned for fall 2010. Some of the cohorts attempt to accelerate students through the English developmental sequence, while others leverage ACE curriculum to enhance Career Technical Education (CTE) programs.
Name Change
As the vision of national expansion became a more concrete reality, the need for a name that better described our mission became strong. In the winter of 2010, we changed our name to the Academy for College Excellence (ACE).
Strategic Plan
Diego Navarro and Jim Knickerbocker speak about the development of ACE's strategic plan. The strategic plan is critically important to the entire ACE Community because it deals with the growth and maturation of ACE in the educational process.
ACE Strategic Plan: Part 1 of 3
ACE Strategic Plan: Part 2 of 3
ACE Strategic Plan: Part 3 of 3
Sponsorship
ACE is a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA). As fiscal sponsor, RPA provides ACE with its 501(c)3 tax-exempt status and facilitates the charitable purposes of ACE by providing a broad range of operating services.