For many students being essential workers, worrying about money and experiences in their lives render school irrelevant.

These life experiences offer our students an altogether different set of learning challenges.  Life has put obstacles in their path, but difficult life experiences have afforded them opportunities to learn critical survival and other skills.  These students are smart.

There is a growing population of disproportionately impacted college students who desperately want a college education and have the courage to seek it out, but don’t know how to apply their unique strengths and skills to college.  While many are successfully navigating the Covid pandemic, poverty, rough neighborhoods, and underperforming public school educations, they struggle with a range of academic and personal issues — from a lack of proficiency in math and English to family stresses. They have a strong desire to succeed and are equipped with an extraordinary strength in persistence and survival.  What they are lacking is help in translating their strengths in persistence and survival to the academic environment. Prepared colleges focus on the on-boarding of students so students apply these strengths to the college academic environment and creating a culture of dignity.

When introduced to ACE’s experiential learning activities that reinforce belonging and emotional safety as well as accentuating the student’s inherent strengths, students thrive, succeed and complete their educational goals. Review this summary of longitudinal studies of student academic and salary outcomes.

Colleges need a creative, cost effective way to help students succeed, especially as we recognize that the problem goes far beyond academic preparedness, but also includes affective and non-cognitive approaches that address the root problems of many of our disproportionately impacted students, i.e., their physiological stress-response system and the degree of toxic stress in their lives. Read Reports Referencing the ACE Approach.

The ACE approach is an evidence-based proven solution that provides a transformative experience and impact for students, faculty, colleges and the community.

Students

ACE sets students up for success in college by helping them translate their strengths in survival and persistence to their academic experience.  Students learn 21st Century Professional competencies while experiencing belonging and psychological safety in the classroom. The ACE approach helps students experience themselves as "college material" while developing confidence and skills to succeed in life.  Through experiential activities the ACE approach instills behaviors of showing up, hard work, fulfilling commitments, effective listening, having reasoned discussions, and working smoothly on teams with others unlike themselves.  These collaborative leadership competencies are the same skills that drive effective entrepreneurship and civic engagement.

Academic & Salary Impact

Students who experience ACE are 7.8 times more likely than their peers to pass transfer-level math & English courses in the semester following their participation in the ACE Program. See page 4 of this study.

ACE students earn more than twice as many college-level credits on average and they are more likely to enroll full time in the semester following their ACE experience than their peers.  

Nursing students who experience ACE’s 5-day (2 credit hour) Professional Leadership and Communication course have almost a $40,000 median salary difference than their peers six years after graduation. See page 6 of this study.

AFFECTIVE IMPACT

ACE students who completed the 2-credit hour ACE Foundations of Leadership Course have statistically-significant gains in academic self-efficacy, personal responsibility, college identity, mindfulness, and leadership and teamwork efficacy as measured by psychological research constructs.

<——To review affective / non-cognitive psychological construct outcomes press the link

Faculty

At ACE, we take our inspiration from William Butler Yeats, who said, "Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." Just as our class activities light a new fire for learning in disproportionally impacted students; they light a fire for a new way of teaching among college faculty so they reach those students. For course completion rate increase see Craig Hayward study summarized in this document on page 3.

We help faculty change the way they understand, connect with and teach disproportionally impacted students. Faculty reconnect with why they chose the teaching profession.

<——To review faculty studies press the link

Colleges

Community colleges are rooted in their communities, and must adapt to local needs. Demographic shifts in communities are resulting in more first-generation students with different needs that the students that the colleges were originally designed to serve. Colleges are called to new approaches that better serve these underprepared students coming through their doors.  Where student equity gaps exist between the college populations and their communities ACE has been effective in helping colleges to improve access and success.

By demonstrating success with our most challenging students, ACE is sustaining community colleges in their role as engines of progress and prosperity in our communities.

<——To review many reports and studies about the ACE Program press the link

Community

Community colleges play a critical role in lifting people out of poverty.  They are local, open and accessible, and the most affordable option in higher education. Further, community colleges are adept at creating curriculum that trains students for skilled jobs with local employers in the community.  But they don't work in isolation, or at least they shouldn't.  Many community based organizations work daily to set people on a pathway to family-supporitng jobs and that means not only getting them to their first day at community college — it means equipping them with the skills to arrive, survive until they thrive.  ACE graduates become the leaders in their communities.

Community by community, ACE fills a critical gap in services by empowering people striving for a better life to be successful citizens with college degrees and a deep understanding of the skills needed to succeed in the 21st Century workplace.

Take the Next Step

Join over a thousand colleagues who have taken the next step by experiencing the ACE curriculum and bringing affective learning to their institutions.  If you are interested in our program contact us about hosting a Five-day Experiential Learning Institute (FELI) on your campus or register yourself or a small exploratory team from your college at any of the FELIs that are open to colleagues outside the host college.  

ACE is providing online workshops with ACE Founder, Diego James Navarro. Please call 831 247-3902 for more information.