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Institute for Educational Initiatives: Strategic Plan
The Center for Achievement and Learning
From the beginning of the University's re-involvement in education through ACE, one conclusion has become eminently clear: ACE teachers were unprepared to meet the needs of students with unique learning styles. This fact, combined with the deep interest and considerable expertise of the Institute's Faculty Fellows in the area of learning differences, led the Institute to search for ways to respond to these urgent needs. Responding to these needs represents the most critical new initiative the Institute must develop. It is this set of needs that leads the IEI to propose the creation of the Notre Dame Center for Achievement and Learning.
The fundamental purpose of the Center for Achievement and Learning will be to offer state of the art training for teachers and school leaders in the area of learning differences. The Center will pay particular attention to the needs of the national Catholic school system. In fact, the Center will train all ACE teachers so that they may better serve all the children they are charged with teaching. The Center will seek to build a cohort of teaching and research faculty, as well as seasoned practioners to teach, conduct research and disseminate that research through clinical activities.
The guiding principles which should serve to define the long-term mission and staffing of this effort should include the following:
- The Notre Dame Center for Achievement and Learning-housed within IEI-will be a world class center dedicated to advancing the learning of children, adolescents, and adults with diverse learning styles, preferences, and abilities through teaching, research, development activities and professional training.
- The Notre Dame Center will seek to bridge the gap between theory and teaching practices, between knowledge about learning and student performance. These goals will be achieved through intervention-based research, the development and delivery of high quality services, and professional development that is informed by both basic and applied research about teaching and learning processes.
- As part of its mission, the Center will develop technology-based resources that have the potential to facilitate classroom teaching practices as well as individualized student learning.
- Through its graduate programs, the Center will prepare college and university-level teachers and researchers who are concerned with the learning processes of students with diverse styles and abilities. The graduate program will develop young scholars who conduct innovative research and learn how to deliver high quality services to diverse groups of students and professionals.
- The Center will communicate its findings and training model throughout the United States and the world. The Center will foster relationships with relevant programs and key strategically important departments at Notre Dame such as Psychology and with relevant partners at other leading Universities. The goal is to develop a broad-based international center dedicated to research on teaching methods and learning processes for students with diverse styles and abilities.
- The Director, and all other faculty appointments, will embrace Notre Dame's commitment to teaching, research, and service to those most in need.
- The Director will have achieved national recognition for his or her scholarship and will oversee the development of a faculty and professional staff whose accomplishments will insure world-class research and first-class delivery of services through the Center's clinic and professional development programs.
The creation of this center has been the abiding interest of a leading Notre Dame supporter. Its creation will provide the IEI with the resources to build the intellectual infrastructure for an multi-disciplinary faculty and professional staff that will have a truly national and international impact and will catapult Notre Dame to the forefront of efforts to serve our nation's neediest children.
 The Center for Research on Educational Opportunity
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