From one ACE to another!
Can’t Escape ACE: From the Center for Academic Community Engagement
to the Alliance for Catholic Education
Felicia Comuniello (’17) earned her B.A in Sociology, along with the Certificate in Community Development last spring. Throughout Felicia’s undergraduate career, the Bonner Service Leader program played a large role in her daily life, as well as assisted her in discovering her true passion: Higher Education. Currently, Felicia is a part of the 24th Cohort of the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) Program through the University of Notre Dame.
During her time at Siena College, Felicia served three years as a Program Associate for the Bonner Service Leader Program, mentoring and providing a level of support to underclassmen throughout their undergraduate years. In addition, Felicia served as a Site Team Leader at Albany Leadership Charter High School for all girls, empowering and aiding inner-city students through the college process. Furthermore, Felicia had the opportunity to partake in a six-week Global Service Internship (GSI), where she taught high school and college-level English at the University of Carmen Pampa, Bolivia. Felicia spent many summers on campus, interning at the Center for Academic Community Engagement, where she led several projects on and off campus, all while enhancing her professional development. Felicia ended her undergraduate career writing a thesis on Obligatory vs. Non-Obligatory Volunteerism for College Students: Relationships Between Volunteerism and the Nonprofit Sector.
Currently, Felicia is working towards her M.Ed through the University of Notre Dame. Felicia teaches fifth-grade in the city of Sacramento, California and returns back to Notre Dame’s beautiful campus during the summer-term to take her graduate courses. Specifically, the ACE Teaching Fellow program is a cost-free masters degree, where participants receive a modest living allowance, are placed in affordable housing, live in community, and can receive their teaching licensure. ACE Teaching Fellows look for energetic, passionate leaders who welcome the challenges of beginning teaching, who can maintain a sense of perspective throughout the two-year experience, and who are able to create community both where they live and in the schools in which they work.
ACE teachers don’t fit into a mold – there’s no “typical” candidate for the program. ACE welcomes graduates from nearly every academic discipline from more than 200 colleges and universities across the country and around the world, including individuals with strong backgrounds in mathematics, natural sciences, or foreign language (especially Spanish), and individuals of varying cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Felicia hopes to use her Masters in Education as a stepping-stone for her to pursue a career in Higher Ed. Administrator.
To learn more about ACE Teaching Fellows- https://ace.nd.edu/teach/
Felicia Comuniello ’17
Bonner Service Leader
