Rick: So, what exactly is ACUE?
Jonathan: Rick, we’ve got the best higher education institutions in the world, and our professors are experts in their subjects. But it’s an open secret that hardly any college educators are prepared to teach with proven approaches. Certainly not in a comprehensive and intentional way. It’s hard to believe, really, given the intense focus in K-12 over recent decades on instruction and educator preparation. Surely college freshmen can benefit as much from effective teaching practices as high school seniors.
So that’s what we’re addressing. ACUE is a company we launched six years ago, in collaboration with college and university leaders, faculty, and experts in college pedagogy. Our mission is student success through quality instruction. We prepare faculty to teach with proven approaches. We award the only nationally recognized credential in effective college instruction endorsed by the American Council on Education (ACE). We’ve published a dozen studies showing stronger and more equitable achievement among students taught by ACUE credentialed educators. No surprise—good teaching matters.
Rick: How did this all get started?
Jonathan: Like a lot of things, out of conversations with friends. They included Matt Goldstein, who was chancellor of the CUNY system; Eduardo Padron, who just retired as president of Miami-Dade College; Molly Broad, who led the UNC System; Andy Stern, president emeritus of the Service Employees International Union; and others. Our thinking went something like this: College graduation rates are not where they should be. Of the millions attending college for the first time, only 60 percent earn a bachelor’s degree in six years. At community colleges, it’s only 32 percent in three years. The figures are worse for first-generation, low-income, and other underserved groups.
Higher ed has responded to all this with a “student success” agenda emphasizing access and affordability and out-of-class interventions like advising, supplemental instruction, and digital nudges. But none of this gets to the heart of the matter: quality teaching and learning. We knew we could help many more students succeed by strengthening the quality of instruction with practices shown to promote engagement, persistence, and learning.
Rick: So, what does the training actually look like?