This week, ACE is celebrating ACE Awards week, an opportunity to showcase its 2021 leadership and innovation awards winners’ accomplishments online through video interviews and social media highlights. Next year, ACE plans to return to celebrating these awards in person at the ACE Annual Meeting.
Among the outstanding higher education leaders ACE is recognizing this year are Janet Napolitano, former president of the University of California, the recipient of ACE's Lifetime Achievement Award; James L. Moore III, vice provost for diversity and inclusion and chief diversity officer at The Ohio State University, the recipient of the 2021 Reginald Wilson Diversity Leadership Award; and Jonathan Alger, president of James Madison University, the winner of the 2021 ACE Council of Fellows/Fidelity Investments Mentor Award.
The University of California San Diego and Davenport University are the recipients of the 2021 ACE/Fidelity Investments Award for Institutional Transformation, created to recognize institutions that have responded to higher education challenges in innovative and creative ways. Betty Turner Asher, Jean Dowdall, Jan Greenwood, Narcisa Polonio, and Shelly Weiss Storbeck have been selected as a group to receive the Donna Shavlik Award. Also focused on the advancement of women in higher education, the ACE State Network Leadership Award goes to the ACE Women's Network of Florida's Pivoting With a Purpose program.
The TIAA Institute Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence in Higher Education honors exemplary and inspirational leaders who embody the spirit and drive of the award’s namesake, and this year’s winner, President Ruth J. Simmons of Prairie View A&M University is certainly in that tradition. ACE is proud to partner with the TIAA Institute in bestowing this award each year.
Finally, St. Nicholas Burrus and Edwin Duarte Jr. are ACE's 2020 Students of the Year. Burrus recently graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maine at Presque Isle, while Duarte is currently working toward a bachelor’s degree in history at the University of Texas at El Paso after earning two associate’s degrees at Norco College in California. Both scholars are fantastic reminders of the power of education and the hard work it takes to complete a college degree.