Gateway Academy

Diego Navarro founded the Academy for College Excellence (ACE) in 2002 and is an Emeritus Professor at Cabrillo College after 16 years of teaching at this Hispanic-Serving community college. He helps colleges improve their teaching and learning through delivering professional development workshops, and supporting the redesign of courses to incorporate affective / non-cognitive approaches and embed 21st-century skills development. ACE has been studied extensively and replicated at numerous colleges. Navarro has been training faculty in affective learning approaches since 2006 when he was funded by the James Irvine Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to replicate ACE. The experiential learning courses he developed have been taught both in classrooms and online. At WGU his affective course enrolls over 1,500 students per month and has served over 60,000 students. Navarro also developed the Five-day Experiential Learning Institute (FELI) to teach faculty how to employ non-cognitive learning exercises in their classrooms. Over 1,500 faculty and staff from more than 90 institutions have participated in these FELIs.

Navarro has served as a coach on the California Guided Pathways Project and received appointments as a Visiting Scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching at Stanford and the University of California, Santa Cruz. Diego received the prestigious American Association of Community College Trustees, William H. Meardy National Faculty Award in 2009 after receiving the Pacific Regional Award. Diego’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York and other nationally-known funders.

Diego earned a graduate degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Business where he performed research with Rosabeth Moss Kanter and J Richard Hackman, has years of experience in social science research at Hewlett Packard Laboratories which he utilized in the design of ACE, and began higher education attending Pasadena City College.

Jon Iuzzini is the Director of Teaching & Learning at Achieving the Dream. In this role he is responsible for managing programs and projects designed to build institutional capacity supporting intentional integration, professional development, and engagement of full-time and part-time faculty in fostering an inclusive, student-focused college culture.  He currently leads the Engaging Adjunct Faculty in the Student Success Movement Initiative and he collaborates with ATD colleagues on related teaching and learning initiatives that support and engage full-time and part-time faculty as change agents in their institutions.  

Prior to this appointment, Jon served as Coordinator of the Teaching & Creativity Center at Monroe Community College in Rochester, NY.  In this role, he led the collaborative work of faculty committees in designing and implementing professional development activities for full-time and adjunct faculty on each of MCC’s campuses.

Jon’s recent publications applied the theory of intersectionality to the work of faculty development and appeared in New Directions for Teaching & Learning and To Improve the Academy. He regularly facilitates workshops on inclusive educational development; inclusive leadership; and strengthening communication to enhance collaboration.

Jon has taught undergraduate psychology courses including introductory psychology, social psychology, and the psychology of stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination at Texas A&M University, Maryville College, and Hobart & William Smith Colleges.  A proud product of the New York City public schools, Jon earned his BA in Psychology at the University at Albany, State University of New York and his MS in Psychology at Texas A&M University