Today, we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Lisa Dunne.
Hi Dr. Dunne, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
After teaching in higher education for 20 years, I saw such distress and dysfunction in our modern education system. Young students were incurring massive amounts of debt, the drop-out rate was soaring, and the lack of engagement was palpable.
I knew that I could either continue teaching in the traditional sector of education or step out and use everything I had learned over the past two decades to create a new model of education. In August 2020, I built a kindergarten-to-college program that helps churches reach their community with what we call an Academic Rescue Mission. The model is built on mentorship and apprenticeship.
Instead of being cogs in a machine, passive spectators in the academic process, students in our model are active, engaged learners who have purpose, hope, direction, and joy. If you’re reading what’s happening in modern American schools and colleges today, those four adjectives are not commonly linked with students. That’s one of the many reasons our tagline is CVCU: College. Different.
We all face challenges, but would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road or an easy one.
Being a pioneer means you have to expect some rocks along the pathway. You have to expect some hurdles. Each level of growth can bring with it a new set of challenges, but if we see each of these as opportunities rather than obstacles, we can use those moments to position ourselves for growth and change that will strengthen our institutional foundations.
In the Academic Rescue Mission, we have faced financial hurdles as we tried to create a structure that confronted the bloated, overpriced traditional systems of private education, many of which were charging as much as $40,000 a year. We launched at a tuition price point of $12,000 a year, almost a quarter of the cost of most colleges in our state.
That meant we had to run a tight ship and focus a lot of our efforts on fiscally conservative practices, but it’s worth the sacrifice to see students graduating from college completely debt-free.
As you know, we’re big fans of The Academic Rescue Mission and CVCU. For our readers who might not be as familiar with the brand, what can you tell them about it?
The Academic Rescue Mission (ARM) equips local leaders to create affordable, values-centric educational models in their local communities. These models extend from our academy focus (preschool to high school) all the way through our college focus. This means that any community in the United States that has a passion for helping the next generation succeed can utilize our model to take back education in their community.
We train pastors and parents to serve as agents of change in their local community, using their existing church building (which is often sitting open and unused six days a week!) to serve as an outpost for a new model of education: an affordable, mentor-driven model that unites rather than separates families. It’s a model that empowers parents and engages students. It discovers the gold in the local community–the hidden talent that resides in every region–and helps create intergenerational mentor models that strengthen the individual, the family, and the city.
We have been helping communities create these programs for the kindergarten to high school sector for 20 years, but now we have expanded that offering to college. This means that any community with a vision for influencing the next generation can start its affordable preschool-to-college program with the help of the Academic Rescue Mission.
There is such a feeling of legacy when parents and pastors walk into a classroom of a school they created. We know we are impacting the students and the families of the future through ARM.
What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Everyone experiences setbacks in life. In fact, my entire childhood was a setback on which my present vision is founded! If we take the challenges we ourselves are facing, if we look deeply into the challenges our culture is facing, we can take creative, courageous steps to become agents of change. It might sound a bit strong, but I think that visionary mindset is really what sets apart the winners from the whiners.
We all have an opportunity to be part of either the problem or the solution. For me, the desire to see social change in the area of education compels me to move forward and create innovative educational methodology. Would it be easier to do nothing? Sure. But it is certainly more gratifying to be a legacy-builder, a change-agent, a voice of hope for the next generation.
Pricing:
- Corporate Academic Rescue Mission (ARM) coaching starts at just $5K for the whole year.
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College degree programs cost $333 a credit, which is 1/4 of the cost of most private colleges. Students graduate with their BA or BS degree completely debt-free!
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Two-year trade programs offer HVAC and electrician certifications at just $350 a credit.
- Community building opportunities: Priceless!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.AcademicRescueMission.com
- Instagram: @ChulaVistaU
- Facebook: ChulaVistaChristianUniversity
- Linkedin: @DrLisaDunne
- Other: www.CVCU.us
Image Credits
William Burdine
