Introduction
In late 1842, after Fr. Sorin arrived at an empty, snowy landscape in northern Indiana with six brothers, three hundred dollars, and one big ambition, he famously wrote: “This college will be one of the most powerful means for doing good in this country.”
Whatever his plan was for building a college in the wilderness, he likely did not foresee the cholera, or the malaria, or the early anti-Catholic hostility, or the great fire of 1879, or even the intense opposition of his own council to the “unnecessary ornament” he proposed -- a dome atop the main building.
But Fr. Sorin led Notre Dame through these difficulties with a powerful sense of purpose.
The purpose comes before the plan.
What is our purpose more than 170 years after our founding? What is our intention in gathering together and merging our efforts under the name of Notre Dame?
We want to be a great Catholic research university for the 21st century.
What does this require of us?
We must provide our students an unsurpassed undergraduate education.
We must excel in discovery and research, offering graduate programs that advance knowledge and serve the world.
We must inform our scholarly pursuits with an overarching 2,000-year religious and moral tradition that orients academic activity and defines a good human life.
There are a number of outstanding colleges in this country that offer excellent undergraduate programs. There are a smaller number of institutions that combine brilliant undergraduate education with world-class research. But there are no universities that have done what Notre Dame aspires to do – to become a pre-eminent research university, to offer an unsurpassed undergraduate program, and to infuse both with a religious and moral framework that imbues knowledge with the power to benefit human beings.
Faith and the Catholic intellectual and moral tradition must not merely add an element to our mission, it must inform all we do.
Our undergraduate program must educate the whole person – intellectual, moral, spiritual. We must transmit worldly knowledge, form students’ character, provide a climate hospitable to conversations about God, the good and truth, and offer students the most profound experience of community they may ever know.
Our graduate programs must aspire to the highest level of disciplinary expertise, guided by the resources of our moral and religious tradition. In the scientific and technical fields, we must focus not only on what we can do, but what we should do – convinced that our ability to seek God, study the world and serve humanity is magnified many times over by the knowledge and discovery that comes with scholarly excellence.
Our mission is not widely shared in higher education today, but that is why our contribution is so valuable. For if we are afraid to be different, how can we make a difference in the world?
The power of the plan outlined on these pages is not purely in enunciating university goals. Its force comes from the record number of faculty, deans, trustees, and benefactors who have merged their personal goals with the mission of Notre Dame – and the alumni, students, parents, and friends who will keep us on course, call for results, and press us on to achieve our goals. Notre Dame is not for any of us just a job, or a duty, or a charity, or even only a University. Notre Dame is a calling, and each of us has been called.
In partnership with all those whose aspirations can be advanced by the success of this university, we will mobilize the Notre Dame family in support of our noble purpose – to join a spiritual tradition of faith with an uncompromising search for truth to fulfill human promise.
Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
President
Introduction Video
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Our Vision
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University Goals
Catholic Character
Goal I: Ensure that our Catholic character informs all our endeavors.
Universities first arose in the soil of the Catholic culture of thirteenth century Europe, and have existed continuously since. Notre Dame stands within and carries on that tradition.
As a Catholic university in the Holy Cross tradition, Notre Dame strives to combine a living faith that is seeking understanding with an uncompromising commitment to the search for truth through teaching and inquiry. It believes commitments to faith and reason are not only compatible, but even complementary. As Pope John Paul II wrote: “Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world in which both can flourish.”
Our Catholic mission gives us a rich understanding of education that demands attention to the development of the whole person—“the cultivation of the heart as well as the mind,” as our founder, Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C., put it. Thus we strive to build a community that inspires the pursuit of truth and teaches respect, love and service, so that our learning serves the Church and the world, particularly for those who are most in need.
Undergraduate Education
Goal II: Offer an unsurpassed undergraduate education that nurtures the formation of mind, body, and spirit
“Education is the art of bringing a young person to completeness,” said Fr. Basil Moreau, the founder of the Holy Cross order who sent Fr. Sorin to found Notre Dame. Moreau established for Notre Dame and for all Holy Cross schools the ideal of educating the whole person. These institutions devoted themselves to the intellectual, spiritual and moral education of the students, striving to lead them into truth.
This forms the hallmark of a Notre Dame undergraduate education – rigorous intellectual training with the cultivation of moral character and spiritual formation offered in a community distinguished by faith.
Our undergraduate program is anchored in excellent teaching – a traditional strength and defining characteristic of Notre Dame. Quality teaching – the nature of the personal exchange between professor and student – will encourage students to become fellow inquirers with the faculty, giving them the ability to form their own views, test their own theories, and stand their own ground in debate.
Our university curriculum is grounded a liberal arts core while students achieve depth of learning in a chosen major. We are committed to enhancing the education of our students through opportunities for study abroad, community based learning and undergraduate research.
In addition to the teaching and guidance offered by professors in the classroom, a vital part of the education at Notre Dame is provided by life in residence halls and engagement in student activities, voluntary service and social life. The Division of Student Affairs fosters a rich community life, encourages student development through programming and supporting student groups, and nurtures the physical and emotional well-being of our students through a variety of student services..
Diversity in all its forms is valued on our campus and we strive to create a community where all feel welcome and the gifts of each enhance everyone.
Ultimately, the Notre Dame undergraduate experience will be magnified by the power of community, people with shared ideals and engaged in a vigorous conversation, and the recognition that education at a Catholic university confers an obligation to become knowledgeable, capable, charitable -- to draw on all the intellectual, spiritual, moral resources of the university to lead a rich human life inspired by the Gospel that will help unify, enlighten and heal.
Research and Scholarship
Goal III: Advance human understanding through scholarship, research, and post-baccalaureate programs that seek to heal, unify, and enlighten
The dividing line between teaching and research is never a sharp one. Good teaching is a conversation with students that is always open to novel insights; and good researchers are always ready to learn from others, whether those others are colleagues or students. Students and faculty are both engaged in inquiry whose culminating experience is discovery—a learning where no one else has previously charted a course. Teaching and research, then, are together integral parts of the core mission of any great university--the pursuit of knowledge and understanding.
Notre Dame has achieved distinction in undergraduate education, but a commitment to research has always been part of its driving vision. Rev. John Zahm, C.S.C., believed that Notre Dame’s destiny was to be a great university like the prominent German universities of his time. Fr. Burns, who became President of Notre Dame in 1919 established college Deans and department chairs and hired the best faculty he could find. He wrote to a friend about a Notre Dame faculty member who was dedicated to research, and said: “My ambition is to have this kind of work going on in every department.” Fr. Hesburgh accelerated the growth in scholarship by, among many things, establishing a great research library and increasing research funding by a factor of 20. When he began his presidency in 1987, Fr. Malloy said in his inaugural address: “We must enthusiastically embrace our potential as a research institution, and we must define those areas of scholarly pursuit where we at Notre Dame are especially qualified to make a lasting contribution.”
The University of Notre Dame is now poised to build on past progress and undertake transformative steps to become even more a distinguished research university whose faculty and students contribute to our understanding of ourselves and our world and whose discoveries enhance human well-being. We believe we can be excellent in all research we undertake and truly distinguished in select areas.
By pushing forward into the unknown, by harnessing discoveries for service to the world, we are determined to become a great Catholic research university, deepening our understanding of God and creation and serving humanity.
Stewardship
Goal IV: Foster the University’s mission through superb stewardship of its human, physical, and financial resources
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Curabitur in diam id nunc consequat elementum et in ante. Suspendisse ut est tincidunt, mattis ligula in, tempor nibh. Curabitur ut mauris at tortor elementum feugiat et in felis. Duis tincidunt, dolor a tristique semper, magna velit varius diam, a ultrices felis turpis ut leo. Vivamus aliquet in nulla nec vulputate. Phasellus nibh risus, molestie ut commodo eu, facilisis at quam. Aenean nisl nibh, mattis egestas consequat vel, cursus id massa. Donec tempor non quam sed scelerisque. Maecenas mollis semper libero. Aenean sodales enim quis nibh cursus, vitae cursus diam sollicitudin. Pellentesque sed turpis ligula. Curabitur ut mauris pulvinar, aliquet tortor non, placerat dolor. Proin velit velit, mollis ac gravida et, vestibulum id neque. Nunc tristique lacus at nunc egestas pretium. Donec semper, ligula et luctus fermentum, libero erat iaculis est, at commodo purus est at sem.
External Engagement
Goal V: Engage in external collaborations that extend and deepen Notre Dame’s impact.
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Curabitur in diam id nunc consequat elementum et in ante. Suspendisse ut est tincidunt, mattis ligula in, tempor nibh. Curabitur ut mauris at tortor elementum feugiat et in felis. Duis tincidunt, dolor a tristique semper, magna velit varius diam, a ultrices felis turpis ut leo. Vivamus aliquet in nulla nec vulputate. Phasellus nibh risus, molestie ut commodo eu, facilisis at quam. Aenean nisl nibh, mattis egestas consequat vel, cursus id massa. Donec tempor non quam sed scelerisque. Maecenas mollis semper libero. Aenean sodales enim quis nibh cursus, vitae cursus diam sollicitudin. Pellentesque sed turpis ligula. Curabitur ut mauris pulvinar, aliquet tortor non, placerat dolor. Proin velit velit, mollis ac gravida et, vestibulum id neque. Nunc tristique lacus at nunc egestas pretium. Donec semper, ligula et luctus fermentum, libero erat iaculis est, at commodo purus est at sem.
University Goals
In an effort to achieve its overall aspiration of becoming a preeminent research university with a distinctive Catholic mission and an unsurpassed undergraduate education, the University of Notre Dame strives to meet the five institutional goals outlined below. Indeed, these principles are what guide all of our major academic and administrative units as they develop, implement, and regularly monitor their strategic plans.
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Maecenas quis blandit libero. Etiam fringilla faucibus libero, id consequat mi placerat quis. Vestibulum imperdiet turpis sit amet ligula sagittis, quis venenatis metus elementum. Ut id luctus odio, eget aliquet augue. Sed vehicula arcu id nunc auctor tincidunt. Vestibulum semper feugiat fermentum. Ut ac accumsan velit. Sed suscipit, tortor quis volutpat dignissim, magna neque vulputate magna, congue porta diam urna sed purus. Maecenas et nunc et purus aliquet scelerisque eget non felis.
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