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Arts and Letters

Overview

The College of Arts and Letters is the oldest and largest college at the University of Notre Dame. It is home to 20 departments and multiple research centers and institutes, which span three divisions: the humanities, arts, and social sciences.

The college’s aspiration is to expand its preeminent academic programs, building on the distinctive foundation of Notre Dame’s Catholic, liberal arts heritage.

Arts and Letters students—at the undergraduate and graduate levels—acquire in-depth research and analysis skills, become strong writers and persuasive speakers, and develop both the foundation and the broad vision required to become leaders in their professional and personal lives.

Faculty, for their part, are highly respected in their various academic disciplines. Through their scholarship and teaching, they actively enhance the international profile of the college’s departments, centers, and institutes.

With its strategic plan for the next decade, the College of Arts and Letters also hopes to inspire in all who are affiliated with the University—students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends—a common sense of purpose and a shared commitment to the enduring mission of Notre Dame.

The college’s aspiration is to expand its preeminent academic programs, building on the distinctive foundation of Notre Dame’s Catholic, liberal arts heritage.

View Strategic Plan News

  • Study Everything. Do Anything.

    Find Your Passion. Create Knowledge. Serve the Common Good. Prepare for Life.

  • Senior Reflections

    The 2016 College of Arts and Letters Diploma Ceremony

News

Goals

Arts and Letters has identified four overarching goals as part of its strategic planning process, each of which advances two or more of the five University-wide goals:

1. Advance research excellence

Daily Life in the Ancient Christian WorldDaily Life in the Ancient Christian World – John Fitzgerald, Professor of Theology

University Goals Supported

  • Goal I: Ensure that our Catholic character informs all our endeavors
  • Goal III: Advance human understanding through scholarship, research, and post-baccalaureate programs that seek to heal, unify, and enlighten

Strategies

  1. Sustain the elite status of the Departments of Theology and Philosophy
  2. Develop the Department of Economics into a Top 20 program
  3. Advance the social sciences as a collective to create more synergies among academic programs
  4. Elevate the Department of History to Top 20 status
  5. Broaden the scope, reputation, and influence of the already premier Medieval Institute
  6. Build the best sacred music program in the United States
  7. Create the leading Institute for Latino Studies in the United States
  8. Better support and assess graduate students across Arts and Letters
  9. Enhance support for digital scholarship and teaching

2. Develop a more sophisticated and intense undergraduate education

Fighting to Inspire the Mind and SpiritFighting to Inspire the Mind and Spirit

University Goals Supported

  • Goal I: Ensure that our Catholic character informs all our endeavors
  • Goal II: Offer an unsurpassed undergraduate education that nurtures the formation of mind, body, and spirit

Strategies

  1. Increase student involvement in independent research, particularly the culminating experience of a senior thesis
  2. Expand opportunities for students to link their Arts and Letters training to professional opportunities, particularly through internships and public speaking
  3. Enhance the quality and sophistication of student exposure to and work in the arts

3. Become a more international college

Japanese Student Profile-Kevin DonleyJapanese Student Profile: Kevin Donley

University Goals Supported

  • Goal I: Ensure that our Catholic character informs all our endeavors
  • Goal III: Advance human understanding through scholarship, research, and post-baccalaureate programs that seek to heal, unify, and enlighten
  • Goal V: Engage in external collaborations that extend and deepen Notre Dame’s impact

Strategies

  1. Hire faculty trained in international fields of study in order to build departmental strengths and increase collaboration
  2. Develop strategic direction for and enhanced presence of the Institute for Asia and Asian Studies
  3. Broaden and deepen the educational experience of students through advanced language studies and cultural immersion
  4. Leverage the Global Gateway Facilities abroad as centers of research collaboration and learning for scholars and students, promoting increased dialogue with faculty and students from other countries

4. Become a more collaborative college

Fighting For Breakthroughs in the Treatment of AutismFighting for Breakthroughs in the Treatment of Autism

University Goals Supported

  • Goal II: Offer an unsurpassed undergraduate education that nurtures the formation of mind, body, and spirit
  • Goal III: Advance human understanding through scholarship, research, and post-baccalaureate programs that seek to heal, unify, and enlighten

Strategies

  1. Foster an interdisciplinary approach to scholarship in the social sciences to better tackle an increasingly complex set of global problems
  2. Expand special programs and research collaborations with the Colleges of Science, Business, and Engineering and the School of Architecture
  3. Make Notre Dame the nation’s foremost place for the study of religion

Learn more about the College of Arts and Letters by visiting al.nd.edu.