University of Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame du Lac (known simply as Notre Dame; NOH-tər-DAYM; ND) is a private Catholic research university in Notre Dame, Indiana, United States. The university was founded in 1842 by members of the Congregation of Holy Cross, a Catholic religious order of priests and brothers. Its main campus covers 1,261 acres (510 ha) in a suburban setting and has landmarks such as the Golden Dome main building, Sacred Heart Basilica, the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, the Word of Life mosaic mural, and Notre Dame Stadium.

Notre Dame is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research spending and doctorate production". In the 2025–2026 academic year 13,042 students attended Notre Dame, making it the eighth largest Catholic university in terms of enrollment in the U.S. The university is organized into seven schools and colleges: College of Arts and Letters, College of Science, Notre Dame Law School, School of Architecture, College of Engineering, Mendoza College of Business, and Keough School of Global Affairs. Notre Dame's graduate program includes more than 50 master, doctoral and professional degrees offered by the seven schools.

The university's athletic teams are members of the NCAA Division I and are known collectively as the Fighting Irish. Notre Dame is noted for its football team, which contributed to its rise to prominence on the national stage in the early 20th century. Notre Dame teams in other sports, chiefly in the Atlantic Coast Conference, have won 17 national championships.

Between 1952 and 1987, Theodore Hesburgh's administration increased the university's resources and improved its academic programs and its reputation. Its network of alumni consists of 151,000 members.

History

Foundations

Stephen Badin, the first priest ordained in the United States, had come to northern Indiana after an invitation extended by Potawatomi chief Leopold Pokagon to minister to his tribe, and Badin bought the 524 acres (212 ha) of land in 1830 that became the university's campus. In 1842, bishop Célestin Guynemer de la Hailandière of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Vincennes offered the land to Edward Sorin of the Congregation of Holy Cross on the condition that he build a college in two years. Sorin arrived on the site with eight Holy Cross brothers from France and Ireland on November 26, 1842 and began the school using Badin's old log chapel. After enrolling two students, Sorin erected more buildings, including the Old College, the first church, and the first main building. Notre Dame began as a primary and secondary school; in 1844 it received its official college charter from the Indiana General Assembly, under the name of the University of Notre Dame du Lac (University of Our Lady of the Lake). The university was originally all-male; the Sisters of the Holy Cross founded the female-only Saint Mary's College near Notre Dame in 1844.

Early history

The college awarded its first degrees in 1849. As it grew under the presidency of Sorin and his successors, new academic programs were offered and new buildings built to accommodate the growing student and faculty population. The brief presidency of Patrick Dillon (1865–1866) saw the original main building replaced with a larger one that housed the university's administration, classrooms, and dormitories. Under William Corby's first administration, enrollment at Notre Dame increased to over 500 students. In 1869, he opened the law school, which offered a two-year course of study, and in 1871 he began construction of Sacred Heart Church, today the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Two years later, the president Auguste Lemonnier started a library in the Main Building that had 10,000 volumes by 1879.

However, fire destroyed the Main Building and the library collection in April 1879; the school closed immediately and students were sent home. Rebuilding began on May 17, and the third and current Main Building was completed before the fall semester of 1879. The library collection was likewise redeveloped.

The presidency of Thomas E. Walsh (1881–1893) focused on improving Notre Dame's scholastic reputation and standards. At the time, many students came to Notre Dame only for its business courses and did not graduate. Walsh started a "Belles Lettres" program and invited notable lay intellectuals like writer Maurice Francis Egan to campus. Washington Hall was built in 1881 as a theater, and the Science Hall (today the LaFortune Student Center) was built in 1883 to house the science program (established in 1880) and multiple classrooms and science labs. The construction of Sorin Hall saw the first freestanding residence hall on campus and one of the first in the country to have private rooms for students, a project championed by Sorin and John Zahm. During Walsh's tenure, Notre Dame started its football program and awarded its first Laetare Medal, one the earlist such honors bequesthed by a Catholic university in the United States. The Law School was reorganized under the leadership of William J. Hoynes (dean from 1883 to 1919), and when its new building was opened shortly after his death, it was renamed in his honor.

Campus

Notre Dame's campus is located in Notre Dame, Indiana, in the Michiana area of Northern Indiana. It lies on 1,250 acres (510 ha), south of the Indiana Toll Road and includes around 170 buildings and athletic fields located around its two lakes and seven quadrangles.

It is consistently ranked as one of the most beautiful university campuses in the United States and around the world, and it is noted particularly for the Golden Dome, the Basilica and its stained glass windows, the quads and the greenery, the Grotto, the Hesburgh Library with its Word of Life stone mural (nicknamed "Touchdown Jesus" by students), and its statues and museums. Notre Dame is a major tourist attraction in northern Indiana; in the 2015–2016 academic year, more than 1.8 million visitors, almost half of whom were from outside St. Joseph County, visited the campus.

A 116-acre (47 ha) historic district was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 as University of Notre Dame: Main and South Quadrangles. The district includes 21 contributing buildings in the core of the original campus such as the Main Administration Building and the Basilica.

Administration and academic buildings

The Main Building serves as the center for the university's administrative offices, including the Office of the President. Its golden dome, topped by the statue of Mary, is the campus' most recognizable landmark. The main building is located on Main Quad (also known as "God Quad"), which is the oldest, most historic, and most central part of campus. Behind the main building stands several facilities with administrative purposes and student services, including Carole Sadner Hall, Brownson Hall, and St. Liam's Hall, the campus health center.

There are several religious buildings. The current Basilica of the Sacred Heart is on the site of Sorin's original church, which had become too small for the growing college. It is built in French Revival style, with stained glass windows imported from France. Luigi Gregori, an Italian painter invited by Sorin to be an artist in residence, painted the interior. The basilica also features a bell tower with a carillon. Inside the church, there are sculptures by Ivan Meštrović. The Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes, built in 1896, is a replica of the original in Lourdes and is a popular spot for prayer and meditation. The Old College building has become one of two seminaries on the campus run by the Congregation of Holy Cross.

Academic buildings are concentrated in the Center-South and Center-East sections of campus. McCourtney Hall, an interdisciplinary research facility, opened its doors for the fall 2016 semester, and ground was broken on the 60,000 sq ft (5,600 m2) Walsh Family Hall of Architecture on the south end of campus near the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center which opened in fall 2018. Since 2004, several buildings have been added, including the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, the Guglielmino Complex, and the Jordan Hall of Science. A new engineering building, Stinson-Remick Hall, a new combination Center for Social Concerns/Institute for Church Life building, Geddes Hall, and a law school addition were completed at the same time. Many academic buildings were built with a system of libraries, the most prominent of which is the Hesburgh Library, built in 1963 and today containing almost four million books. The Stayer Center for Executive Education, which houses the Mendoza College of Business Executive Education Department, opened in March 2013, just south of the Mendoza College of Business building.

Organization and administration

The university's president is always a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross. The first president was Edward Sorin, and the current president is Robert A. Dowd. As of June 2024, John McGreevy is the provost overseeing academic functions.

Until 1967, Notre Dame had been governed directly by the Congregation. Under the presidency of Theodore Hesburgh, two groups, the Board of Fellows, and the Board of Trustees, were established to govern the university. The 12 fellows are evenly divided between members of the Holy Cross order and the laity; they have final say over the operation of the university. They vote on potential trustees and sign off on all that board's major decisions. The trustees elect the president and provide general guidance and governance to the university.

Endowment

Notre Dame's endowment was started in the early 1920s by university president James Burns; it was $7 million by 1952 when Hesburgh became president. For fiscal year 2023, the university reported total endowment assets of $16.62 billion.

Academics

Colleges and schools

The College of Arts and Letters was established as the university's first college in 1842. The first degrees were granted seven years later. The university's first academic curriculum was modeled after the Jesuit Ratio Studiorum from Saint Louis University. Today, the college, housed in O'Shaughnessy Hall, includes 20 departments in the areas of fine arts, humanities, and social sciences, and awards Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degrees in nearly 70 majors and minors, making it the largest of the university's colleges. As of 2022, there were 2,000 undergraduates and graduates enrolled in the college, taught by 500 faculty members.

The College of Science was established in 1865. The curriculum involved six years of coursework, including higher-level mathematics. Today, the college, housed in the Jordan Hall of Science, includes over 1,200 undergraduates in several departments, each awarding Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees. According to university statistics, its science pre-professional program has one of the highest acceptance rates to medical school of any university in the United States.

The Notre Dame Law School was established in 1869 and is the oldest law program at a Catholic university in the United States. In 2024, the school ranked 20th among the top American law schools by U.S. News & World Report. The law school grants the professional Juris Doctor degree, as well as the graduate Master of Laws, and Doctor of Juridical Science degrees. It was ranked fourth in graduates attaining federal judicial clerkships in 2024, and seventh in graduates attaining Supreme Court clerkships in 2020.

The School of Architecture was established in 1899, the year after Notre Dame first granted degrees in the field. Today, the school, housed in Walsh Family Hall of Architecture, offers a five-year undergraduate program leading to a bachelor's degree. All undergraduates spend their third year in Rome. The faculty teaches (pre-modernist) traditional and classical architecture and urban planning (e.g., following the principles of New Urbanism and New Classical Architecture). It also awards the annual Driehaus Architecture Prize.

The College of Engineering was established in 1920; however, courses in civil and mechanical engineering had been taught in the College of Science, since the 1870s. Today, the college, housed in the Fitzpatrick, Cushing, and Stinson-Remick Halls of Engineering, includes five departments of study, with eight B.S. degrees offered. The college also offers five-year dual degree programs with the College of Arts and Letters and the College of Business awarding additional B.A. and Master of Business Administration (MBA) degrees, respectively.

Research

Joseph Carrier, director of the Science Museum and the library, was a professor of chemistry and physics until 1874. Carrier taught that scientific research and its promise for progress were not antagonistic to the ideals of intellectual and moral culture endorsed by the Catholic Church. Notable researchers in the early history of the university include John Augustine Zahm, whose book Evolution and Dogma (1896) defended certain aspects of evolutionary theory as true; Albert Zahm, John's brother, who built an early wind tunnel to compare lift to drag of aeronautical models; Jerome Green, who became the first American to send a wireless message; and Julius Nieuwland, who performed early work on basic reactions that were used to create neoprene. The study of nuclear physics at the university began with the building of a nuclear accelerator in 1936 and continues now partly through a partnership in the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics.

The rise of Hitler and other dictators in the 1930s forced many Catholic intellectuals to flee Europe; President John O'Hara brought many of them to Notre Dame. Anton-Hermann Chroust, in classics and law, and Waldemar Gurian, a German Catholic intellectual of Jewish descent, came from Germany. Ivan Meštrović, a renowned sculptor, brought Croat culture to campus. Yves Simon brought the insights of French studies in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of philosophy to the university in the 1940s; his teacher, Jacques Maritain, was a frequent visitor to campus. The exiles developed a distinctive emphasis on the evils of totalitarianism.

Richard T. Sullivan taught English from 1936 to 1974 and published six novels, dozens of short stories, and other works. Frank O'Malley was an English professor during the 1930s through the 1960s who developed a concept of Christian philosophy that was a fundamental element in his thought. In 1939, Waldemar Gurian founded The Review of Politics, which quickly emerged as part of an international Catholic intellectual revival, offering an alternative vision to positivist philosophy. The College of Arts and Letters is distinguished for its contributions in the field of theology and religious studies, while its affiliated Medieval Institute is the largest center for medieval studies in North America.

The university has many multi-disciplinary research institutes, including the Medieval Institute, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and the Center for Social Concerns. Recent research includes work on family conflict and child development, genome mapping, the increasing trade deficit of the United States with China, studies in fluid mechanics, computational science and engineering, supramolecular chemistry, and marketing trends on the Internet. As of 2013, the university was home to the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, which ranks countries annually based on how vulnerable they are to climate change and how prepared they are to adapt.

Эх сурвалж: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)