A Brief History of Notre Dame

Brief History: A Legendary Past

The Early Days

In fact, the early Notre Dame was a university in name only. It encompassed religious novitiates, preparatory and grade schools and a manual labor school, but its classical collegiate curriculum never attracted more than a dozen students a year in the early decades.

 Based on the ratio studiorum used by the Jesuits at St. Louis University, this curriculum included four years of humanities, poetry, rhetoric and philosophy, plus offerings in French, German, Spanish and Italian and various forms of music and drawing.

Founded in 1842
by Rev. Edward Sorin, CSC

The University of Notre Dame was founded in late November 1842 by a priest of the Congregation of Holy Cross, Rev. Edward Sorin. His original land grant of several hundred acres was the site of an early mission to native Americans, but included only three small buildings in need of repair.

The land had been purchased by Rev. Stephen Badin, the first Catholic priest ordained in the United States, and left in trust to the Bishop of Vincennes, Indiana, for anyone who would found a school on the site. Father Sorin and his companion Brothers of St. Joseph (later the Holy Cross Brothers) called the fledgling school, in their mother tongue, L'Universite de Notre Dame du Lac. The University was officially chartered by special act of the legislature of the State of Indiana on January 15, 1844. It is worthy of ecumenical note that a Methodist state senator, John B. De Frees, was responsible for this action and for the writing of the University's charter as a degree-granting institution.

Strategic Location

Despite these humble academic beginnings, however, Notre Dame from its founding enjoyed two significant advantages. First, its establishing coincided with the great opening of the Midwest by railroads and canals and with the great antebellum immigration, largely of Catholics, from Europe; "for most of the 1840s," historian Thomas Schlereth has written, "Notre Dame was the only Catholic college of consequence with access to such cities as Toledo, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and particularly the rapidly growing city of Chicago."

Strategic Vision

The University's second, and even greater, advantage was the character of its founder, Father Sorin, whose overarching vision of a great American Catholic university in the tradition of the great Medieval universities has inspired Notre Dame's growth over its entire history.

Courses in physics and geology were added to the curriculum in 1863, and two years later the College of Science was established. In 1869 the University established the nation's first Catholic law school, and in 1873 the first Catholic College of Engineering. Its architecture program also was the first in the U.S. under Catholic auspices, and its circulating library was the first on any American campus.

Even after a disastrous fire in 1879 destroyed the Main Building, which housed virtually the entire University, Father Sorin willed Notre Dame to rebuild and continue its growth. In 1889 Sorin Hall became Catholic higher education's first student residence with private rooms. From that day to this, residentiality and the traditions that flow from it have remained central to student life at Notre Dame, with about 80 percent of current undergraduates continuing to live on campus.

Pioneering Leadership

Sorin's death in 1893 brought to an end the founding era, but not the tradition of visionary leadership. Father John A. Zahm, C.S.C., a brilliant scholar who later accompanied former President Theodore Roosevelt on a South American expedition, became the builder of the science departments at Notre Dame and inspired the University's first flowerings in research. Zahm's brother, Albert, was among the earliest and most influential pioneers of the aerodynamics of flying machines, and professor Jerome Green achieved the nation's first wireless transmission at Notre Dame.

Later, Father Julius A. Nieuwland, CSC, a beneficiary of the advanced education encouraged by Father Zahm, earned lasting fame as the discoverer of the formulae for synthetic rubber.

Father James A. Burns, CSC, Notre Dame's great theorist of education, revolutionized the University in the 1920s. In eliminating the preparatory school and dramatically upgrading the Law School, in establishing the University's first meager endowment and a board of lay advisors to oversee it, Burns made it clear that Notre Dame was committed to nothing less than preeminence in American Catholic higher education.

Beginning in the 1930s the University was strengthened by an influx of distinguished European scholars fleeing the Nazis, and, drawing on their expertise, Father (later Cardinal) John A. O'Hara, CSC, significantly expanded the graduate school to include programs in biology, physics, philosophy and mathematics.

Notre Dame's dramatic post-World War II flowering began under Father John J. Cavanaugh, CSC, who raised entrance requirements, increased faculty hiring and established the Notre Dame Foundation to expand the University's development capabilities.

The explosive growth of the University - both in size and in stature - gained national prominence during the 35-year tenure of Father Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., who himself became an internationally known figure for his work in education, the Church, human rights and world affairs. The Hesburgh era saw Notre Dame's enrollment, faculty and degrees awarded all double; its library volumes increase five-fold; its endowment rise from less than $10 million to more than $400 million; its physical facilities grow from 48 to 88 buildings; its faculty compensation increase ten-fold and its research funding, more than twenty-fold. Two defining moments in Notre Dame's history occurred at Father Hesburgh's direction: the transference of governance in 1967 from the Congregation of Holy Cross to a predominantly lay board of trustees and the admission of women to undergraduate studies in 1972.

Under the leadership of Father Edward A. Malloy, C.S.C., from 1987 to 2005, the University continued to grow in stature. Endowed faculty positions now number more than 200, the student body has become one of the 20 most selective in the nation (some 69 percent of entering freshmen rank among the top five percent of students in their high school graduating classes), and the endowment, at approximately $4 billion, is among the top 20 in American higher education.

Also during the Malloy years, Notre Dame's minority student population more than doubled, the presence of women                                    Father Ted Hesburgh
at all levels in the University - students, faculty, staff and officers - expanded significantly, and a major effort in
international outreach is under way.

Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., a professor of philosophy, became Notre Dame's 17th president on July 1, 2005.

Father John Jenkins