Tucked away among the narrow cobblestone streets of the Old City of Jerusalem, Razzouk Tattoo advertises itself as the oldest tattoo business in the world.
Kayle Lauck, a political science major from tiny Salem, South Dakota, visited the business in the summer of 2023 while studying abroad through a Notre Dame summer program in Jerusalem.
She left with the words Duc in Altum inked in small black script on the inside of her right arm, just above the crook, in a mix of her parents’ distinctive handwriting.
The phrase, which translates to “launch into the deep,” comes from the Bible—Luke 5:4, to be exact.
Jesus tells a discouraged Simon, who along with a small crew has just returned from an unsuccessful night of fishing on the Sea of Galilee, “Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”
Simon is skeptical but obeys, and “When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break.”
A lifelong Catholic, Lauck had heard the phrase during a homily a few years prior and it immediately resonated, becoming a sort of mantra, a concise description of her head-first approach to life.
“It’s kind of been like a driving force for me, just to throw myself into the deep of a lot of things,” the Glynn Family Honors Scholar said.
Family history?
Launch into the deep.
School?
Launch into the deep.
Travel?
Launch into the deep.
Agricultural roots
Lauck grew up outside Sioux Falls, South Dakota, among the flat plains of McCook County, population 5,600. Her mom is a nurse; her dad owns a construction company. Her grandparents, German and Norwegian by ancestry and with deep roots in the Upper Midwest, worked a farm—cattle, pigs, corn, soybeans.
“My grandparents farmed, and so I spent a lot of time out there growing up, and that was one of the most formative things for me in terms of developing a passion for agriculture,” Lauck said.
Like many of her friends, she participated in 4-H and FFA, showing cattle, attending meetings and conferences, learning the ins and outs of agricultural policy. She participated in sports and was a member of the band in high school. She was on the staff of the yearbook and school paper. She sang in the choir.
In high school, she discovered she had Native ancestry—Lakota, one of three primary subcultures of the Sioux people of North and South Dakota. Surprised but not disturbed by the news, she immediately embraced this new aspect of her identity and worked to get more in touch with her Indigenous roots.
Launch into the deep.
‘A good fit’
That same spirit guided her to Notre Dame.
Wanting to study agriculture, she planned to attend South Dakota State University, a land-grant institution. But midway through her senior year, a family member contacted her out of the blue and suggested she apply to Notre Dame instead.
“I had a second cousin reach out over social media,” she said. “We hadn’t seen each other in a while. He was at Notre Dame at the time and he was like, ‘I’ve been keeping up with you. I think you’d make a really good fit here. I think you should apply.’”
So she did.
She submitted her application in October and was accepted in December, qualifying for both a Suzanne and Walter Scott Scholarship through the Notre Dame Scholars Program and a Boehnen Family Scholarship.
“I wasn’t going to be able to afford it, but the financial aid package that Notre Dame put together was so generous,” she said. “I realized I could kind of do anything I wanted here.”
Launch into the deep.
Arriving in South Bend in the fall of 2021, Lauck hit the ground running, majoring in political science—with minors in education, schooling, and society and politics, philosophy, and economics—while pursuing opportunities and interests outside of the classroom as well.
A Truman Scholar, she interned with the Law School’s Exoneration Justice Clinic and conducted research for the Human Rights Clinic as part of the College of Arts and Letters’ Washington Program. She participated in the Student Policy Network as the Indiana housing crisis project co-lead. She joined Student Government as a member of the Senate and the Committee on Sustainability.
In between, she studied abroad in Ireland, Jerusalem, and Poland.
But even as she expanded her social and intellectual horizons, she never strayed far from her small-town agricultural roots.
In 2022, she co-founded the Agricultural Student Association. She also co-founded South Dakota College Connections, a nonprofit mentorship program connecting South Dakota high school students with mentors from a variety of colleges and universities in the US. She interned for the House Committee on Agriculture during her time in the Washington Program.
Still, her relationship with Debra Javeline, professor of political science and a fellow with the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, the Kellogg Institute for International Studies, and the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, stands out.
As a Kellogg International Scholar, Lauck worked closely with Javeline on issues related to resilience and recovery in international development, with a particular focus on disaster response. She was a student in Javeline’s class titled Solutions: Science, Politics and Saving the Planet.
Building on those experiences, her education, schooling, and society capstone project involved an analysis of rural student choice and motivation for attending college, with a focus on the experience of graduates of American Indian Catholic Schools Network schools.
Her senior thesis, which won the John Roos Award for best thesis in American politics from the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy, explored the role of interest groups in shaping rural development policy, with a focus on rural political behavior, lobbying influence, and policy outcomes with respect to rural broadband access.
In 2024, Lauck was among 60 recipients of the prestigious Truman Scholarship in recognition of her academic success, leadership, and dedication to public service.
Javeline recommended her for the scholarship, describing her as “one of Notre Dame’s finest students.”
“It is rare to see such a cohesive scholarly and civic profile in an undergraduate resume,” Javeline said. “Kayle has identified needs in rural communities, particularly in her home state of South Dakota, and she is mission-driven in trying to educate herself to fill those needs. She is committed to being part of the solution.”
A bright future
When she graduates in May, Lauck will be the first person in her family to earn a four-year degree.
She will spend next year teaching history at Maȟpíya Lúta Middle School, a Catholic school in Oglala County, South Dakota, while applying to graduate school. Serving members of the Pine Ridge Reservation, Maȟpíya Lúta was founded as Holy Rosary Mission by the Jesuits in 1888. The name was later changed to Red Cloud Indian School (Maȟpíya Lúta Oáyawa in Lakota) to emphasize its Native American roots.
In the long term, Lauck plans to pursue a joint law degree and doctorate in history and then return to South Dakota to work with the Indigenous population there—something she recently discussed with Nell Jessup Newton, former dean of Notre Dame Law School and a preeminent scholar of federal Indian law.
“I would really love to practice law and work on behalf of the tribes,” Lauck said. “That would be a really fantastic place to be. I think I could more authentically connect with the Native American side of my family and my own identity as Native American if I’m closer in proximity to those communities and those places.”
Additionally, she is interested in working on behalf of small farmers to protect a rural way of life and ensure a future for family agriculture in the US.
Whatever Lauck decides, Javeline envisions a bright future for her former student.
“She will be one of the students for whom we all proudly say, ‘We knew her when,’” Javeline said.
And if Lauck ever feels herself hesitating, if she needs encouragement, she need only look down for inspiration, to those three small words on her forearm: “Launch into the deep.”