Notre Dame marked its 175th anniversary year in fittingly historic fashion, celebrating landmarks in its research, its international presence, and its benefaction, to name just a few areas. The year 2017 showcased how the University is using knowledge in service to justice and human flourishing while continuing to live out its mission to be a distinctive Catholic institution of higher learning. Below are selected stories from the past year at Notre Dame.
The story of Notre Dame is one of unbridled optimism and profound faith. Its past is traced to French explorers and missionaries in the 17th century. Its present is characterized by the rigorous pursuit of truth in every field as a preeminent Catholic research institution.
Upon receiving the Notre Dame Award from University president Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Brazilian judge Sérgio Moro said, “the age of our robber barons is ending.”
A stamp honoring the late Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame from 1952 to 1987, was unveiled during a ceremony Sept. 1 at Purcell Pavilion inside the Joyce Center on campus.
Vice President Mike Pence received an honorary degree and served as principal speaker at the 172nd commencement ceremony May 21. He became the first vice president of the United States to deliver the commencement address at Notre Dame.
In the tradition of Father Sorin's inspirational journey and intrepid spirit, pilgrims retraced his journey from Vincennes to Notre Dame.
“For nearly 30 years, Father Boyle has served men and women who have been incarcerated and involved with gangs, and, in doing so, has helped them to discover the strength and hope necessary to transform their lives,” said Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C.
Legendary coach Ara Parseghian, who guided the University of Notre Dame's 1966 and 1973 national championship football teams and is a member of the National Football Foundation's College Football Hall of Fame, died on August 2.
The single largest unrestricted guaranteed gift ever committed to the University is being made through a Philanthropic Succession Partnership, an innovative giving structure developed by Ricci.
The University of Notre Dame has received $138.1 million in research funding for fiscal year (FY) 2017, surpassing the previous record of $133.7 million set in FY 2015. Additionally, the University also broke its monthly record receiving $27.6 million in June alone.
A chance meeting a decade ago in a graduate school hallway led paleoecologist Jason McLachlan to create a Jurassic Park-like wonder in Notre Dame's greenhouse, where rows of salt marsh bulrushes have germinated from 100-year-old seeds.
"The drawing as a humanoid robot playing football. A quarterback," recalls Bill Hederman. The drawing gave Hederman an idea. He reached out to a couple of his College of Engineering classmates with a proposal for a new kind of robotics competition - one that might act as an interest-builder as well as an academically valuable experience.
Americans may be consuming fast food wrapped in paper treated with perfluorinated chemicals — the same chemicals used in stain-resistant products, firefighting materials and nonstick cookware.
School voucher programs, which use government funds to support students attending private schools, are rising in popularity around the United States. These programs raise important questions about church-state issues.
In 1882, an ambitious Notre Dame student named Albert Zahm built what might have been the first wind tunnel in the United States so that he could study the lift and drag of various wing shapes. Today, Thomas Juliano, an expert in fluid mechanics, is building the country's largest quiet hypersonic wind tunnel.
Notre Dame health experts respond to lead crisis by identifying the cause of the high lead levels in St. Joseph County and help guide the cash-strapped health department's response.
A few days after Hurricane Harvey struck Houston and a week after classes started at Notre Dame, Tracy Kijewski-Correa, a structural engineering professor, called about an urgent email while she waited in the car during her son’s tutoring session. Chase the storm, assess the damage, determine how to improve future construction.
When air speeds inside a hypersonic wind tunnel are expected to reach 4,000 miles per hour, the crafting of the most critical part of the tunnel — its 25-foot, 5-ton stainless steel nozzle – needs to be hyper-exact. So the aerospace engineers designing Notre Dame’s Mach 6 wind tunnel turned to their in-house experts at the machine shop in the basement of the Hessert Laboratory for Aerospace Research.
Michael Pfrender sits facing a whiteboard in his lab at the Galvin Life Science Center. He’s discussing the genomics of Daphnia – water fleas, found in every standing body of water in the world – and has a tendency to sketch when he speaks.
Scientists at the University of Notre Dame have found that exposure to just 10 minutes of light at night suppresses biting and manipulated flight behavior in the mosquito most responsible for transmitting malaria in Africa.
Researchers have developed a novel platform to more accurately detect and identify the presence and severity of peanut allergies, without directly exposing patients to the allergen.
Although working-age adult refugees who enter the United States often rely on public assistance programs, a study by researchers at the University of Notre Dame indicates that the long-term economic benefit of admitting refugees outweighs the initial costs.
Culminating a four-day visit to Ireland, University of Notre Dame president Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C. joined the Most Rev. Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, today to inaugurate the Notre Dame-Newman Centre for Faith and Reason in the nation’s capital with a Mass at the historic Newman University Church.
Eight members of the Notre Dame–Saint Mary’s College Irish Dance Team took the stage. Marching in a line, the four pairs stepped in coordinated time to their marks, as they had done at least a hundred times during rehearsals over the last few months. This occasion was different, of course. If that reality wasn’t obvious, they needed only glance at the brightly colored banner upstage.
On Wednesday (May 31), peace was the centerpiece topic as the Alumni Club of Colombia hosted an International Hesburgh Lecture in the capital city of Bogota in conjunction with Pontifica Universidad Javeriana, one of the country’s most important Catholic universities.
After concelebrating Mass and meeting briefly with Pope Francis earlier in the week, University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., met with Archbishop Paul Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States, the Vatican's foreign minister, and discussed challenges and opportunities for the Church in countries around the world.
After months of preparation and anticipation, the Robinson Shakespeare Company travels to England to perform Cymbeline and explore Shakespearean history in Stratford-upon-Avon and London.
Since its opening in 1998, the gateway has grown into a hub for more than 1,500 Notre Dame undergraduates who have come here to broaden their intellectual and cultural horizons in virtually every discipline. Or whatever is their cup of tea, one might say.
For the last four years, the Notre Dame Initiative for Global Development (NDIGD) has brought 25 young people from African nations to campus each summer for six weeks of classes in business and entrepreneurship known as the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders.
As Communist Party officials streamed into this burgeoning capital of 21 million people for the convening of the party’s 19th congress, the University of Notre Dame drew scores of educators and government and corporate officials to mark the opening of its Global Gateway here.
University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., hosted leaders from four Christian denominations, along with local Christian clergy and worshippers, for the Nov. 5 (Sunday) Common Prayer of Reconciliation and Remembrance in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.
Catholic leaders from Central and Eastern European countries participated in a weeklong program on nonprofit administration with other leaders from around the world.
Gabriel Said Reynolds, professor of Islamic studies and theology at the University of Notre Dame, is one of 15 Catholic delegates invited by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue (PCID) to participate in a bilateral conversation with 15 Muslim counterparts at Al-Azhar al-Sharif Center for Dialogue (ASCD) Feb. 22-23 in Cairo, Egypt.
Theologians, Catholic Church leaders, graduate students and lay men and women from around Africa and North America will gather March 23-25 at the University of Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway for African Christian Theology: Memories and Mission for the 21st Century, a conference examining the past, present and future of African theology in the Catholic tradition.
The Donald R. Keough School of Global Affairs, Notre Dame’s first new school in nearly a century, has opened its doors to Notre Dame and the world. Housed in the newly completed Jenkins Hall, the Keough School now enrolls 38 students in its new master of global affairs program. The students come from 22 countries and bring a wealth of professional experience in international development, education, peacebuilding, environmental conservation, human rights, humanitarian assistance, journalism and other fields.
Alvin Plantinga, John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, was named the 2017 Templeton Prize Laureate by the John Templeton Foundation.
The U.S. Senate voted Oct. 31 to confirm Notre Dame Law Professor Amy Coney Barrett as a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
