University of Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame (ND) was founded in 1842 by Edward Sorin, a Catholic priest of the religious order of the Congregation of Holy Cross (Congregatio a Sancta Cruce—CSC). ND was originally a primary and secondary school. Two years later, in 1844, the school received its college charter from the General Assembly of Indiana (which had been a state since 1816). It awarded its first degree in 1849.

Today, ND is still run by the CSC, although the faculty members and the student body are now recruited from far beyond the confines of the Catholic Church.

ND’s transformation from a small Catholic college to a modern research university has been gradual but steady. Already in 1919, the university began to abandon its traditional Classical and Scholastic curriculum in favor of a modern, secular curriculum. Another major push toward parity with secular institutions nationwide was initiated under the leadership of President Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., beginning in the 1960s.

ND gained further national recognition when Hesburgh became a national figure, standing arm-in-arm with Martin Luther King, Jr., at a Chicago civil-rights rally in 1964. In 1969, Hesburgh was appointed Chairman of the US Civil Rights Commission by President Richard Nixon.

In addition to ND’s college, graduate school, and such highly regarded professional schools as the Notre Dame Law School and the Mendoza College of Business, ND is also home to several highly regarded, specialized institutes, including the Keough School of Global Affairs, the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, and the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Studies.

Among many prominent ND alumni and faculty, we may mention the following:

• Mathematician, Mei-Chi Shaw
• Computer scientists, Jeffrey Vitter & James Massey
• Philosophers, Alasdair MacIntyre, Alvin Plantinga, Ralph McInerny, Peter van Inwagen & Gary Gutting
• Science fiction author, Orson Scott Card
• Romance novelist, Nicholas Sparks
• Physicist, Charles W. Misner
• Electrical engineer, Panos Antsaklis
• Aeronautical and biomedical engineer, Dava Newman
• Physiologist, Philip Majerus
• Geneticist, Anne Villeneuve
• Developmental biologist and Nobel laureate for physiology or medicine, Eric Wieschaus
• Priest, explorer, and early evolutionary theorist, John Augustine Zahm
• Evolutionary biologist, H. Frederik Nijhout
• Ecologist, William Mitsch
• Sociologists, Christian Smith, Ann Mische, Lynette Spillman & Saskia Sassen
• Economist, Kasey Buckles
• Political scientists, Patrick Deneen, David E. Campbell, Emilia Justyna Powell & Ming Chu-cheng
• Legal scholar and political scientist, Richard W. Garnett
• Intellectual historians, George Marsden & Brad S. Gregory
• American Studies scholar, Murray Sperber
• Islamic Studies scholar, Ebrahim Moosa
• Sinologist, Edward L. Shaughnessy
• Catholic bishop and popular author, Robert Barron
• Peruvian priest and liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutiérrez
• Journalist, Robert Costa
• TV journalist and political commentator, Mark Shields
• TV personalities, Phil Donahue & Regis Philbin
• Current US Representative, John Ratcliffe
• Former US Senator, Joe Donnelly
• Former US Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice