University of Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame is founded. - November 26, 1842

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The University of Notre Dame du Lac (or simply Notre Dame /ˌnoʊtərˈdeɪm/ NOH-tər-DAYM) is a Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, an unincorporated community north of the city of South Bend, in St. Joseph County, Indiana, United States. "Notre Dame," French pronunciation: ​[nɔtʁə dam] meaning "Our Lady," is a Catholic honorific salutation in reference to the Virgin Mary, the patron saint of the university.

The school was founded by Father Edward Sorin, CSC, who was also its first president, and even today many Holy Cross priests serve the school—most notably the president of the university. It was established as an all-male institution on November 26, 1842, on land donated by the Bishop of Vincennes, Indiana. The university first enrolled women undergraduates in 1972. As of 2012 about 47 percent of the student body was female. Notre Dame's Catholic character is reflected in its explicit commitment to the Catholic faith, numerous ministries funded by the school, and the architecture around campus.

The university today is organized into five colleges and one professional school, and its graduate program awards 32 master's and 25 doctoral degrees. Over 80% of the university's 8,000 undergraduates live on campus in one of 29 single-sex residence halls, each of which fields teams for more than a dozen intramural sports, and the university counts approximately 120,000 alumni.

The university is known for its Notre Dame School of Architecture, a faculty that teaches traditional (pre-modern) architecture and urban planning (e.g. following the principles of New Urbanism and Neo-Historism).

The university's athletic teams are members of the NCAA Division I and are known collectively as the Fighting Irish. The football team, an Independent, has accumulated eleven consensus national championships, seven Heisman Trophy winners, and 62 members in the College Football Hall of Fame. Other ND teams, chiefly in the Atlantic Coast Conference, have accumulated 16 national championships.

In 1842, the Bishop of Vincennes, Célestine Guynemer de la Hailane, offered land to Father 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 on November 26, 1842, and began the school using Father Stephen Badin's old log chapel. They immediately acquired two students and set about building additions to the campus.

Notre Dame began as a primary and secondary school, but soon received its official college charter from the Indiana General Assembly on January 15, 1844. Under the charter the school is officially named the University of Notre Dame du Lac (University of Our Lady of the Lake). Because the university was originally only for male students, the female-only Saint Mary's College was founded by the Sisters of the Holy Cross near Notre Dame in 1844.

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A view of the University's historic center, the Main Quadrangle, popularly termed the God Quad.

More students attended the college; the first degrees were awarded in 1849. The university was expanded with new buildings to accommodate more students and faculty. With each new president, new academic programs were offered and new buildings built to accommodate them. The original Main Building built by Sorin just after he arrived was replaced by a larger "Main Building" in 1865, which housed the university's administration, classrooms, and dormitories. Beginning in 1873, a library collection was started by Father Lemonnier. By 1879 it had grown to ten thousand volumes that were housed in the Main Building.

This Main Building, and the library collection, was destroyed by a fire in April 1879, and rebuilt before the next school year. The library collection was also rebuilt and stayed housed in the new Main Building for years afterwards. Around the time of the fire, a Music Hall was opened. Eventually becoming known as Washington Hall, it hosted plays and musical acts put on by the school.

By 1880, a science program was established at the university, and a Science Hall was built in 1883. The hall housed multiple classrooms and science labs needed for early research at the university. By 1890, individual residence halls were built to house the increasing number of students.

William J. Hoynes (1846–1919) was dean of the law school 1883-1919, and when its new building was opened shortly after his death it was renamed in his honor.

John Zahm C.S.C. (1851–1921) became the Holy Cross Provincial for the United States (1896–1906), with overall supervision of the university, He tried to transform Notre Dame into a great university, erecting buildings and added to the campus art gallery and library, and amassing what became a famous Dante collection. His term was not renewed because of fears he had expanded Notre Dame too quickly and had run the Holy Cross order into serious debt.

Theodore Hesburgh, C.S.C., (born 1917) served as president for 35 years (1952–87) of dramatic transformations. In that time the annual operating budget rose by a factor of 18 from $9.7 million to $176.6 million, and the endowment by a factor of 40 from $9 million to $350 million, and research funding by a factor of 20 from $735,000 to $15 million. Enrollment nearly doubled from 4,979 to 9,600, faculty more than doubled 389 to 950, and degrees awarded annually doubled from 1,212 to 2,500.

Hesburgh is also credited with transforming the face of Notre Dame by making it a coeducational institution. In the mid-1960s Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College developed a co-exchange program whereby several hundred students took classes not offered at their home institution, an arrangement that added undergraduate women to a campus that already had a few women in the graduate schools. Nearly a third of accepted Notre Dame students chose not to enroll because of its single-sex status,[citation needed] and a 1968 poll indicated that nearly three-fourths of all Notre Dame students considered transferring to a coeducational school. After extensive debate, merging with St. Mary's was rejected, primarily because of the differential in faculty qualifications and pay scales. "In American college education," explained Rev. Charles E. Sheedy, C.S.C., Notre Dame's Dean of Arts and Letters, "certain features formerly considered advantageous and enviable are now seen as anachronistic and out of place.... In this environment of diversity, the integration of the sexes is a normal and expected aspect, replacing separatism." Thomas Blantz, C.S.C., Notre Dame's Vice President of Student Affairs, added that coeducation "opened up a whole other pool of very bright students." Two of the male residence halls were converted for the newly admitted female students that first year, while two others were converted for the next school year. The first female student, a transfer from St. Mary's College, graduated in 1972 with a bachelor's degree in marketing.

In 18 years under President Edward Malloy, C.S.C., (1987–2005), there was a rapid growth in the school's reputation, faculty, and resources. He increased the faculty by more than 500 professors; the academic quality of the student body has improved dramatically, the average SAT score rose from 1240 to 1360; the number of minority students more than doubled; the endowment grew from $350 million to more than $3 billion; the annual operating budget rose from $177 million to more than $650 million; and annual research funding improved from $15 million to more than $70 million. Notre Dame’s most recent capital campaign raised $1.1 billion, far exceeding its goal of $767 million, and is the largest in the history of Catholic higher education.

Currently Notre Dame is led by John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., the 17th president of the university. Jenkins took over the position from Edward "Monk" Malloy, CSC, on July 1, 2005. In his inaugural address, Jenkins described his goals of making the university a leader in research that recognizes ethics and building the connection between faith and studies.

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Historic Washington Hall on the Main Quadrangle, popularly termed the God Quad.

Since 1967 Notre Dame has been governed by a Board of Trustees, and not directly by the leadership of Holy Cross. The university is governed by two groups, the Board of Fellows and the Board of Trustees. The Fellows of the University are a group of six Holy Cross religious and six lay members who have final say over the operation of the university. The fellows vote on potential trustees and sign off on all major decisions by that body. The trustees select the president from the United States Province of the Congregation of Holy Cross. In addition to the president, these groups help to maintain the bylaws and elect other officers of the university. Finally, the provost of the university, as of 2012 Thomas Burish, works under the president to oversee many of the academic activities and functions of the university.

As of fall 2006, Notre Dame had 11,603 students and employed 1241 full-time faculty members and another 166 part-time members to give a student/faculty ratio of 13:1.

The first phase of Eddy Street Commons, a $215 million development located adjacent to the University of Notre Dame campus and funded by the university, broke ground on June 3, 2008. The Eddy Street Commons drew union protests when workers hired by the City of South Bend to construct the public parking garage picketed the private work site after a contractor hired non-union workers. The developer, Kite Realty out of Indianapolis, has made agreements with major national chains rather than local businesses, a move that has led to criticism from alumni and students.

Notre Dame alumni number near 120,000, and are members of 275 alumni clubs around the world. Many alumni give yearly monetary support to the university, with a school-record 53.2% giving some donation in 2006. Many buildings on campus are named for those whose donations allowed their building, including residence halls, classroom buildings, and the performing arts center.

Notre Dame alumni work in various fields. Alumni working in political fields include state governors, members of the United States Congress, and former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. A notable alumnus of the College of Science is Nobel Prize winner Eric F. Wieschaus. A number of university heads are alumni, including Notre Dame's current president, Rev. John Jenkins. Additionally, many alumni are in the media, including talk show hosts Regis Philbin and Phil Donahue, and television and radio personalities such as Mike Golic and Hannah Storm. With the university having high profile sports teams itself, a number of alumni went on to become involved in athletics outside the university, including professional baseball, basketball, football, and ice hockey players, such as Joe Theisman, Joe Montana, Tim Brown, Ross Browner, Rocket Ismail, Megan Duffy, Jeff Samardzija, Jerome Bettis, Brett Lebda Olympic gold medalist Mariel Zagunis, professional boxer Mike Lee, former football coaches such as Charlie Weis and Knute Rockne, and Basketball Hall of Famers Austin Carr and Adrian Dantley. Other notable alumni include prominent businessman Edward J. DeBartolo, Jr. and astronaut Jim Wetherbee.

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Notre Dame Stadium