The University of Notre Dame du Lac (or simply Notre Dame) is a private Roman Catholic research university located in Notre Dame, Indiana, USA. It is the largest Catholic university in the United States. It was founded by Father Edward Sorin, CSC, who was also the school's first president. It was established as an all-male institution on November 26, 1842, in an area first settled as a mission by Father Claude-Jean Allouez S.J. in 1686. The university first enrolled women in 1972, and 47 percent of the student body is female. Notre Dame's Catholic heritage is evident in the architecture around campus, manifested by the ornate Basilica of the Sacred Heart, together with numerous chapels and religious iconography.
The university today is organized into five colleges and one professional school, the oldest of which, the College of Arts and Letters, began awarding degrees in 1849. The undergraduate program was ranked 18th among national universities by U.S. News & World Report for 2008-2009. Notre Dame has a comprehensive graduate program with 32 master's and 25 doctoral degree programs. Additionally, the university's library system is one of the 100 largest in the United States.
More than 80% of the university's 8,000 undergraduates live on campus in one of 28 single-sex residence halls, each of which fields teams for more than a dozen intramural sports. Notre Dame's approximately 120,000 alumni are located around the world.
Notre Dame is also known for its sports programs, especially its football team. The sports teams are members of the NCAA Division I, and are known collectively as the Fighting Irish, a name it adopted in the 1920s. The football team, an Independent, has accumulated eleven national championships, eight Heisman Trophy winners, and sixty-two members in the College Football Hall of Fame. Additionally, other sport teams, most members of the Big East Conference, have accumulated 18 national championships.
History
The University of Notre Dame began late on the bitterly cold afternoon of November 26, 1842, when a 28-year-old French priest, Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., and seven companions, all of them members of the recently established Congregation of Holy Cross, took possession of 524 snow-covered acres that the Bishop of Vincennes had given them in the Indiana mission fields. A man of lively imagination, Father Sorin named his fledging school in honor of Our Lady, in his native tongue, “L’Université de Notre Dame du Lac” (The University of Our Lady of the Lake). On January 15, 1844, the University was thus officially chartered by the Indiana legislature.
Father Sorin’s indomitable will was best demonstrated in 1879 when a disastrous fire destroyed the Main Building, which housed virtually the entire University. Father Sorin willed Notre Dame to rebuild and continue its growth. "I came here as a young man and dreamed of building a great university in honor of Our Lady," he said. "But I built it too small, and she had to burn it to the ground to make the point. So, tomorrow, as soon as the bricks cool, we will rebuild it, bigger and better than ever."
Currently Notre Dame is led by Father John I. Jenkins, the 17th president of the university. Jenkins took over the position from Father Edward Malloy, 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. In 2009, the University received criticism for its invitation and planned conferring of an honorary degree to President Barack Obama due to Obama's position on abortion, stem cell research, which conflict with Catholic teachings
Campus
Notre Dame's campus is located in Notre Dame, Indiana, an unincorporated community in north Indiana, just north of South Bend and four miles (6 km) from the Michigan state line. Development of the campus began in the spring of 1843 when Father Sorin and some of his congregation built the "Old College", a building used for dormitories, a bakery, and a classroom. A year later, after an architect arrived, a small "Main Building" was built allowing for the launch of the college. Today the campus lies on 1,250 acres (5.1 km2) just south of the Indiana Toll Road and includes 138 buildings located on quads throughout the campus.
Library
The library system of the university is divided between the main library and each of the colleges and schools. The main building is the fourteen-story Theodore M. Hesburgh Library, completed in 1963, which is the third building to house the main collection of books. The front of the library is adorned with the Word of Life mural. This mural is popularly known as "Touchdown Jesus" because of its proximity to Notre Dame Stadium and Jesus' arms appearing to make the signal for a touchdown. The library system also includes branch libraries for Architecture, Chemistry & Physics, Engineering, Law, the Life Sciences, and Mathematics as well as information centers in the Mendoza College of Business and the Kellogg/Kroc Institute for Peace Studies, and a slide library in O'Shaughnessy Hall. The library system holds over three-million volumes and is one of the top–100 largest libraries in the country.
Research
Notre Dame has a long history of scientific research. In 1882, Professor Albert Zahm built the first wind tunnel used to compare lift to drag of aeronautical models. Around 1899, Professor Jerome Green became the first American to send a wireless message. Also, in 1931, Father Julius Nieuwland performed early work on basic reactions that was used to create neoprene. Additionally, nuclear physics study at the university began with the building of a nuclear accelerator in 1936.
Today, research continues in many fields, as the current university president, Father Jenkins, described his hope that Notre Dame would become "one of the pre–eminent research institutions in the world" in his inaugural address. The university has many multi-disciplinary institutes devoted to research in varying fields, including the Medieval Institute, the Kroc Institute for International Peace studies, and the Center for Social Concerns. Recent research includes work on family conflict and child development,genome mapping, the increasing trade deficit of the United States with China, studies in fluid mechanics, and marketing trends on the Internet.
Endowment
Notre Dame's financial endowment was started in the early 1920s by then-president of the university, Father James Burns, and increased to $7 million by 1952 when Father Hesburgh became president. By the 1980s it reached $150 million, and in 2000 it returned a record 57.9% investment. For the 2007 fiscal year, the endowment had grown to approximately $6.5 billion, putting the university in the top–15 largest endowments in the country. As of September, 2008, Notre Dame's endowment has grown to over $7 billion.
Academic Reputation
As of 2008. Notre Dame ranked 18th overall among "national universities" in the United States in U.S. News & World Report's best colleges. U.S. News and World Report also lists Notre Dame Law School as 22nd overall, and the Gourman Report, which is published by The Princeton Review, ranks the Law School at 18th. BusinessWeek ranks Mendoza College of Business undergraduate school as 2nd overall. Additionally, The Washington Monthly ranked the university 13th nationally in its 2006 edition. BusinessWeek also ranked the undergraduate business program as 2nd nationally. The Philosophical Gourmet Report ranked Notre Dame's graduate philosophy program as 13th nationally, while ARCHITECT Magazine, ranked the undergraduate architecture program as 12th nationally. Additionally, the study abroad program ranks sixth in highest participation percentage in the nation, with 57.6% of students choosing to study abroad in 17 countries.
Colleges and Schools
- School of Architecture
- College of Arts and Letters
- Mendoza College of Business
- College of Engineering
- First Year of Studies
- The Graduate School
- The Law School
- College of Science
University of Notre Dame was ranked 168th in the 2008 THES-QS World University Ranking.
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