Faculty Stories
Faculty at Notre Dame come from communities and cultures all over the world. They conduct research and scholarship on topics and issues that span numerous academic disciplines. They share with students not just their areas of expertise but also their questions and concerns about the enduring issues and latest developments that shape our times.
But their role in broadening and sharpening the lenses through which we understand ourselves and the world around us extend well beyond individual research projects, classroom lectures, course syllabi, or a list of academic programs.
The selection of stories below helps illustrate the many other ways Notre Dame faculty foster diversity, support inclusion, and enliven the entire Notre Dame community.
Six distinguished figures in community leadership, the Catholic Church, education, engineering and science will join principal speaker Oxford Chancellor Christopher Patten as honorary degree recipients at the University of Notre Dame’s 170th University Commencement Ceremony on May 17 (Sunday).
Chinese civil rights activist to give Notre Dame’s 2015 Human Dignity Lecture
Chinese civil rights activist and former political prisoner Chen Guangcheng will give the University of Notre Dame’s 2015 Human Dignity Lecture at 7:30 p.m. April 7 (Tuesday) in the McKenna Hall Auditorium. Chen’s lecture, “Interpreting Reform: Human Dignity and Human Rights in Contemporary China,” is sponsored by Notre Dame’s Institute for Church Life (ICL) as one of its Human Dignity...
Grammy Award-winning singer Aaron Neville to receive Notre Dame’s 2015 Laetare Medal
Aaron Neville, a four-time Grammy Award-winning singer and musician, will receive the University of Notre Dame’s 2015 Laetare Medal, the oldest and most prestigious honor given to American Catholics, at Notre Dame’s 170th University Commencement ceremony May 17 (Sunday). “Aaron Neville proudly embraces and honors his faith through his God-given musical talents,” said Notre Dame’s president, Rev. John I. Jenkins,...
Making the most of a Notre Dame education
The fundamental function of CUSE, the Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement, is “helping students maximize their undergraduate experience, with an eye to contributing to their post-baccalaureate success,” says Deb Rotman, Paul and Maureen Stefanick Faculty Director of the program. CUSE, founded in 2009, provides undergraduates opportunities for research, scholarship and creative projects, as well as assisting with applications for prestigious...
Robinson Community Learning Center celebrates 14th anniversary
The University of Notre Dame’s Robinson Community Learning Center celebrates its 14th anniversary from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Feb. 20 (Friday) at the RCLC. The celebration is open to the public.
Notre Dame among top producers of Fulbright students
Ten University of Notre Dame students have been awarded Fulbright grants in the 2014-15 program, placing the University among the top-producing universities in the nation. The U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program, Fulbright recently announced the complete list of colleges and universities that produced the most 2014-15 U.S. Fulbright students. The success of the top-producing institutions is highlighted in...
Notre Dame hosts business students from top-ranked Chinese university
The University of Notre Dame expanded its reach in global education with the arrival of 35 students from Tsinghua University, a top-ranked school located in Beijing. The students, who arrived on campus Saturday (Jan. 24), are part of the PBC School of Finance at Tsinghua University. During the intensive two-week program offered by the Mendoza College of Business in coordination...
Notre Dame to honor Martin Luther King Jr. Day with prayer service, community events
Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., president of the University of Notre Dame, will preside at a prayer service to honor the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. from 11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Jan. 19 (Monday) in the rotunda of the Main Building. The public is invited to participate in the prayer service and the reception that will immediately follow.
Nora Besansky-led studies featured on the cover of Science
Two studies led by Nora Besansky, O’Hara Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame and a member of the University’s Eck Institute for Global Health, which resulted in the sequencing the genomes of 16 Anopheles mosquito species from around the world, are featured on the cover of today’s (Jan. 2) edition of the prestigious journal Science.
ACE launches $1M project to improve reading outcomes in Haitian Catholic schools
The University of Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) Haiti initiative recently launched its “Haiti Reads” project, an innovative literacy program in 52 Haitian Catholic schools. Working in partnership with the Haitian Episcopal Commission for Catholic Education (CEEC) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS), the project began in the summer and is supported by a $1 million grant from an...
Notre Dame produces Liam Neeson-narrated documentary to remember Ireland's 1916 Easter Rising
The University of Notre Dame will play a major role in the international celebration of the centenary of Ireland’s 1916 Easter Rising, which was announced Tuesday (March 31) in Dublin by Taoiseach Enda Kenny. A documentary television series, “1916: The Irish Rebellion,” produced by Notre Dame’s Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, will be broadcast worldwide during the centenary, which memorializes...
Notre Dame and Latin American bishops sign memorandum of understanding
The University of Notre Dame and the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM) have signed a “memorandum of understanding,” pledging to cooperate in a range of initiatives in academics, social development, peace-building and institutional administration. Notre Dame’s president, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., and Archbishop Carlos Aguiar Retes of Tlalnepantla, Mexico, president of CELAM, signed the memorandum in a ceremony Tuesday...
Early survey results indicate that LF will be eliminated in Haiti
Preliminary testing of more than 850 schoolchildren in the Haitian town of Saut-d’Eau has shown only one child to be infected with the parasite that causes lymphatic filariasis (LF), a milestone in efforts to eradicate the debilitating disease from the island. The results, involving children from 38 schools in the community of 35,000 people 50 miles north of Port-au-Prince, mean...
Notre Dame anthropologist awarded Fulbright Fellowship
Anthropologist Deb Rotman, Paul and Maureen Stefanick Faculty Director of Notre Dame’s Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement (CUSE), has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award for the 2015-16 academic year. Rotman will spend the year in Ireland, collaborating with University College Dublin (UCD) and the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) on her project, “Clachans and Cultural Landscapes of County Mayo,...
New antibiotic holds promise against antibiotic-resistant infections
Estimates of deaths from methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in the United States range upwards of 19,000 annually. Around 1960, when Staphylococcus aureus developed resistance to first-generation penicillin, methicillin and other second-generation beta-lactam antibiotics were adopted to fight the illness. The modern variants of the bacterium have developed resistance to the four drugs now used to treat it. A team of...
ND Expert: Media must resist Islamophobia in wake of Chapel Hill murders
Sensational reporting and commentary must be avoided in the wake of the recent murders of three Muslim college students in North Carolina, according to Ebrahim Moosa, professor of Islamic studies at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
$3 million gift from Susan Scribner Mirza to establish Notre Dame’s first endowed professorship in Islamic studies
The University of Notre Dame announced Wednesday (Jan. 21) its first ever endowed professorship in Islamic studies, established with a $3 million gift from alumna Susan Scribner Mirza of Greenwich, Connecticut.
Video: Chinese professor on applying pedagogical theories to language instruction
“If you teach a student to learn to swim, you must put the student in the water. The same philosophy we can apply to the classroom teaching,” said Yongping Zhu, associate professor and chair of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.
Truly Christian and African: Notre Dame theologian Paulinus Odozor’s new book
The election of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Cardinal Archbishop of Buenos Aires, as Pope Francis nearly two years ago is only one illustration of how the Catholic Church has become less concentrated in Europe and North America than in the southern hemisphere. Nearly half of the world’s 1.1 billion Catholics live in Latin America, and the Catholic Church in Africa, home...
For Rabbi, ND Means Faith, Friendship, and Learning
Ask Rick Libowitz ’70 about Notre Dame, and he’ll tell you how it led him to explore his faith and become a rabbi.
Video: Tom Tweed on the history of religion in America
“How do we tell a more inclusive story that represents the broad and deep history of religion in the lands that became the United States?” said Thomas Tweed, the W. Harold and Martha Welch Endowed Chair in American Studies and professor of history at the University of Notre Dame.
New paper examines household production and asset prices
A new paper by Zhi Da, Viola D. Hank Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Notre Dame, finds that residential electricity usage can track household production in real time and helps to price assets. “The importance of household production in economics has been recognized by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker back in 1960s, but measuring what household produces at...
Women engineers gather at Notre Dame, bring the ‘brains and beauty to engineering’
This Friday and Saturday (March 6 and 7), approximately 850 female collegiate students and professionals will gather at the University of Notre Dame for the 2015 Society of Women Engineers (SWE) Region H Conference, highlighting women engineers’ unique place and voice within the engineering industry and bringing a significant economic impact to the area.
Notre Dame launches online theology program for Hispanic Catholics
The University of Notre Dame’s Institute for Church Life (ICL) has launched a new online adult faith formation program for Hispanic Catholics.
The program, Camino, is a collaborative initiative of ICL’s Satellite Theological Education Program (STEP) and the Southeast Pastoral Institute (SEPI).
Notre Dame receives USAID grant to undertake global development research on 3 continents
Twelve University of Notre Dame researchers, students from the Graduate School and the College of Arts and Letters, have been selected by the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) brand-new Research and Innovation Fellowship Program. They will travel to Brazil, Colombia, India and South Africa to research global development challenges and create innovative solutions to address these issues.
New psychology hire focuses on anxiety and depression
Associate Professor Lira Yoon has brought her expertise in social anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder to the University of Notre Dame’s Department of Psychology, where she plans to establish an experimental psychopathology lab that uses multiple methods to better understand the interface between cognition and emotion.
Faculty and staff to minority students: You belong here
This Letter to the Editor appeared in the January 20, 2015, edition of The Observer, the student-run, daily print and online newspaper serving Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s.
Hey, we just launched a school of global affairs. Now what?
Notre Dame carves out a holistic, religion-savvy niche with the creation of its first new school in 93 years.
Two new hires bring expertise in Chinese history
Notre Dame’s Department of History has significantly broadened and deepened its coverage of China with the appointments of Elisabeth Köll and Liang Cai, two scholars “who are doing extraordinarily exciting and complementary work,” said Madden-Hennebry Professor of History Patrick Griffin, chair of the department. “These two historians enjoy established reputations in their subfields,” Griffin said. “They are also committed to...
Notre Dame professor’s new work explores morality and tradition in African Christian theology
The Catholic Church in Africa is growing at an annual rate of over 3 percent. Given the largely Eurocentric nature of moral theology in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, what will it take to invest the theological community in the history and moral challenges of the Church in other parts of the world, especially Africa? What is to...