The ever-changing built landscape of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College and South Bend is the focus of “City and Campus: Rediscovering Lost Landmarks,” a current exhibit at The History Museum in South Bend.
Presented in the Raclin Gallery of Notre Dame History, the exhibit includes photographs, information and artifacts about pioneer Thomas Bulla’s 19th-century farmhouse, which stood near the site of Flanner and Grace halls; the former University farm and manual labor school; the old Senior Bar; long-ago downtown South Bend movie palaces; and Saint Mary’s original site in southern Michigan.
The exhibit was inspired by the 2024 book, City and Campus: An Architectural History of South Bend, Notre Dame, and Saint Mary’s, authored by the late Notre Dame architecture professor John W. Stamper, and will run through December 31, 2025.
The percentage of Notre Dame undergraduates who study abroad has reached an all-time high — 87.5 percent for the 2022-23 academic year. That figure, based on the number of enrolled students, places the University third among doctorate-granting institutions in the United States. Participation increased by more than 10 percentage points from the previous year according to data released in November in the “Open Doors” report published by the New York City-based Institute of International Education.
University leaders attribute the rise to several factors, including greater flexibility during the application process. Notre Dame Global reopened the application period in early spring during each of the last three years to allow more students to apply or to have a second chance to apply.
The University offers approximately 58 semester and year-long study abroad programs and 34 summer programs in 35 countries around the world.
The end of the world will arrive someday, maybe prompted by a comet, an atomic bomb or the Second Coming, but until then we have work to do, best-selling author John Green says. Green spoke to a capacity audience in Leighton Concert Hall in February for the 2025 John Ruskin Birthday Lecture hosted by the University’s John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values. The internationally popular novelist and nonfiction writer offered his thoughts on mortality, the power and fragility of humanity, and his own religious faith.
Many of the students who attended Green’s lecture grew up reading his books, including The Fault in Our Stars and Turtles All the Way Down, both novels.
Noting that 4.9 million children under the age of 5 around the world died in 2022 of diseases related to poverty, Green said the number of such deaths is declining — but not fast enough. “Someday we will no longer have the opportunity to work together to bring about a world where everyone is treated as fully human by the social order. Someday we will lose the opportunity to make progress on child mortality, but not today,” the author said. “We must not allow our cacophonous fear of what’s coming drown out the cries of what’s already here.”
Read more about Green’s talk >
Maggie Su, a postdoctoral research associate and assistant director of the University Writing Center, is gaining national attention for her debut novel, Blob: A Love Story, which was published in January.
In Su’s humorous novel, Vi Liu, a struggling, 20-something, biracial Midwesterner, finds a mysterious blob in an alley and discovers she can mold it into her ideal boyfriend; Frankenstein-like, the boyfriend soon rebels against his creator.
A New York Times review declares the book a “sharp, funny and poignant look at what it means to connect with another being, and yourself.”
Construction of the second building making up McCourtney Hall finished this winter, and the first research teams have moved into the facility. The addition nearly doubles the hall’s overall contribution to Notre Dame’s interdisciplinary science and engineering research footprint.
The new 205,000-square-foot structure east of the Hesburgh Library consists primarily of custom-designed laboratories, with 30 percent of the building remaining as shell space available to attract new faculty researchers or accommodate new research collaborations.
Something new is buzzing on the western edge of campus. Workers have installed a 46,000-square-foot solar array in a field near Indiana 933, north of the WNDU-TV studios.
The West Campus Solar project is part of Notre Dame’s ongoing effort to diversify its energy supply and achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. As a clean, renewable source of energy, the array will meet 1 percent of campus electricity demand while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 600 to 700 tons annually, like taking as many as 135 gasoline-powered vehicles off the road.
The field has been home to wildflowers as part of the University’s 21 acres of designated native pollinator areas. While some of those plantings were removed to clear land for the array, the field will be reseeded with shorter native plant varieties to accommodate pollinators while keeping the panels fully exposed to sunlight.
Notre Dame and Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC Chile) have expanded their dual Ph.D. program.
Previously available to engineering students, the program now admits candidates from all academic disciplines, the first university-wide dual Ph.D. agreement for both institutions.
Participants spend at least one year at each school, culminating in two doctoral degrees — one from Notre Dame and one from UC Chile — for a single body of work. The program’s expansion offers significant opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration and lays the foundation for a broader faculty exchange program across disciplines.
“Graduate student exchanges are the foundation of strong research partnerships with institutions like UC Chile,” says Michael Hildreth, Notre Dame’s associate provost, vice president for graduate studies and dean of the Graduate School. “By enabling students to spend time in different academic environments, we deepen collaborations and contribute to groundbreaking research that strengthens both institutions while addressing global challenges.”
Ara Parseghian was the last Notre Dame football coach to lead the Fighting Irish to two national championships — in 1966 and 1973. His storied career receives its due in Ara: The Life and Legacy of a Notre Dame Legend, an authorized biography written by South Bend resident Mark O. Hubbard ’72 and published last August by Notre Dame Press.
The author benefited from full access to Parseghian’s letters and personal files, as well as interviews with Katie Parseghian, the coach’s widow. Ara Parseghian died in 2017 at age 94. The book includes a foreword by Rocky Bleier ’68.
Ara chronicles Parseghian’s childhood in Akron, Ohio, his college playing days, his two years as a halfback for the Cleveland Browns and his coaching career at Miami University of Ohio and Northwestern before his 11 seasons at Notre Dame from 1964 to 1974.
The book includes an essay Parseghian wrote in retirement that reveals his Catholic upbringing. When he was hired at Notre Dame, he was introduced to fans as a Presbyterian, and he worried that his lapsed Catholic faith would cause a furor. “I wonder if we had made my Catholic background known, would I have been accepted by the Notre Dame faithful?” the coach wrote years later.
Hubbard’s book was a runner-up for 2024 Sports Book of the Year in the American Writing Awards competition.