University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, CSC, ’87 traveled to Japan in August as part of a pilgrimage of peace to mark the 80th anniversaries of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some Notre Dame faculty, staff and students joined in the pilgrimage along with representatives from other Catholic universities in the United States.
On August 6, the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, Dowd offered remarks at Elisabeth University of Music, in Hiroshima. He said, in part: “One reason I wanted to be part of this pilgrimage is the opportunity to hear directly from the remaining survivors of the bombings, the hibakusha. Their witness to the reality of these barbarous weapons is irreplaceable in gaining the moral wisdom to fulfill the promise of the inscription on the Memorial Monument . . . : ‘Let all the souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil.’”
There’s a new leprechaun in town. In August, the Notre Dame athletic department unveiled a new football logo depicting the familiar mascot running with a football. The University will be releasing more such sport-specific marks to represent the 26 Irish varsity sports teams.
The update doesn’t spell the end of the traditional leprechaun logo, which will continue to be used for all athletic teams, together with the new, sport-specific designs. The original Notre Dame Fighting Irish leprechaun logo was designed in 1964 by Theodore “Ted” Drake, an Elkhart, Indiana-based cartoonist and graphic artist.
A sweatshirt worn by Knute Rockne, Class of 1914, and a whistle the famed Notre Dame football coach used at team practices are displayed among personal letters, telegrams and other artifacts in a new exhibit, “Rockne: Life & Legacy,” that will run through May 31, 2026, at The History Museum in South Bend.
The collection also includes an auto dealer’s sign advertising the Studebaker Rockne — the South Bend-based manufacturer produced a sedan named for the coach in model years 1932 and 1933 — and a piece of the wreckage from the airplane that crashed in Kansas, causing the coach’s death.
The items are on loan from the Notre Dame Archives, the College Football Hall of Fame, the Studebaker National Museum and private collector Jim Augustine. Full the full story here.
The Richard and Margaret Carey Courtyard in front of the Hesburgh Library has a new look. Over the summer, the invasive Callery pear trees featured in the courtyard’s planters for years were replaced with “Lois” magnolia trees, which produce pale yellow tulip-shaped blossoms in midspring. The planters will also house forsythia shrubs and a rotating variety of annuals such as tulips and chrysanthemums.
Students with food allergies have a new option. The Olive Kitchen, a 1,600-square-foot, allergen-free food preparation facility, was created over the summer on the first floor of Grace Hall.
Students with severe allergies who have registered with Campus Dining and are working with a staff dietitian may order specialized meals from the kitchen to be delivered at a designated place and time in either of the dining halls. A limited menu is available for grab-and-go meals directly from the kitchen. Some 120 students had signed up for the service by mid-August; in the past, such specialized meals were prepared in designated areas of the dining hall kitchens.
Notre Dame senior Luke Horwath and his mother, Anne, displayed their Lego skills on national television this past summer. The mother-son team competed on Lego Masters USA, a reality show in which contestants show off their creative and practical skills by building various projects with the iconic Danish toy bricks.
Competing on the show was a dream come true for the mechanical engineering major who dreams of working in the roller-coaster industry. A Lego enthusiast since age 5, he built a life-size, fully operational Lego pinball machine as a teenager. Taping the competition, he says, was a thrilling mix of intensity and joy — one for which he took a leave of absence during the fall 2023 semester. “For every moment of pressure, when you’re looking at the clock and realize that time is ticking away, it’s also a lot of fun,” he adds.
The show’s 10-episode season was recorded in one month. The Horwaths made it through episode eight before they were eliminated. Their project, a life-sized bed, proceeded smoothly until the weight of its colorful Lego bedsheet crushed its structural beams. Read the full story here.
The first major renovation of Moreau Seminary is complete. The building, erected in 1958 to house up to 200 seminarians during an era of vocational growth, has been updated to serve a new generation of men in the Congregation of Holy Cross. The improvements retain the seminary’s midcentury modern aesthetic with clean lines and simple forms.
One challenge was to adapt that original design — with its many stairs — to the contemporary need for accessibility. New ramps and larger elevators now meet that need. Holy Cross expects about 30 men in formation to be in residence at Moreau this fall.
Named for the congregation’s founder, Blessed Father Basil Moreau, CSC, the building also has a new name: Moreau Seminary and Scholasticate. In the Holy Cross tradition, a scholasticate is a building where religious brothers-in-training live and pursue their studies. Moreau has long served as a home for seminarians and prospective religious brothers; the new name encompasses both groups. Read more here.
Frank Leahy ’31 was Notre Dame’s head football coach from 1941 to 1943 and from 1946 to 1953. His teams played six undefeated seasons and won four national championships. When he retired from the University at age 45, he had the second-best record (107-13-9) in the history of college football — ranking just behind his mentor, Knute Rockne.
Yet it was not until 1970 that Leahy was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Year after year, a committee made up largely of former coaches passed over Leahy in favor of others with lesser records.
Such paradoxes are explored in a new book, American Coach: The Triumph and Tragedy of Notre Dame Legend Frank Leahy, by veteran college football writer Ivan Maisel.
“Leahy’s successes bolstered the university so it could take advantage of its football renown to transform into the premier Catholic institution of higher learning,” Maisel writes. The author explores friction between the coach and higher-ups, including the University’s young president, Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, CSC.
Maisel also covers Leahy’s successes on the field, as well as stress-induced illnesses, alcoholism in the family and the strains of national celebrity. While working on the book, he had full access to the archives of the University and the National Football Foundation and the cooperation of Leahy’s descendants. The book sheds new light on this legendary and underappreciated Fighting Irish coach.
Ed Hums ’75 retired in the spring after 50 years of work at Notre Dame, including 36 as a professor of accountancy. His wife, Shirley Hums ’97MSA, who worked in information technology support in the Joyce Center, retired in 2022. Together the couple completed 100 years of service to the University, which includes 12 years the Humses spent living among undergraduate students in Lyons Hall as part of Notre Dame’s faculty-in-residence program.
During his own undergrad days, Ed Hums worked as an athletic trainer under hockey coach Charles “Lefty” Smith and football coach Ara Parseghian. Over five decades, Notre Dame “really, really hasn’t changed that much,” he told Mendoza Business magazine. “The buildings might be different, but the feeling is still there.”
Notre Dame has a new headquarters in the nation’s capital. The University’s Washington Office is located at 1201 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, four blocks from the White House and a mile and a half from Capitol Hill. Opened in May with a blessing and dedication ceremony, it will serve as Notre Dame’s hub for federal affairs. The team previously occupied space in Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs D.C. office on 16th Street NW.