Two newcomers have taken up residence in Jordan Hall of Science: a polar bear and a walrus. Appropriately, the walrus arrived on campus on a cold day in January. The latest additions to the College of Science’s Museum of Biodiversity, these two specimens of mammalian taxidermy were donated by a zoo in South Dakota.
Reginald Dillard, a client of Notre Dame Law School’s Exoneration Justice Clinic, walked out of prison in February, exonerated 27 years after his conviction for a crime he did not commit.
The release came after several years of work to challenge Dillard’s case and present new evidence on his behalf, an effort led by adjunct professor and lead defense attorney Elliot Slosar and law students at the clinic.
In 2000, Dillard was convicted of murder in the 1998 shooting in Elkhart, Indiana, of Christopher Thomas, a confidential informant of the Elkhart County Drug Task Force. Dillard was sentenced to 65 years in prison. In February, a special prosecutor concluded that his constitutional rights had been violated through the withholding of material exculpatory evidence and agreed to vacate his conviction. A judge then signed an order dismissing the criminal charges against Dillard, who is 57.
“There was a time when I was the voiceless, and now I’ve become a voice for the voiceless, and I plan on being that voice,” Dillard said after his release. His exoneration is the fourth achieved by the clinic since it was established in 2020, and the clinic’s third in a row obtained with the agreement of prosecutors in the case.
A record number of students prepared this year to receive Catholic sacraments through the Order of Christian Initiation of Adults offered through Notre Dame’s Campus Ministry. With 76 participants in the year-long OCIA course, 60 in the spring short course and 27 in the fall short course, the OCIA class of 2026 easily surpassed last year’s high mark of 123 total
participants, The Observer reported in February.
The OCIA process is designed to help students discern the next steps in their faith journey and prepare those who wish to join the Catholic Church to receive baptism, the Eucharist and confirmation.
“The message of Jesus is ever-ancient, ever-new, right? It’s the message that the world always needs, that always points to ‘You are here for a purpose,’” said Brett Perkins ’01, ’11M.A., Campus Ministry’s assistant director for evangelization and religious education. “That is a message that is compelling for every person, for all people, for all places, all times.”
As an undergraduate, Missy Conboy ’82 was a varsity basketball player. Now a 39-year veteran employee of the Notre Dame athletic department, Conboy will retire June 30.
Currently senior deputy athletic director for industry and campus engagement, she is the longest-tenured female administrator in the department.
After college, Conboy earned a law degree at the University of Kansas and was hired by the University in 1987 to set up its inaugural NCAA compliance program. She’s served in leadership roles covering nearly every facet of the athletics enterprise from legal affairs to community outreach. She is liaison to the Board of Trustees’ athletic affairs committee and the Faculty Board on Athletics and is the University’s primary representative to the Atlantic Coast Conference.
Conboy also led renovations of the Purcell Pavilion, Rolfs Athletic Hall and Notre Dame Stadium and oversaw the planning and construction of numerous varsity facilities. To mark the 50th anniversary of Title IX in 2022, she worked with the Monogram Club to honor more than 200 women from Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College who founded the first women’s club sports at the University.
The History Museum in South Bend has topped off its ongoing “Rockne: Life & Legacy” exhibit with an addition: Knute Rockne’s hat. Fans will recognize the light gray fedora that Notre Dame’s famous head football coach appears to have worn in several often-republished photos.
The hat’s backstory begins when Rockne and a man named Maurice Vennet met at a South Bend Elks Club meeting, where a mix-up led to their accidentally switching hats. The coach’s fedora remained with Vennet, and the family says the hat was passed down to the eventual possession of Vennet’s great-great nephew and nieces. Its inner band indicates its purchase at Renfranz-Rasmussen, once a prominent men’s clothing store in South Bend. The Rockne-Vennet hat is now on display in the exhibit, which continues through May 31.
Students have a new way of sharing greetings, encouragement or romantic overtures. Residents of Farley Hall now sell “Potatograms” before Valentine’s Day.
Each customer who places an order, $2 per potato, writes their message in permanent marker on the raw tuber, which is delivered by dorm residents to the designated recipient on campus, explains Farley junior Theresa Lalli, who helped organize this year’s sale.
The idea follows traditional conversation heart candies, minus the pastel colors and sugar. Some people scribble potato puns — “You’re the tater to my tot”; “I only have eyes for you” — while others compose more romantic sentiments.
The two-year old fundraiser, suggested by former hall president Meghan Lang ’26, peddled some 1,500 spuds this year, raising more than $3,500 for Our Lady of the Road, a local homeless outreach and service center.
Notre Dame and the city of South Bend are moving ahead with plans to develop Colfax Corner, a 202,000-square-foot research and innovation hub downtown.
Situated on Colfax Avenue between Lafayette Boulevard and Main Street, Colfax Corner is the first phase of a city-designated “tech and talent district.” It will feature renovation of the vacant former South Bend Tribune building and construction of an adjoining facility. The two will connect on the second floor, frame an outdoor public plaza and offer classroom, research and event space. Work is slated to begin this summer and take two years to complete.
The project, funded in part by a $30 million grant from the Indiana-based Lilly Endowment, is expected to support more than 400 high-tech jobs and have a $750 million impact on the local economy over the next 10 years.
Notre Dame acquired the century-old building in 2023 to preserve it from demolition.
In February, Professor Susan Ostermann declined an appointment to lead an academic institute in the Keough School of Global Affairs after widespread criticism of the appointment was prompted by her outspoken advocacy for abortion.
Ostermann’s appointment as the director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, announced in January and scheduled to take effect July 1, produced a series of dueling op-ed columns in campus and national publications and resulted in Keough Dean Mary Gallagher’s announcement in late February that Ostermann had withdrawn from the appointment.
A political scientist and an attorney with expertise in comparative politics in South Asia, Ostermann joined the Keough faculty in 2017 and will remain a faculty member.
The objections concerned a series of op-eds she co-wrote in recent years with former Keough sociologist Tamara Kay and published in the Chicago Tribune, Salon and elsewhere, in which they argued that contemporary abortion politics in the United States cannot be understood apart from longer histories of race and demographic change.
Rev. Wilson Miscamble, CSC, ’78M.A., ’80Ph.D., ’87M.Div., a professor emeritus of history, wrote in the Catholic journal First Things that the University’s commitment to its Catholic character was “explicitly repudiated” by Ostermann’s appointment.
Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend issued a statement objecting, for instance, to Kay and Ostermann’s assertion that “the pro-life position has ‘its roots in white supremacy and racism’” and urging Notre Dame’s leaders to rescind the Liu directorship. At least 15 bishops and two cardinals joined campus voices in calling for the same. Diane Desierto, a professor of law and global affairs, and Robert Gimello, a professor emeritus of theology, resigned as fellows of the Liu Institute, citing Ostermann’s support for abortion rights in opposition to Catholic teaching.
“My only goal in accepting the Liu Institute Directorship was to serve as a steward for the Institute’s world-class faculty, students and staff; it is not a position I applied for, but I was truly honored to take it on,” Ostermann wrote in a statement.
“At present, the focus on my appointment risks overshadowing the vital work the Institute performs, which it should be allowed to pursue without undue distraction. At the same time, it has become clear that there is work to do at Notre Dame to build a community where a variety of voices can flourish. Both academic inquiry and the full realization of human dignity demand this.”
Legendary football coach Lou Holtz, who led Notre Dame to the 1988 national championship, died at age 89 on March 4 — the anniversary of Knute Rockne’s birth — just days before the magazine went to press. Read longtime sports reporter Malcolm Moran’s remembrance, classic magazine stories from Holtz’s triumphant Notre Dame tenure, and coverage of the campus services that celebrated the coach’s life and legacy here.